One last look at her and I know I need to go.
“All right, kid. Sleep well, huh?” I stroke her hair one last time, brushing a few stray strands back behind her ear, and then we go. Out in the hallway, both Sloane and Mason startle when the door swings open. Mason, poor bastard, looks like he’s about to die himself. I know exactly how he feels. When Lacey died, I couldn’t even speak properly for days. I fucking hate thinking about how raw the pain was back then. It was brutal, all consuming. I thought I was never going to emerge out of the other side of it. Some days, I feel like I still haven’t.
I place my hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Sorry,” I tell him. It’s the only thing I can offer him. No platitudes or it-will-get-better-with-times. Those are pointless. Sorry is the only thing that actually means something.
Sloane looks beaten down. She gives me a sad, tired smile, and I have to stop myself collecting her up in my arms and forcing her to come home with me. She looks like she needs sleep. She definitely shouldn’t be here, but she’s committed to her job. It wouldn’t matter if she didn’t know the guy sitting next to her from any other stranger on the street; she would stay with him and comfort him for as long as he needed her. She’s not walking away from Mason any time soon.
“Call me if you need me,” I tell her. She nods. Quickly, she gets to her feet and throws her arms around my neck, hugging me. I kiss her on the top of her head, and then on the mouth, deeply, trying to pass some of my strength into her. She doesn’t need it; my angry girl is a badass. At a time like this, though, there’s no harm in sharing a little.
Michael’s on my heels as I leave the hospital. “Do you want me to follow you back? I have my Lexus here.”
“No, it’s fine. Go home. Sleep. You’ve been out all night.”
“You know me. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”
I slap him on the shoulder, grunting. “I’ll catch you at the gym later.” Fuck telling him that I need a minute to myself. Fuck telling him that seeing that little girl still and lifeless back there has hollowed me out beyond belief. He reads all of these things on me, though. He’s known me long enough to be able to gauge my moods. Michael retrieves his keys from his pocket and gives me a perfunctory nod.
“Later, then.”
I drive the Camaro away from St. Peter’s, and with every mile I put between myself and that place I feel heavier instead of lighter. I want to smash my fists into something—heading to the gym is probably the best thing I can do for myself right now, but I find myself driving in the direction of the warehouse instead. Back to Lacey. We lived together there for a short period of time, but the open rooms, hallway and vast, empty spaces are so full of memories that it sometimes feels like she’s still there somehow, crashed out on the couch, eating her breakfast cereal, watching TV.
My body is on autopilot, my brain somewhere far, far away, and so I smell the smoke before I see it. A thick, chemical tang thickens in the air as I get closer to the warehouse. Acrid and bitter, the smell grows stronger and stronger until my mind finally snaps back to reality, and I see it: the large, billowing plume of dirty black smoke funneling up toward the sky like a tornado right in the middle of the docklands.
I already know where it’s coming from by the distance and the location of the smoke, and I already know what I’ll see when I turn the next corner: the warehouse, burning. The warehouse on fire.
An alarm is drilling the air somewhere close by. It grows louder, piercing my eardrums, when I park up twenty feet from the burning building and climb out of the car.
What. The. Fuck?
The flames have melted the glass in the window frames on the second floor. The roller door at street level that I always keep locked is still chained, but the metal is warped and turned rust-red. It makes a wobbling, popping noise as I take a step toward the place. Inside, a loud crashing sound splits the air, as something collapses—a support beam or an internal wall.
The fire is well established. Must have been burning for some time. There are no fire trucks or police parked up out front, though. Everyone around here knows better than to call 911 in a situation like this. Who’s to say what the fire fighters or the cops would find in a building like mine. No, the people on the docks are all too aware I’d skin them alive if I found out they’d placed that call, so no one has dialed, and so the building has burned.
The heat from the furnace is almost unbearable. It feels as though it will melt the skin from my bones as I get closer and closer. A huge crack, from the roof down to the very foundations of the building, has rented the main wall almost in two. Inside, every stick of furniture, every book, every single possession Lacey ever brought home with her, is being eaten by the flames.