To Have A Heart (A New Adventure Begins - Star Elite 7)

Backstepping, Callum grabbed Mallory by the arm and tugged her with him.

“We have to move a bit faster. We must at least preserve the distance between us. Their bullets won’t hit us if they stay that far away.”

Callum had no idea if he was really thinking aloud but when he turned to face her, he found Mallory glancing wildly around the area, clearly panic-stricken because she didn’t know the area.

“Which way?”

Callum grinned because his sense of direction was perfect.

“Come on.”

“You really are smiling,” Mallory cried. “You are, aren’t you? What is there to smile about? We are being shot at you know.”

The dull thud of another gun being fired punctuated her sentence.

“I know which route to take to get out of the area,” he assured her with a wink. “Just stay close and don’t try to look over your shoulder too much.”

“I am struggling to see where I am going,” she grumbled when she almost fell over a particularly large clump of mud.

“Good. That means they can’t see much of us,” Callum replied unconcernedly.

Putting her cheeks out, Mallory followed Callum across field after field. She walked for miles, unable to think of anything except the men who remained not all that far behind.

“They aren’t giving up,” she whispered when Callum stopped to take aim at the guards’ new leader.

Mallory flinched and looked away the second Callum fired, not least because she didn’t want to witness any more death and destruction. Unfortunately, her gaze landed on Melrose House. Although it was now blessedly on the horizon, its orange flames still stood in bold contrast to the blackness of the night.

“It looks like the whole house has been engulfed,” she murmured, although could find no remorse for the loss of the large building.

“That is because most of it was built out of wood. That house is going to be derelict by the time the fire is extinguished.”

“It’s eerie.”

“What?”

“Seeing that. Even from this far away we can see the timbers. They look like bones, don’t they? The skeleton of the house.”

As they watched, some of those ‘bones’ creaked and began to sway before a low rumbling noise began. Within seconds, the bones disappeared into the hungry flames, which surged to life.

“There isn’t a sound to be heard except for that rumbling noise,” Mallory whispered. “Although we can see it, we cannot even hear the popping of wood being burnt, or the people. There are guards rushing everywhere still.”

“We cannot hear anything because we are so far away. What we should remember is that as soon as the fire is extinguished, Melrose’s guards will be even more vengeful.”

“Melrose. I haven’t heard of him before.”

“No?” Callum lifted his brows at her. “Didn’t you meet him while you were there?”

“No. He was always the master upstairs who everyone was fearful of.”

Callum didn’t doubt that.

“Do you think that they – this Melrose person - set fire to the house? Maybe he set fire to it to burn the evidence?”

“Of what?”

“Pardon?” Mallory blinked at him.

“What evidence is there for him to burn? What have you left behind in there that he might wish to destroy?”