I woke up as the stretcher was taken out of the ambulance and moved back through the emergency department to the acute care section. A nurse came in as the paramedics transferred me to the hospital bed. "What about the dean?" I said as the nurse attached a blood pressure cuff, a pulse oximeter, and pulled out her stethoscope to listen to my lungs.

"The dean is the man who came in at the same time?"

"He has third-degree burns on his chest."

"He'll be okay. It will take him a little while to recover, but there is no doubt that he will."

I reached out and held Ranger's hand. I was having more and more trouble breathing. My throat was very sore and all I wanted was some juice or water to drink. I could see the paramedics talking to the doctor through the door of the cubicle. The doctor shook his head in amazement, then seconds later came through. "How are you feeling?" he said.

"It is getting very difficult to breathe. My chest is tight again and I feel like I'm not getting enough air."

"How does your abdomen feel?"

"It hurts like hell. I think I pulled something when I lifted that nice man."

The doctor looked at the pulse ox numbers, then turned up the concentration of oxygen. He looked at my blood pressure, listened to my chest, looked down my throat, and turned to me. "I think I know what has happened. You are recovering from pneumonia, as we know. I don't know how your lungs sounded before today, so I can't tell you whether the damage I hear is a result of your activities today and how much was left over. However, your lungs are very rapidly becoming congested. Whether it's chemical pneumonia compounding or just the smoke inhalation on top of your already compromised lungs, I don't know. I do know, however, that you are going to be here a while so you might as well get comfortable. That's your lungs. As for your abdomen, I would like to get some imaging to see what is going on. You also have second-degree burns on your legs. The nurse is going to put some cool pads on your burns. The paramedics already removed your shoes."

"Can you check Ranger and Heather?"

The doctor smiled and turned to Ranger and Heather. He looked down their throat and listened to their chest and back. "Amazing", he said. "Both of you seem to be fine, but if something changes, call us immediately. I would also like to see you drinking cold water to dislodge all the black smoke from the tissues in your throat. Does anything feel unnatural?" Ranger and Heather shook their heads. The doctor smiled. "Good. From what I understand, you are all heros. Now we just have to fix up Stephanie so that she can go home and sleep." He looked at us. "Any questions?"

"Is it okay to use a cell phone in the hospital?" said Ranger.

The doctor smiled. "Certainly", he said. "We'll be back frequently to check on things."

Ranger smiled and kissed my forehead. "Just proving that, once again, everything happens to you."

I snorted, and Ranger kissed my forehead again. "I'm thinking that it is time to get Miguel and Dirk and Nick here for a visit – with their families of course – and at the same time get Hal to bring one of our national teams", he said quietly. "The managers are talented and would be able to run the department when the directors are gone. I personally want to throw everything we have at this, and find the people responsible and shut them down."

I smiled.

"I was thinking that Julie could stay with the children and perhaps Kai could come into the emergency room. He would be able to better work with the doctor to determine how much of the damage is new and how much of the damage is still hanging around from your pneumonia."

I nodded and smiled.

Ranger sat back on his chair and sent a text to Kai explaining what was going on. Kai said that he'd be there as soon as he could.

Then, as he opened an email to Tank, the man that I had dragged out walked into my cubicle. "I just wanted to meet the person who got me out, and thank her for doing that", said the man.

Ranger smiled and shook his hand. "I'm Ranger", he said, "and this is my wife, Stephanie. Stephanie was the one that rescued you."

"My name is Ben Fowler", said the man. "I was lucky that you were there. I'd been sitting at the front. I had wanted to get a good seat as my niece was graduating."

"Did you, sir?" said Ranger.

"I did. It was one of the proudest days of my life."

Ranger smiled. "I know what you mean. It was the same for Stephanie and me. It was a good friend rather than a niece, but I couldn't have been prouder." He turned to Heather. "This is Heather. She stopped some of the people from stampeding out of the auditorium and organized them so that they were each taking a victim. Steph and I worked our way to the front through the stampeding crowd, and by the time we got there Heather had taken care of everybody except the three most injured – you, the dean, and another student. Heather lifted the person closest to her, I jumped up on the stage for the dean, and Steph crossed the hot zone and got you."

"You're on oxygen", said Ben. "Are you going to be okay?"

"We hope so", said Ranger with a smile, but I could see his eyes were worried. "Steph was already recovering from pneumonia, and she just underwent a major operation that she is still recovering from as well. It's been a traumatic six months and this seems to be the epitome of it."

Ben looked at me in shock. "You are recovering from surgery, and from pneumonia, and you waded into a hot zone to save a stranger that weighs about three times as much as you?"

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. "I didn't want to leave you lying there. You looked uncomfortable."

Ben shook his head.

"If there is anything I can do", he said, "please let me know. I'll give you my business card. Make sure you call me."

"Thank you, sir", said Ranger. He took the card and looked down at it. He looked surprised, and then smiled. "Sir, perhaps I had better introduce myself more fully." He turned to Heather. "I'm sorry, Heather, but Ben is someone that Steph and I were going to meet this week for business purposes. I need a couple of minutes to talk to Ben and I'll come get you afterwards, okay?"

She smiled and said okay, and I thought about how far she had come in a short time. Two months ago, she would have taken it personally if she'd been asked to leave. As she left, Ranger turned back to Ben. "I am Ranger, as I said. I am the new president of Castle Force." He handed me Ben's business card. Like many secret organizations, it was not specified on the card. But as I looked at the name and the lack of organization, I smiled. Ben was the head of MI6. "I believe that Steph and I are meeting you tomorrow."

Ben looked at Ranger and assessed him, then smiled. "Coincidences are wonderful things."

"You can check us out by phoning Adam", said Ranger. "My company is called Rangeman."

"Thank you. I will."

Ranger smiled and nodded. "Tomorrow, assuming that Steph is home again, we'll meet at the castle and talk there. I will want to talk about what happened today and find out if you were the intended target. It would make sense, since you were the closest to the hot zone. Just so that you know, I am going to ask for Steph's elite team to come to Scotland for a couple of weeks to do some work, and I'm in the process of asking for a strike team to come to provide support."

"Strike team?"

"I come from a Special Forces background, and I don't know the team here well enough yet to know their strengths and weaknesses. I do, however, know my strike team."

"Fair enough."

"Can you get a copy of all security footage from today? I could get it through hacking, but this would be much faster and more...legal."

Ben laughed. "I can definitely do that." He looked at Ranger and me. "You know, Colin was a good friend of mine. He was the best director at MI6 that we'd ever had."

I laughed. "He never told us he was the director."

Ben laughed. "That's not surprising. He was a humble man. However, when he got back from the US, he phoned me. He told me that he had adopted a daughter and a son-in-law and their children, that they were the best people he had ever met, and he was gifting them Castle Force. He sounded happier than I had ever heard him before. It was, in fact, the main reason I wanted to meet you. I wanted to meet the person who had made him so happy, and to thank you for doing that."

I smiled with tears in my eyes. "I loved him too. He provided support at a time when I really needed it, when my own family was not being supportive at all. He was a good man."