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“What is happening?”
He doesn't say anything, just leads me through my wrecked front door and out to the front yard where a fire truck is parked, as a burning car is being hosed down.
“Oh, my god,” I gasp through coughs. “That’s my car.”
He pushes the T-shirt back up to my mouth as he drags me out to the street, where the breeze helps dissipate the smoke and I can breathe a little easier. Almost immediately, he grabs his side and starts to gasp, a harsh hacking cough that feels like it’s stabbing my heart with each one.
“Kylian! Help! We need water over here!” I jump up, waving at the group of firefighters tending the fireball in my driveway.
He grabs my arm. “No, I’m sorry, I’m fine. Just took a particularly big breath of smoke.” He takes another breath and coughs it out.
I reach out to pat his back without even thinking. But the moment my palm touches the burning skin of his back, I’m the one who can’t breathe. Something lodges itself in my lungs and no amount of coughing can get it out.
“Kiara. We have to get you to a hospital. I need to get you checked out.”
“No!” I swallow and force down the urge to cough. “Tell me what happened here?”
There’s a pause, as I can see him trying to figure out what to say. But we should be past that. Have we learned nothing?
“Don’t sugar coat it. Don’t you dare treat me like a child. Tell me exactly what happened, or I am never ever speaking to you again.”
The threat seems to work, and he takes one more breath before he finally speaks.
“We’ve been tracking him for a few days. It took us awhile, but we managed to find where he bought the surveillance equipment he had in your apartment. He’s been here for almost six months, and his tourist visa is expired. He moves from place to place. But we found him. And just in time. Frank was surveilling him and saw him pick up your car from the lot he had hidden it in after he stole it. As Frank was tailing him, he realized he must be coming here. Frank called me and I tried to call you, but you didn’t answer.
“I was sleeping.” I don’t know why I feel like I need to explain, we both know that I wouldn't have answered the phone even if I were awake.
“Frank tried to catch up to him, but he must’ve picked up that someone was chasing him so he pretty much sped the whole way here, and then, he rammed the car right through your gate. I’m not sure what he did, but Frank said seconds later the car pretty much exploded. And he was gone.”
It all sounds like it’s part of some movie. Except that it’s my life. “The explosion is probably what woke me.”
“Maybe.” He swallows. “Did he hurt you?”
“No. He had only come in there, when you arrived.”
His shoulders drop three inches from relief. “Good.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s not over yet.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I let him. I let him because I want to feel safe again. I let him because I missed him so much. I let him because I don’t know what my life is without him in it.
“You’re shaking,” he says, his mouth muffled by my hair.
“I was scared.”
“Me, too.”
We’re standing there, giving in to everything I’ve been fighting for the last six weeks, when there’s a deafening bang. At the same time I hear Frank, in the distance, yell “Look out!”
Then there’s another shot, and out of the corner of my eye, I see my stalker standing on the corner of my house, and then drops to his knees and falls face down, forever.
“Oh my god!” I shout. “Kylian!”
“Hmmm?” he says, and I look up, his eyes are glazed, watery. “We got him?”
“Yes!”
