“Fire!”
What occurred next happened so fast, my brain didn’t process it until the back wall burst into flames.
More shouts. Running. Movement. Heat.
So much fucking heat. It was the bad kind, the kind that hit you like a sudden power outage, plunging crucial corridors of your mind into darkness and short-circuiting the pathways between your brain and muscles.
Choking, paralyzing, life-stealing heat. Sweat enveloped my skin.
Xavier! ¿Dónde estás mi hijo?
She was trapped…couldn’t get past the front door… Died of smoke inhalation…
Lucky we recovered her body… It should’ve been you.
My mind seethed with visions better left buried. Reality wavered, switching from past to present and back again.
It should’ve been you.
An attempt at air drew in smoke instead of oxygen. I coughed, my lungs burning, and ironically, that was what snapped me out of it.
The smells, the heat, the panic. I’d been here before.
I’d almost died when I was ten, but I wasn’t ten anymore, and I’d be damned if I let another fire finish what the first one had started. I blinked, and my surroundings rushed back in horrifying clarity. Flames danced around me with malevolent glee, spreading faster than my eyes could track them. Their red and orange tongues reached hungrily for anything in their path and cast a surreal glow on the vault’s stone floors and ribbed ceilings. The temperature soared to such unbearable heights that every inch of my skin screamed for relief.
Still, my feet remained rooted to the floor.
My mind was back, but my body remained frozen until a loud crack finally, thankfully shattered my numbness and spurred me into motion.
I didn’t waste time checking to see what had caused the sound. I simply ran, dodging abandoned tools while covering my mouth and nose with my forearm. Flames rushed toward me like ants streaming toward an overturned picnic basket, and I made it halfway to the exit before a wave of dizziness slowed me down.
I stumbled but didn’t stop moving. I was already lightheaded from the smoke; if I stopped moving, I would die.
I made it another ten or so feet when a flash of black caught my eye.
My heart stopped. Vuk.
“Markovic!” I coughed from the effort of shouting amid a scarcity of oxygen. “We have to get out of here!”
The fire was closing in fast. If we didn’t leave soon, we’d get trapped.
Vuk didn’t move. He stood there, his eyes blank, his body so still I couldn’t even see him breathe. If he weren’t standing, I would’ve thought him dead.
Willow was nowhere in sight.
“Vuk!” I didn’t give a shit if he hated his given name. I only cared if it got through to him.
It didn’t.
Dammit.
I silently cursed using every English and Spanish expletive I knew as I closed the distance between us and forcefully hauled him toward the exit.
I was in excellent shape. I worked out regularly, and I packed a good amount of muscle, but trying to drag two hundred and thirty-five pounds of uncooperative Serb through a fire was like trying to pull a freight train with a toy car.
Sweat poured into my eyes. My muscles weakened and turned slack. The distance between us and the door stretched endlessly, each step akin to climbing a different Mount Everest.
Part of me wanted to give up, lie on the floor, and let the flames burn away the pain and worries and regrets.
But if I did that—if I didn’t get us to the exit—we’d die. I’d never see Sloane again, and I’d be responsible for yet more death.
I couldn’t let that happen.
Through sheer force of will, I dragged us inch by inch across the floor. I wasn’t breathing so much as gasping now, and bursts of darkness peppered my vision.
But somehow, I did it.
I didn’t know how. Maybe it was the same superhuman strength that allowed mothers to lift entire cars off their children, or maybe it was my body’s last rallying cry before it collapsed.
Whatever it was, it pulled us through the vault exit and toward the stairwell. The door flung open, and suddenly black and yellow streamed past my vision.
I glimpsed the letters FDNY before someone pulled Vuk off me, and someone else grabbed hold of me, and we were moving, ducking, hurrying up the stairs while other crew members battled the encroaching fire.
I let them guide me, too dazed and disoriented to do more than follow, but I looked back once—just long enough to see the vault, my dream, and everything that came with it burn.
CHAPTER 38
Xavier
