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Shitshitshitshit. I’d dragged her into this, me and me alone, and now Meghan was on the prowl. I knew she’d light a house on fire, and I knew she had threatened Phoebe, but somehow, my stupid, slow brain hadn’t put the two together.
I growled through my clamped jaw and drove faster, the speedometer clicking past one-twenty.
“Whee!” Henry cried, my arm still glued to his chest, pressing down for dear life.
We rounded the final street corner, and it was with absolute horror that I realized I had been wrong. It wasn’t the house that was on fire.
It was the Airstream.
Meghan had come for Phoebe.
I screeched the truck to the stop a hundred feet from the house, my arm the only thing that prevented Henry from flying through the window.
“Stay in here!” I shouted to Henry as I threw open the door and jumped out. “Do not move, son!”
With that, I took off running to the Airstream, my feet hitting the pavement faster than I knew was possible.
Phoebe was in danger. It was my fault. I had ruined everything. The only person I’d cared about since Henry came into my life was going to die. If I died running into that fire, it would be what a worthless man like me deserved.
In less than twenty seconds, I was at the door of the Airstream. The trailer was engulfed in flames, red licking the silver off its sides. It looked like hell had dropped a present right on my doorstep. Or rather, Satan herself. Everything was about to burn.
I tried the door handle. It was screaming hot the touch, and scarred my flesh.
I’ll have to break it down, I realized.
I laid my shoulder against the door, took a deep breath, which was shot through with smoke, then rammed it in.
It didn’t move.
I tried again. Nothing.
I hesitated, despairing as the fire roared around me, determined to destroy everything in its path. It was now or never. If I couldn’t break down the door, every ounce of Phoebe’s blood would be on my hands. I didn’t hear her screaming, but I knew that if the trailer was on fire, Meghan hadn’t done it on accident. She was thorough — Phoebe was inside, and she needed me.
That was the thought that propelled me into the door once again.
And on the third try, it worked.
The metal crumpled beneath my bone. I felt a sharp impact as the frame of the trailer curled around me, burning a hole through part of my T-shirt. There would be a scar later, I knew, but couldn’t think about it just then.
Smoke poured out of the hole I’d just put in the structure.
I didn’t pause to call for Phoebe. I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was inside.
So I dove into the trailer, fighting off the smoke that was stinging my eyes and choking my airways.
Through a bleary vision, made worse by smoke and confusion, I looked for Phoebe.
Sure enough, through fog and flame, I saw her, lying on the bed, apparently passed out alone.
I ran to her, feeling something hot streak my face, wondering if it was fire only to realize later that they were tears. The fire surged around me as though it were a living thing, anxious and hungry to consume my flesh. I would let it, too, if only I could get Phoebe out alive.
In one swift move, I scooped her up in my arms and stumbled to the door, trying not to fall as the smoke messed with my mind.
Against all odds, I made it through the gaping hole the discarded door had left in the trailer and flew down the steps. But I didn’t stop there — Phoebe still limp in my arms, I hit the concrete and began running to the truck. Henry was in the front seat, crying and screaming.
I made it halfway when a noise split my eardrum asunder, the sound of an enormous explosion, the shocks of which I felt from the soles of my feet up through the hair on my neck. I dropped flat to the ground, cradling Phoebe against me and hoping, praying that my body would be enough to protect her from whatever evil had just been unleashed.
After a moment, I turned to look back, and saw desolation and total destruction.
The trailer had caught fire. Even as my mind careened with adrenaline, I guessed that the flames had gotten to the tank, igniting the gas. It’d been a miracle that it hadn’t exploded earlier, that I’d seen the flames just in time, that Phoebe was in my grasp.
My lungs ached, but I maintained consciousness, enough to lay Phoebe flat on the concrete beneath me and check her air flow.
“Fuck!” I screamed.
Her pale face was cold, her mouth hanging open. She wasn’t breathing.
Over the sounds of Henry’s cries, piercing even through the whoosh of the flames in my ears, I began CPR.
