I leave the car with Tommy at the pub and hoof it back to the palace. To take my mind off Ellie, I check on the progress of the investigation into Lady Olivia and Prince Nicholas’s stalker. We still haven’t caught the fucker. It’s like he’s a ghost, dropping his nasty notes here and there, then evaporating into the ether. And it’s escalating. The last one came with photographs. Shots of Olivia in the palace gardens, picnicking with her friend, Simon Barrister’s wife, Lady Francis, and their three-year-old boy, Jack.
The photos weren’t taken with a long-range lens—which means the bastard was on the palace grounds. And that’s why he sent them: because he wanted us to know he’d slipped inside. That he’s getting closer. We pumped up security around the perimeter, but it still eats at me. A niggling worry. As Winston said, obsessed nutters come with the territory. They’re common for people as well known and powerful as the royal family—for every thousand subjects who adore them, there’s one who wants to see them burn like witches.
But this one’s uncomfortably persistent. And bold. Gives me a bad vibe, and I make a note to follow up directly with Winston tomorrow.
Around dinnertime, I drive away from the palace, but I don’t go home. I can’t—too many temptations there. The priests always said masturbation could turn us blind—and I like my eyesight the way it is.
Instead, I go to Katy’s Pub. I’m greeted when I enter, loosen my tie, grab a pint at the bar and head into the back room to shoot some pool. The room is windowless and dim. A top-notch place to block things from the outside, to pass the time so fast you don’t realize it’s passing. A space to forget . . . and hide.
I play a few rounds with the regulars. Then shoot on my own, focusing on the simple act of knocking a billiard ball into the cup. It’s relaxing, centering—sort of like my idea of yoga. A bit later, after I land the eight ball in the corner pocket, I straighten up and stretch my neck. I head back out to the bar for another pint.
But when I step into the outer room, I see the other patrons and Kathleen holding her daughter in her arms, gathered around the bar. Silent and serious—they’re all focusing on the small television screen mounted to the wall in the corner.
The cue in my hand drops to the floor with a crack.
For a moment I can’t move, can’t think—can’t even fucking breathe.
Because of the image on that screen.
The image of black smoke pouring out the windows of The Horny Goat. Of red-hot flames licking the wind and climbing up the walls. Encompassing it—devouring it—obliterating it from the world. Like it had never been there at all.
“Poor Macalister,” someone whispers. “Hope he’s all right.”
And it’s as if my soul turns to dust, like I’m a statue of sand disintegrating in the breeze. Because I know—I know it in my bones—Ellie is in there.
In a heartbeat, I’m out the door. Running, muscles stretching and screaming—sprinting faster than I ever have. It’s like I’m running for my life . . . because I am.
I pump my arms and turn the corner, my shoes slapping the pavement. But it feels like I’m moving through liquid. Through gelatin. Like that nightmare everyone has—I push and lean and strain and reach but I can’t go fast enough.
Move, move, fucking move!
Her face flashes in my mind. Smiling. Laughing. Her dancing eyes and flittering gait.
I promised her. I swore I would keep her safe. Be her guard, her wall, so she could fly free. And I will not fucking fail her.
I can smell the smoke now. If I look up I’ll see the gray mist and the ash in the air, but I won’t look. My eyes are on the ground, one foot in front of the next. Bringing me closer. To her.
I’m coming. Almost there.
There’s no space for sorrow or recriminations. Not yet.
I see it in my mind—how it’ll go. How I’ll get to her, find her, wrap her in my arms—shield her from the heat. Carry her away from the flames. I’ll be there for her.
I’ll save her.
Because that’s who I am. That’s what I do. Why I’m here—the only reason I’m here.
And she belongs to me.
Ellie is mine to have and to hold. To save and keep. Forever and always.
At last, I see The Goat ahead of me. My eyes find the door, engulfed in flames. I push and leap and shove my way through the crowd. The heat is on my face, blistering against my skin—suffocating and scorching. My lungs strangle on the acrid smoke that coats the air. But it doesn’t matter—she’s in there, so that’s where I need to be.
I clear the crush of people and am just a few steps from the door . . . when I’m hit, tackled from behind and knocked to the ground.
My heart roars, even if my throat can’t. I push and fight, ready to destroy whatever’s stopping me.
But another weight piles on, and another, pinning me down.
Later, I learn it’s the firefighters, gripping me, holding on. They’re shouting in my ear, but I don’t hear them. I only see the door.
And then I’m shouting. Screaming my lungs raw.
For her. Calling her name.
But I can’t hear my own voice.
It’s drowned out, overwhelmed by the inferno and the deafening sound of cracking, splintering wood. As the roof of The Horny Goat caves in, sending an eruption of deep-red sparks into the air like a volcano.
And anything or anyone—is consumed by flames.
“WHERE WERE YOU?”
Olivia, the Duchess of Fairstone, my Lady and so much more, looks down at me with an ashen face, her eyes like two sapphires left out in the rain—hard and wet.
I don’t know if she means to sound accusatory but I hear the blame in her voice.
Where were you? Why weren’t you there? What were you doing, you worthless cunt?
Or maybe . . . maybe it’s just my own guilt, burning me alive.
I open my mouth to answer, but the words are lodged behind the lump in my throat. I have to clear it to speak.
“She was with Tommy. I left off early.”
We’re in the front parlor of Guthrie House. Where we’ve gathered—me, Olivia, Nicholas, Henry and Sarah—to wait for news while the fire marshals investigate and Winston and his army of Dark Suits chase down leads. Evan Macalister, the owner of The Goat, is in the hospital being treated for smoke inhalation. Tommy’s one floor below him, unconscious with a concussion from a falling beam. Both of them were dragged from the burning building; the other patrons all made it out on their own.
Except Ellie.
“Why?” Olivia asks.
I rub my eyes. “I don’t . . .” Hold it together. Don’t you fucking break, now. “I can’t remember . . .”
When I was seventeen, in the military, I watched a man die next to me. Sniper shot came in, got him right in the heart. I remember seeing the hole in his jacket, the fabric singed around the edges. He didn’t bleed, not right away. And he didn’t fall at first; he stayed standing.
A dead man standing—looking down at the wound in his chest. Waiting to bleed out.
That’s what I am now.
The pain’s there—an exquisite, intense agony, the likes of which I have never known. But I don’t feel it. I can sense it, like it’s shored up on the other side of a wall, a rising tide.
And I have to hold it off, just a little while longer.