There.
From behind the broken table, I could see an arm poking out. He must be hurt, unconscious even. I needed to get him out.
Pulling my sweater up over my nose and mouth, I sucked in one last breath of air then held it tight as I dove into the destroyed cottage. Or attempted to. A strong arm grabbed me around the waist, hauling me back from the flames and away from Wesley.
“Stop it!” I screeched. “Let me go! I need to help!” I clawed at the arms holding me, but I was frantic, panicked, and totally lacking my superstrength. I may as well have been fighting a robot for all the impact I was having.
“Stop fighting me, woman,” the man grunted, hauling me off my feet as he dragged me back from the fire. “Ye go in there, and yer as good as dead.”
“No,” I moaned, “please, let me go. You don’t understand, I need to get him out! He’s still alive; I can feel it. Please, please let me go!”
“Fecking crazy bitch,” the guy muttered, totally ignoring me as he dragged me away from Seamus’s cottage.
Fighting him, I screamed, looking around me for something to help. It was then that I realized the town’s little fire truck had arrived and was hooking up their hoses, ready to fight the flames. They weren’t going fast enough though! Why were they going so damn slow?
This couldn’t be how it ended for Wes; he was counting on me. I wasn’t getting anywhere like this though, so I stopped fighting the man holding me. My body went limp, and as expected, his grip on me loosened just enough for me to break free and sprint back head first into the fire.
“Wesley!” I screamed over the roaring flames, taking a lungful of smoke and coughing violently. The path to the kitchen had become obstructed by falling beams, but I could still see that hand poking out from behind the table. If only I could get to him.
It meant climbing over a burning beam, but if I moved fast enough then maybe... Not bothering with another second of indecision, I tensed and leapt.
9
The sheer whiteness of my surroundings when I blinked open my eyes smacked me in the face like a brick. Where the fuck was I? How did I get here? The last thing I remembered was... shit! The fire! Wesley!
“Wesley?” I croaked, but my voice barely made a sound before I began coughing violently. Struggling to breathe, I pushed myself up in the sterile, white bed and gasped for air.
Hospital. I was clearly in a hospital. Shit, this was bad.
Frantically, I looked around me, trying to see where Wesley was. The curtain was drawn between my bed and the next, so I stabbed at the Call-Nurse button.
“Oh, you’re awake, dear.” The gray-haired woman smiled as she entered my bed area. “You must be feeling a bit worse for wear, no?” She tsked-tsked, shaking her head at me. “That was a silly thing you did, running into that fire. You’re lucky to be alive, so you are.”
“What?” I coughed, frowning at her. “Please, where is my friend? Wesley? He was”—I paused to swallow the lump of emotion in my throat—“he was in the cottage.”
“Wesley, you say?” She cocked her head at me like a confused cocker spaniel. “No, dear. You must be confused. That was crazy old Seamus’s cottage.”
“No.” I shook my head, feeling fuzzy. “I mean yes, it was, but my friend was in there with him. Wesley. Like, six-foot tall, sandy-blond hair, blue eyes... he must be here too?” My voice was hoarse and dry and it burned my throat to speak, but this was too important.
“Oh, honey.” The nurse gave me a pitying look and squeezed my fingers. “After they pulled you out, they only found Seamus. No one else.”
“What?” I shook my head, sagging back against my pillows. “How... what?”
“Well, you took off into that fire like the devil himself were chasing you, but you got smacked in the head by a falling rock. Father Flaherty ran after you and dragged you back out before you got burned, but I dare say you took in a bit of smoke—that’ll be why your voice is so rough.” The nurse handed me a cup of water, which I sipped gratefully. It wasn’t until the cool water had soothed my throat that I realized how much it hurt.
“But, Wesley,” I insisted. “They must have found him too. Unless he got out himself?”
“No, dear.” She shook her head again, looking sympathetic. “If he was in there, hon, he won’t have made it out. They’re still to check the wreckage, but there’s just no way.”
“No,” I denied her words, even as sobs clawed at my throat. “No, you’re wrong; he must have gotten out somehow.”
The woman handed me a box of tissues before I’d even noticed the tears pouring down my cheeks. I was full on crying now, sobbing and hiccupping as she just stared at me in pity. She was wrong though. She didn’t know him; she didn’t know us. There was simply no way something as mundane as an explosion could have taken down one of my dianoch. It wasn’t possible! Was it?
“They’re saying it was arson, dear,” the nurse said gently after I’d sat there bawling for several minutes. “Although that don’t surprise me. Crazy old Seamus had plenty of enemies, so he did. The garda will be wanting to speak with you, though, so don’t you go anywhere, okay?” She chuckled like she’d made a joke, but I was too far gone to even listen.
I didn’t respond, and eventually she left my cubicle. I slunk back into my bed to sob. Over and over in my mind, I replayed the events. My brain examined every damn detail of that memory, hunting for something, anything, just some small sign of hope to show Wesley might have made it out alive.
But... if he had, where was he?
Anguish wracked through me as another violent coughing fit shook my body. It was all too much. Wesley couldn’t be dead... he just couldn’t. How would I wake up tomorrow morning and not hear his voice? How would I drink coffee and not think of him? Of all the times he’d bribed me with it or tried to switch me to decaf, hoping I wouldn’t notice? Fuck, how would the sun continue to shine and the wind continue to blow… if Wesley was dead?
When I woke again, there were two uniformed policemen standing at the curtain of my cubicle talking to a different nurse in hushed tones. Seeing them, I sat up abruptly. Maybe they had found Wesley?
“Miss Greene?” one of the officers inquired, using the fake name I’d given at our accommodation. I nodded, and he stepped further into the space around my bed. “I’m Garda O’Neil, and this here is Garda Douglas. We’re investigating the fire at Seamus Connolley’s house.”
“Explosion,” I corrected him in my scratchy voice, and he raised his eyebrows. “It was an explosion, not just a fire. Like a bomb going off.” Speaking of it brought the vivid picture back to my mind, and I felt the wetness of tears on my cheeks again.
Something scratched at my mind, like someone trying to tell me something, but I shoved it aside. Now wasn’t the time to be distracted.
The man made a note on his little pad, then gave me a tight smile. “Good to know. Can you tell us how you and Mister Connolley were acquainted?”
“No,” I snapped. “Can you tell me if you found Wesley?”
“And Wesley is...” He poised his pencil over the pad and raised a brow at me.
“My friend,” I whispered, then corrected myself. “My boyfriend. Did you find him?”
The two policemen exchanged a look, then the first one, O’Neil, sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Look, miss... there was another body found in the wreckage, aside from Mr. Connolley, but the damage was too extensive to be able to identify who it was. Not without dental records. And here’s the thing, it would appear both you and your boyfriend were travelling under false IDs. Can you tell us anything about that?”