Rafe Sinclair's Revenge

He opened his eyes, slitting them against the painful stab of sunshine pouring through the crack he’d inadvertently left between the halves of the motel’s plastic-backed drapes when he’d closed them last night. He ran his tongue around parched lips as his heart rate began to slow.

As soon as the frantic pulse of blood through the veins in his ears eased, another sound replaced it. Distant at first and indistinct, within seconds an identification of what he was hearing roared into his consciousness. Siren.

He listened, again not breathing. Sometimes he couldn’t tell, but he would have staked his life that what he was hearing now was real. A real siren, and therefore… Real smoke?

He tore at the sheet, frantically trying to free his legs from its tangling hold. He staggered a little when his feet touched the floor, but that was only reaction to the flood of adrenaline coursing into his bloodstream.

When he reached the window, he lifted his arm, intending to sweep the curtain aside so that he could see out. He couldn’t force his hand to grasp the material. It was as if the muscles were literally paralyzed.

Cop chasing a speeder, he told himself. Or an ambulance carrying some poor bastard with a heart attack to the hospital. Whatever is outside these windows, it won’t be what was there before.

Sweat beaded his forehead as he willed his fingers to close over the fabric of the drapes, jerking them to the side. Light flooded the room, forcing him to close his eyes. When he opened them, the pillar of oily black smoke was all he could see. All his mind could grasp.

Smoke. Fire. Explosion.

It hadn’t been a dream. The evidence of its stark reality was right before him.

Except he had long ago learned not to trust “reality.” Not his. Not about something like this.

He closed his eyes, deliberately holding them shut as tightly as he could for a few seconds before he opened them again. Nothing had changed. The column of smoke still obscured the sky, and that first lonely siren had now been joined by a chorus of others.

He lowered his gaze, examining the rest of the scene revealed by the opened curtain. Parking lot. Cars, most of them recent models. A motel sign.

One he recognized from having glanced at it last night when he’d checked in. Reassured by that recognition, he lifted his eyes again.

The smoke seemed to be billowing upward from behind the row of buildings across the street. Which meant that the fire was at least a block away, he decided, feeling the adrenaline rush begin to ease. Maybe two. No more than that.

Of course, in Magnolia Grove two blocks was practically across town. Almost—

With the realization, his heart rate, which had almost returned to normal, accelerated like a trip hammer. He ran across the room, scrambling through the sheet he’d thrown aside, trying to locate his jeans.

He dragged them on, hopping awkwardly on one foot and then the other. He pushed his feet into his shoes, not bothering to find his socks. On the way to the door, he grabbed the shirt he’d worn yesterday off the chair where he’d thrown it down on his way to bed.

As soon as he stepped outside, a wall of heat hit him, almost forcing him back. His first response, emotional rather than intellectual, was that it was from the fire. Just like before.

It took a few seconds to realize that what he was feeling was simply a typical Mississippi-in-August heat. The air, however, was thick and acrid with smoke. Just as it had been in his dream.

Or maybe this time there hadn’t been a dream. Maybe what had awakened him had been a real explosion, one that had started this fire. And if so…

He was already running toward the source of the smoke, and he wasn’t the only one. People were rushing out of the surrounding buildings, heading toward the wail of the sirens and the black cloud that seemed to fill the sky.

Despite his lack of familiarity with the town’s landmarks, his usually unerring sense of direction led him straight to his destination. As he neared it, he knew with a wave of terror that he hadn’t been wrong.

The office where Elizabeth worked was on this street. The same street from where that ominous pillar of smoke was rising.

As he rounded the corner, he made a quick visual assessment. Despite the widespread effects of the blast, there was no doubt in his mind that the structure on fire was the law office of Connell and Anderson.

And with a renewed sense of panic he realized he had no idea what time it was. No idea what time Elizabeth normally arrived at work.

Then his searching eyes found her. She was standing, talking to a fireman or paramedic. There was no blood on her clothing, but even from here he could tell her face was completely without color, the scattering of freckles stark against the milk-white skin.

Still, she was standing. Talking. Not bleeding. Apparently unharmed. His knees almost gave way with the force of his relief.

He closed his eyes in an unspoken prayer of thanks. It was a mistake, but by the time he was aware of that, it was too late to do anything about it. Images began to unwind, like the flickering frames of an old newsreel, against the blackness behind his lids.

They weren’t from any newsreel, of course. And they were all in color. The vivid, shocking brightness of freshly spilled blood. The grotesque black of skin that has been charred, peeling off the arm of a woman whose mouth was open, silently imploring him to help her.

At that moment someone running down the street careened into him. The force of collision was enough to turn him, causing him to stumble against the side of a building.

The impact of his fall or the roughness of the brick as his cheek scraped against it was enough to tear him out of the flashback. He opened his eyes, seeing in front of him the scene he had been watching before it began.

Elizabeth was still in the center of his vision. Mouth moving, she was pointing toward the line of cars parked in front of the burning building. They were close enough to the fire that the paint on their hoods was starting to blister. Just like—

He jerked his mind from that comparison, concentrating instead on Elizabeth. Not the woman in the embassy, he told himself doggedly. This was not the same situation. Nothing about it was the same.

He started to run again, feeling as if he were moving through quicksand. The distance between them seemed vast and immeasurable, but he never took his eyes off his goal. Never allowed himself to think about anything other than reaching it. Reaching her.

He knew the exact second when she became aware of him. She had been talking to another of the firemen, but when her eyes locked with his, her mouth stopped moving, remaining open as if frozen in midsentence.

At her sudden silence the two men standing beside her turned to stare at him as well. One of them moved between him and Elizabeth, the gesture obviously protective.

Rafe’s response was nothing short of murderous. Get the hell out of my way, you son of a bitch. He didn’t say that. He had no breath, and his mouth was too dry to form the words.

Elizabeth moved from behind the fireman, quickly taking the last few steps that would close the distance between them. There could have been nothing more natural than to take her in his arms. He had wanted to do that last night, despite everything he understood about how unwise it would be for both of them. That wasn’t what stopped him now.

There was less than two feet between them when their forward motion ground to a halt. She was again looking up at him, her head slightly raised because of the difference in their heights.

A cone of silence descended around him, blocking out the noises of the sirens, the pressure hoses, the shouts from the firemen fighting the blaze. All he could hear was his own breathing, harsh and panting from the exertion of his run.

Terrifyingly, the smell of the fire was all around him. The heat of it.

Elizabeth didn’t say a word, widened eyes searching his face. He couldn’t imagine what he looked like. Deranged, perhaps. Maybe even dangerous. Enough like a lunatic to cause the fireman to edge closer again.

She lifted her hand. For an instant he thought she intended to touch his face, but instead she pressed the tips of her fingers, trembling as they had been last night, against the center of his heaving chest.

“Rafe?”

God, he wanted to touch her. Just to take her hand as he had last night.

He didn’t, of course, because he was afraid that if he gripped her arm, her skin would slip off muscle and bone to lie in his hand as it had before.

That wasn’t here. Not Elizabeth. Not now.

“What the hell happened?” he managed to rasp.

She shook her head, her eyes never leaving his face. “I don’t know. It just…blew up. They think maybe there was a gas leak.”

He laughed, the sound a breath, devoid of amusement. “They’d be wrong.”