Page 6 of Lethal Danger

Soft beats thumped against his fingers.

Thank the Lord.

Hawthorne leaned forward to get a better look at the man’s head where it had slammed against the spoke.

Blood oozed onto the steel from an apparent wound. Not good. Was it still actively bleeding?

Hawthorne mentally cycled through the First Aid course he’d received years ago in basic training.

He should apply pressure, but with a clean cloth. Given how sweaty his clothes were by this point, a torn scrap from either his shirt or pants wouldn’t suffice. Maybe he should wait for the rescue squad to try it.

Hawthorne glanced down below.

Wow. Way below. Glad he hadn’t looked down earlier. And he was especially glad heights didn’t bother him.

Wait a second…

Something moved, but not on the ground. On the Ferris wheel.

A person in a black T-shirt climbed up the spokes and beams exactly as he had done. Was that the redhead?

Sure enough, a dark ponytail swung as she shifted her body toward a spoke.

A strange feeling stirred in his chest as he watched her. She moved quickly—faster than he had climbed, actually. Her movements were fluid and strong. No hesitation or caution. Only athleticism and skill, not missing a hold in her almost rhythmic climb.

She disappeared under the cluster of connecting beams at the center. But only for a moment.

Then her head appeared above the horizontal spokes where he waited with the injured man.

She sprang onto the beams and crawled toward him nearly as fast as the monkeys he used to watch at the zoo where he had volunteered. Coiled rope hung from her shoulder and angled across her shirt.

“How is he?” She didn’t even sound out of breath as she came up beside Hawthorne, close to the passenger’s head.

Hawthorne turned toward the injured man. Probably should’ve been watching him instead of the remarkable woman who’d just free-climbed halfway up a 156-foot Ferris wheel without breaking a sweat.

He rechecked the man’s pulse. “Pulse is steady but weakening a little.”

The redhead crawled closer and pushed up to sitting, balancing on the middle of the crossbeams’ X with her feet braced on the two beams where they angled away. She aimed big eyes at him. “The rescue squad is on the way. ETA ten minutes. But one of the onsite nurses is waiting below. If we can get him down, she can start treating him.”

The woman was fascinating. With only a few feet between them, there was no missing she was even more beautiful than he’d first thought. And she wasn’t slathered in makeup like so many women her age who wanted to be attractive.

Her smooth, creamy skin was sun-kissed to perfection, and the rays glinted off her shiny red hair. Her full lips didn’t need more than the gloss he guessed she wore. But her eyes were her most stunning feature. A brilliant emerald green that made him rethink his statement that he’d never seen a green as intense as the color of the fields in Ireland.

The woman had beauty, brains, courage, and toted a gun and knife he was sure she knew how to use. It couldn’t get any better than that.

“I’ll get on his left side here. You can go on his right, and I’ll pass the rope under him to you.” Her directions brought him out of his observations to see she was hefting the coiled rope off her shoulder and over her head.

Occupational hazard to get lost in observations and imagination. But he couldn’t help it this time. He’d been searching for weeks for the right idea for his next book series. And now, she was staring him in the face.

“What’s your name?”

“Excuse me?” She shot him a glance with raised eyebrows as she unwound one end of the rope.

“Sorry.” He scrambled for an excuse for the oddly timed question. An excuse that would also get her to answer. “I just want to know what name to yell if I’m about to fall.”

His joke earned a charming laugh that sounded like she was hitting the notes of a musical scale.

She bent over the passenger to slide the rope under his back. “Jazz Lamont.”

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