Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

“Because he hasn’t told me not to be.”

“But you don’t know…and there was only one shot…one.” Only one.

“Trust me when I tell you that one shot doesn’t—” He bites his tongue before he finishes his sentence.

It doesn’t matter how many times Casper explained to me what would happen if something ever happened to him. This doesn’t feel right. I can’t leave when there’s a chance he might still be alive.

He would never go down that easily. He’s a killer.

Killers don’t get killed, I keep telling myself. But the lie is refusing to stick.

Like he can hear my thoughts, Ryan tips my chin up so that our eyes meet. “All it takes is one shot.”

“No.”

“Yes, believe me, I know.” His tongue runs over teeth, and his stark blue eyes glint sharply as they shutter like there’s something inside his head clawing to get out. Jaw clenching, he swallows heavily. “I gave Casper my word. I told him I’d keep you safe.”

“I told him they’d find us. I know Freddie…Christopher…” They’re not the forgiving type. “I told him they’d find us, and they’d hurt him.”

Tears track down my face. I knew this day was coming. I knew that in the end it would come to this. Casper would protect me, and they would hurt him for it. My sadness simmers down to a deep anger, a rage I’ve never felt before. And I want to scream until everything around me crumbles to meaningless dirt. I want to torch the entire fucking universe like Casper told me he would if anyone touched me…touched her.

Cradling my belly, I let out the shrill torment and despair. I don’t care who hears and what may happen. I scream and scream until I’m dizzy and numb enough that I can go through everything that happened after Casper walked me down the hill.

Run after run, thought after thought, I stumble at the kiss. I knew it was a goodbye. I felt it. But he’s kissed me like that before. That night, he kissed me like that, and he came back. He came back to me again and again.

There’s a shard of hope inside me that’s desperately trying to hold on. “We can’t leave if there’s a possibility that—”

“Casper made a plan, Fleur. I’m following his plan because if you knew him like I do, you would know that if he was okay, he would be here. Not me. Him.”

I do know him.

Beyond any doubt, I know that he would not leave us. I know that he is a killer. I know that he is a man of his word.

Without another word, Ryan robs me of the option to defy his words as he goes back to the small boat that got us to this cave. He douses it in paraffin, the smell enough to make me gag. My head goes from pulsing to deep gonging throbs by the time he gets me onto the other boat. As he reverses back into the open sea, he shoots the metal rowlocks. The spark from the bullet catches on the paraffin, and the whole thing goes up in flames.

“What are you doing?”

“We don’t want them to know we’re in the water. It’ll be like we disappeared into the thin air.”

“I don’t want to disappear. I want to find Casper. I want to go back.”

“Cover your face, don’t breathe any of it in.” Ryan grabs my hand fisting the handkerchief and pushes it over my mouth and nose. Turning to steer the boat, he ignores everything I just said.

“Take me back!” I cough, my lungs struggling to cope with the fumes. “I said ta—”

His strong hand grasps the collar of my coat, and in a brusque move, he opens the hatch beside him and pushes me inside the berth.

“I said don’t inhale any of the shit in,” he barks at me as he slams the hatch door shut.

Tears sluice down my face, sobs tearing from me as I watch the land shrink in the horizon through the tiny porthole. Everything inside me is raging like the fire in the cave. I want to reach up into the sky and rip all the light from the world. To extinguish the sun so that the darkness will hide the fact that everyone I love is gone.

“I’m sorry.” I hold my belly, trying to jostle the baby like the doctor did when we had the scan.

There’s no movement though. There’s nothing. And a brand-new panic starts to set in.

Your duty is to her.

My lungs feel like they’re wilting in my chest, allowing my broken heart to fall to pieces that rattle inside me as I fall onto the bed.