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Then I get hold of her wrist.
“Please, no!” she begs as I pry the gun out of her fingers.
She flings her arm one final time, a last attempt to overpower me, but I swing the gun around and press it to her forehead.
“Adrik,” she whimpers when she sees she’s lost the struggle, “don’t do this. You said my death haunted you. That you felt responsible. This will be so much worse.”
The heat from the fire rakes over the back of my neck. My skin is coated with sweat even here, so I can only imagine how much hotter it is inside the house.
Even if the flames haven’t caught her yet, could Emery survive the inferno? Every last drop of oxygen burning up when she needs it most?
I shove the thought away and focus on the task in front of me.
“Please,” Sofia rasps. “You don’t want this.”
She’s right about one thing: if I pull the trigger this time, there will be no doubt that I’m responsible. That I killed her.
I’ve spent the last six years regretting Sofia’s death. Not because she died or because I thought she didn’t deserve it, but because it was out of my control. Because it felt like a mistake. An execution carried out before I could gather the facts.
But now…
Tears pour down both sides of her face. The smooth and the scarred alike.
“It feels accurate to see you like this,” I say, brushing a hand over her uninjured cheek. “The two sides of you. You were a spy for so long, able to play both of your roles to perfection. And then you got a second chance at life, but you chose to come back here. To challenge me. To threaten my family.” I twist her jaw from the smooth side to the scarred. “This is better, though. Your outsides finally match your insides.”
She shakes her head, her sobs twisting her expression into an ugly mask. “I’ll disappear for good this time. You’ll never see me again. Please, Adrik. Don’t do—”
I pull the trigger.
Sofia jolts and then goes still. Her eyes glaze over. Her mouth falls limp. Her final words are nothing more than the raspy exhale of her last breath.
As blood drips from the small, ragged hole in her forehead and puddles behind her head, there is no regret to be found in me. Not an ounce of shame.
I’d kill Sofia a thousand times over for even the slimmest of chances to save Emery.
I drop the hot gun and hurry to my feet as best I can, limping towards the back door. Heat is pouring through the cracks. When I open the door, an avalanche of acrid smoke washes over me. My eyes burn instantly, and I throw an arm over my mouth.
“Emery!” I roar.
There is no response, so I step into the cabin.
I’m only two steps inside before the world around me disappears. Aside from a vague sense of brightness coming from the open doors behind me, I can’t see anything. The only sound is the roar of flames. It’s like being inside of a bonfire. Diving into the heart of a raging star.
Every instinct in my body is telling me to get out. Every instinct except for the one pushing me forward, demanding I find Emery or die trying.
And I know what to call that instinct now. I’ve been afraid to say it, but that fear has burnt up along with everything else. That fear is bleeding out on the back porch. That fear will never return.
The name of the instinct is love.
And once I find my wife, I’ll tell her just how much I love her.
“Emery!” I scream again. Smoke fills my lungs and hacking coughs tear through my chest.
I drop to my knees to try and stay under the smoke line, but there’s no such thing, no safe haven. The smoke is everywhere.
The floor is littered with ash and shards of glass from the shattered windows. But crawling over that, even as it tears my hands and knees to bloody ribbons, has nothing on the pain pumping through my leg. The heat is scorching the bullet wound. It feels like it’s being cauterized from the inside out.
Still, I army crawl through the kitchen and around the island. As soon as I’m out from behind the protection of the cabinets, a burst of heat hits me like a truck. A wall of flames has replaced the back half of the house. From floor to ceiling, wall to wall, there is no getting around it.
If Emery is back there, she’s beyond my help. Beyond my reach.
I move forward a few more feet before the heat is too intense. But just as I’m about to retreat, I notice a chair in front of me.
It’s a dining room chair. There’s no reason it should be in the living room.
And it’s lying on its side.
“Emery!” I call out again, swinging around to scan the surrounding area. “Emery!”
She was here. This is where they had her. At some point, Emery was on this side of the flames, strapped to this chair. She can’t have gone far.
“Emery!”
Each time I scream, I inhale a dangerous amount of smoke. But if there’s even a small chance she can hear me…
Suddenly, I swing my arm out and feel something soft and solid. I squeeze, and I know instantly the smooth skin beneath my hand belongs to my wife.
“Emery.” I wrap an arm around her wrist and pull, but her body is limp.
Lifeless. The word appears in my mind, but I swat it away.
I can’t see anything anymore. The smoke is too heavy. I can feel the fire moving closer. We have minutes, maybe less, before the entire house is engulfed. I lift myself to standing and, grabbing clumsily at Emery’s hand while hooking my other arm around her side, I haul her up over my shoulder.
My gunshot wound screams in agony, but I ignore the pain and move towards where I hope the exit is.
“I’ve got you,” I tell her. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
I stumble into counters and trip over my own feet on the way out. It’s impossible to tell if Emery is breathing. All I can focus on is making it to the door and getting out.
Finally, after what feels like hours of stumbling around, I burst through the threshold and back onto the patio. I stagger past Sofia’s body and into the forest dirt further from the house. As delicately as I can, I slide Emery off of my shoulder and onto the ground. Still, she hits the ground with a thud.
And doesn’t move.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Emery, no.” I kneel down next to her and press my fingers to her neck. I don’t feel a pulse, but her body is warm. Could be from the fire, could be from the lingering life left in her. “Don’t you dare fucking leave me.”
Maybe Sofia already killed her before she set the house on fire. I don’t see any blood or obvious wounds, though.
I press my palms to her chest, pumping her heart to a beat I count out between wracking coughs.
“Come on,” I rasp, trying to force life into her with my own two hands. After a while, I tilt her head back and blow breath into her body. Then back to compressions.
Breath.
