“Lawson!” I yelled, immediately regretting it when smoke filled my mouth and nose. It got thicker with every step. I coughed again and ran my hands over the wall where I thought the light switch should be. I came up empty, my nails scratching over nothing but drywall.
I spun around, confused now at exactly where I was. I needed to get to my uncle. I knew, that if there was a fire, he would have come for me. Called me. He knew where I was. And there was only one way to get there. We couldn’t have missed each other. I pushed my legs harder, not certain that I was even heading in the right direction, but I had to try.
Suddenly, the room around me opened up, and I nearly wept with relief as I recognized the foyer. But there was no time for that.
I’d found the source of the smoke.
Flames licked the walls.
“Lawson!” I yelled again, tasting ash. Panic surged, adrenaline kicking in and powering my movements. My brain short-circuited, whether from lack of air or fear, I didn’t know. The one thing I was certain of was that I couldn’t lose another parent. I couldn’t add my uncle to the broken part of me that had existed ever since my birth parents’ disappearance. He was the only father I really remembered. And he wouldn’t have left without me. I knew that without a doubt. He wouldn’t have left me there to die.
Which meant he was still inside.
I ran in a crouch toward the flames. They grew with every second that passed. “Laws—” I couldn’t even get his name out this time before the lack of air stole my voice. I held my breath and rushed toward his office, throwing open doors as I went and dodging the deadly heat.
I skidded to a stop at the glass window of the principal’s office. A scream curled up my throat but came out silently.
Lawson’s still form lay facedown on the floorboards.
Flames billowed up around him, higher in here than anywhere else. They crawled across the ceiling, like slithering beasts of orange fury. I bashed on the window so hard it should have broken, desperately yelping my uncle’s name between racking bouts of coughing.
Overhead, a beam cracked.
Sparks flew and I flinched away. I tried again, lunging for the door, but the heat drove me back. Tears streamed down my face. “Help,” I croaked.
I couldn’t save him alone. He was right there, the flames getting ever closer, and I couldn’t reach him. I stumbled back the way I’d come, dropping to my knees and crawling when my feet wouldn’t take another step. My eyes stung. My gaze flitted around the smoke-filled room, but my head grew cloudy.
With a sudden certainty, I realized we were both going to die.
There was no way out.
I closed my eyes. At least the last thing I’d done was something I loved. I remembered the way it felt to have my fingers flying over the piano keys, the song soaring, not only in my ears but in my heart. When the flames took me, that’s where I’d be in my head. In the place I was happiest. The only place I had true peace.
Something grabbed me.
Not something, someone.
I dragged myself back into the present. There was somebody else here. Someone who could help. Hope surged within me.
“My uncle,” I choked out.
Startled by hands on my bare skin, and my body being lifted from the floor, I tried to force my stinging eyes open. But my vision was so blurred I couldn’t make out a face. I turned into the person’s chest, and my gaze focused instead on the thing closest to me. Letters floated across my vision, a mere inch from my nose.
The man—it had to be a man, his body had none of the softer curves of a woman—didn’t say anything, but gripped me tighter while he moved through the crumbling building. Heat seared at my legs, my arms, my face. I couldn’t do a thing but fist my fingers into the material of his shirt and hold on. The embroidered feel of the letters scratched, in contrast with the softness of the fabric.
He muttered something that sounded like, “Hold on, Lacey.”
A thought floated through my head, but it was too hard to grasp. I wanted to chase it, grab it, and force it to make sense. But I was too tired. I watched it go, disappearing into a smoke tendril.
My body jolted against his with each step. I wanted him to run. I wanted him to get me out of this place, but it all just seemed impossible now. Everything hurt. My lungs screamed in pain. It was too hard to hold on. My grip on his shirt loosened.
“Lacey!” he yelled, but his voice was far away.
I closed my eyes and let the darkness take me.
2
Lacey
If the size of my uncle’s wake was anything to go by, he was the most popular man in town.
I leaned against the wall, in a corner of my house, a tall potted palm doing a bad job of obscuring me from the room full of people. The champagne flute in my hand was almost empty, so I ditched it and grabbed another from a passing waiter.
“Lacey,” a woman cried, grasping my free hand and squeezing tightly. Her wrinkled skin was thin as tissue paper and dotted with age. “Your uncle was a great man. Much too young.” Her voice dripped with fake sincerity.
I tried to force my lips to move, knowing I should thank her.
I couldn’t.
The woman’s concerned look disappeared, only to be replaced with an expression of mild disapproval. She tutted beneath her breath, dropped my hand, and moved on to the next group of people.
I watched her go, not caring I’d been rude. I didn’t even know who she was.
“How you doing, Lace?” Meredith appeared beside me. She propped one stiletto heel up on the wall.
Owen sidled up next to her, casting a worried eye over me.
“I don’t even know who most of these people are. Like those girls over there.” I jerked my head in the direction of a group dressed in pretty blue and green tones. “Have I even met them before?”
Owen eyed the girls, his lip lifting in a sneer of disgust. “Freshman bimbos. Probably just here to gossip.”
I sighed, wanting this entire thing to be over. Waiters in white shirts and black ties circled the room with canapés on their trays as if this were a party, the same as the hundreds my aunt had thrown in the past. Selina had a wine glass stem firmly clutched between her perfectly manicured fingernails, while she held court in the center of the room, surrounded by her tennis buddies, her hairdresser, and her nosy best friend. Her over-Botoxed expression didn’t betray any real emotion.
She had her mask firmly in place.
I’d lived in fear of losing mine every day since the fire. It was easier to live behind fake smiles than to allow myself to think about my uncle, the man who’d been my father for thirteen years, being gone.
Fire was all I thought about now. That, and my aunt. She’d lost the love of her life. The man she’d woken up next to every day for twenty years. She was hurting, and I hated I couldn’t do anything to make it better for her.
“I had to talk to the police again,” I said quietly to my friends. “That’s three times now. I think they’re trying to trip me up in my story.”
Meredith frowned. “You think they don’t believe you?”
I lifted one shoulder as I twisted to face her. Her pretty blonde curls had been tamed back into a sleek bun that better matched her black knee-length dress. A single strand of pearls around her neck set off the Audrey Hepburn look. She even had oversized sunglasses perched on her head. “They can’t find any footage from the security cameras that corroborates my version of that night. Apparently, the security cameras were all switched off. Along with the smoke detectors and the sprinkler system. I don’t think they believe me when I say a man carried me from the flames.”