ADRIK
I’ve just turned off the highway when I look up and see the smoke.
A massive plume of it pours out of the trees. I know exactly where it’s coming from. I slam down on the gas, ripping through the turns on the dirt road to the cabin far too fast. But I have to get there. I have to get to Emery. Now.
When I round the last turn, the entire front of the cabin is in flames. The windows are shattered and orange fingers of fire dance in the air, reaching hungrily towards the trees surrounding the house.
I mash the brakes, leap out of the car before it even stops, and sprint up to the house. “Emery!” I bellow even though I can barely hear myself over the roar of the inferno.
I don’t see another car. Did Sofia leave her alone in there? Did she start this fire and then abandon my wife to burn alive?
Rage hotter than any fire burns inside of me. I sprint around to the back of the house, hoping to God the flames haven’t spread and there’s a way inside.
But as soon as I round the corner onto the cement patio, I see a figure standing in front of me.
She’s soot-stained and heavily scarred, just like Emery said, but Sofia looks otherwise much the same. She still has the same pitch-black hair and she’s still wearing ridiculously inappropriate shoes.
And now, she has a gun.
“Hello, Adrik.” Her voice is hoarse.
“I don’t have time for this, Sofia.”
“What’s new?” she laughs. “You never had time for me. You were always working. Busy, busy, busy.”
“Made it hard to be a spy, did it?”
“I was just worried about you, baby,” she croons. “You know what they say about all work and no play.”
I glance at the house. The flames haven’t consumed everything yet. If Emery is in the back half of the house, she could still be alive.
And considering Sofia is standing here with a gun instead of running for her life, it tells me that my odds are good. If she was certain Emery was dead, she would have left. No reason to stick around when the show’s over.
I dodge towards the patio furniture to the right, hoping to edge around the table and get through the back door before Sofia can shoot.
But a shot cracks through the air.
I don’t feel any pain at first, but my leg goes limp. It drags awkwardly behind me, and I stumble, catching the table just in time to stop from falling flat on my face.
Blood is already pouring down my thigh, soaking through my pants. I don’t think she hit an artery, but I’ll find out in a matter of minutes, I suppose. Either I’ll die of blood loss or I won’t.
When I look up, Sofia is smiling. “Move again without my permission and the next bullet goes in your skull.”
“You don’t want to kill me, eh?” I taunt. “Feeling sentimental?”
“More like vengeful,” she says. “I’ve been waiting a long time for this moment. I don’t want you to die until you hear your wife’s screams.”
"This is extreme, even for you."
She snorts. "You never saw what I was capable of. If you had, you never would have laid a finger on me."
"You think you're special because we fucked? Get in line," I snort. “You’re one of a million.”
Her eyes narrow. "Laugh it up while you can. I suspect it'll die down around the time Emery does."
“Emery isn’t involved in any of this,” I growl. “Let her go.”
Sofia continues as if I haven’t even spoken. “This is even better than I imagined, actually. A front row seat to the show of a lifetime. I get to watch you realize there is no hope. I’ll see the look on your face once you’re certain she’s dead. God, that’s going to feel so good.”
My chest clenches hard. My wife is in there. The mother of my baby. The woman I swore to protect.
Every second I stand here is one less second I have to save her. It’s a bigger fire to wade through. It’s more blood loss.
But I can’t save her if I’m dead. And I have no doubt Sofia will put a bullet in my back without a moment of hesitation.
I wipe the scowl from my face and look up at the vengeful bitch I thought was long gone. “Were you conscious when I found you after the crash?”
Her eyes widen before she gains control of her expression. She’s surprised.
“You didn’t know that?” I ask softly. “When you crashed, I ran up and pulled you out of the car. I thought you were dead.”
“What are you trying to do, Adrik?” she snaps. The gun wavers in her hand.
I shake my head. “Not a damn thing.”
“Liar,” she hisses. “You always have a plan.”
“I didn’t have a plan for what I was going to do with you,” I admit. “I knew you were a spy, but when I got in my car and chased you down, I didn’t know what would happen when I caught up.”
“You didn’t want to kill me, eh? Feeling sentimental?” she asks, mocking my words from a moment ago.
“Something like that,” I shrug. “I cared for you, despite what you seem to think. And your ‘death,’ if I can still call it that, has haunted me. I felt… responsible.”
Sofia may be scarred now, but I can still read her face as well as I ever could. She’s not expecting this sentimentality from me.
Which means she also isn’t expecting it when I throw myself forward and lunge for the gun in her hand.
There’s a second where she tries to take aim, to reclaim the upper hand, and I’m sure I’m going to be shot. But then she teeters on her absurdly tall heels and tumbles backwards.
Sofia falls as I thud against the patio. The cement sends the air in my lungs whooshing out of me, but I don’t stop. Stopping means dying. I crawl forward, breathless and determined, and grab Sofia’s ankle.
“Get off!” she screams.
The gun must have fallen out of her hands. Weaponless, she kicks out at me with her other foot. I turn my face just in time to avoid a blow to the nose, but her heel stabs into my shoulder, sinking a few inches deep into the muscle.
I roar in pain, then wrap a hand around her other ankle and yank her towards me. The momentum sends her arms flying back over her head. I can see her fighting to grab something.
The gun.
If she gets it, I have precious few seconds before she swings her arm down and pulls the trigger. Before a bullet enters the top of my head and snuffs out the light. So, using her body like a ladder, I crawl my way up, pinning her legs with my knees to hold her down.
From this vantage point, I watch as she wraps her hand around the gun and lifts her arm. I bat it sideways, driving my elbow into her bicep. She screams, but manages to still hold onto the weapon.
She’s thrashing and flailing now, trying uselessly to break free. Trying to wriggle out from under me. There’s a moment where everything teeters on a knife’s edge. Where both options—death and life, victory and defeat, hope and despair—lean this way and that, still uncertain.