One More Time

~ooo000ooo~

The first stop on our way out to the warehouse was my place. Which, in and of itself wasn't so scary. Not unless you were afraid of the enormous dust bunnies lurking in the corners and the mountains of laundry that needed doing.

No, my place wasn't scary on its own. But knowing these assholes were stalking m

e and could possibly be waiting in there, ready to pop out at me like some goddamn jack-in-the-box from hell, made me more than a little nervous.

But, I sucked it up. I had to. There was no other choice. I could either do this and confront whoever it was trying to kill me, take them head on, and put them down. Or, I could live in fear the rest of my life. Spend my days looking over my shoulder, watching and waiting for that other shoe to drop. Spend the rest of my life wondering when I was going to wake up in another burning building – and this time, with no Oliver there to save me.

No, I was sick of this bullshit and needed to put a stop to it. Needed to reclaim my life. I wasn't the sort of girl who hid from her troubles or liked to be intimidated. I was the sort of woman who took life by the horns and beat it into submission. Bent it to my will. This was going to be no goddamn different if I had anything to say about it.

We walked through my home, and Oliver asked me questions like, “Do you remember doing this before you left? Do you remember doing that before you left? Do you recall any sounds or smells that are unusual to your place?”

“Wow, you really watch those crime documentaries pretty closely,” I said and smirked at him.

“I also listen to a pretty good podcast on the subject,” he replied, flashing me a smile. “So, do you? Do you remember anything at all?”

I tried. I really tried to remember, but all I got back was nothingness. I reached into the darkness in the back of my mind, searching for the memories I knew were in there somewhere, but came up completely empty. My memories remained elusive, sitting just beyond my grasp. I could brush them with my fingertips, but couldn't grab hold of them and bring them back to the light.

“It's like the memories are there,” I said, “but they're just out of reach. Barely. I can sense them and can almost see them, but I can't quite bring them into focus. This is so goddamn frustrating.”

Oliver took my hand. “It's okay,” he said. “You're doing great. Just don't give up.”

We walked into my bedroom and I collapsed on my bed, lying on my back, and stared up at the ceiling. My familiar purple bedspread beneath me, soft, warm, and inviting. I rolled over and patted the bed next to me, encouraging Oliver to join me. He smiled, then plopped down beside me. I nestled my head on his chest, and he played with my hair.

It all felt so normal and comfortable to me. It felt so much like we were just a normal couple, like the countless millions out there, enjoying a quiet and intimate moment together, that I was almost able to forget about all of the madness and chaos that was upending my life right now. Almost.

I closed my eyes, a wave of exhaustion washing over me, and I felt like I could go back to sleep. I hadn't slept but a few hours the night before, and I was home. In my bed. With Ollie. That feeling of warmth, familiarity, and comfort radiating between our two bodies. Part of me wanted nothing more than to curl my body around his and sleep for the next three days.

But then his phone dinged, sounding the alarm that a new text message was coming in, and ruined the moment. But then, my eyes flew open as something wormed its way into my head. It carried a sense of something familiar – and yet, something entirely dark and foreboding. Something terrifying. Something that sent a wave of cold from my toes, all the way up to my nose.

I jumped up from the bed, my heart thundering in my chest, and my pulse racing off the charts. I looked around wildly, trying to find out what that noise had been and where it had come from. Intellectually, I knew it was Ollie's phone. It was a text message. I got a hundred of them a day.

Yet, on another level, it was something darker. More sinister. A sound that set off a primal, fight or flight response inside of me.

“Sorry, it's just Jimmy,” he said, putting his phone away. “He's ragging on me for taking my vacation time—”

He looked up at me, his words dying on his lips as he stared at me. I was staring at the wall. The sound. A text message. That was it. It was a text message. I scrambled from the bed and walked toward the door.

“Madison?” he asked, a note of worry in his voice. “What is it?”

“I remember now,” I said. “It wasn't night when I left the house. It was daytime. I was given an address to meet someone. Someone who said he had some information for me about the arson cases.”

“Who?”

“I didn't get a name,” I said. “But I made sure we met in a public place. A Starbucks down the street.”

“Let's go,” he said, grabbing my hand.

Before we made it out of my bedroom and into the living room though, the smell of gasoline hit me like a ton of bricks. The acrid stench of it was overwhelming. A wave of fear rolled through me upon smelling the gas, but it was nothing like the tsunami of terror that stole over me when I saw the smoke billowing out from the other room.

Oliver stepped in front of me, blocking my exit. At first, I wasn't sure why. Although, on some level, I knew what was happening, I was having trouble making the connections in my mind. The fear had gripped me so hard that it was distorting my sense of reality.

But then, I was able to cut through it, to focus on what was happening. And when I managed to get control of myself again, it dawned on me.

My living room was on fire.

CHAPTER NINE