Chapter 30 #2
“Except for the inconvenient fact that he wasn’t actually the heir,” Thane pointed out.
Mrs Fairchild grimaced, and adjusted her shooting arm to settle her sight on Thane’s head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Of course it does.”
One advantage of living through a war was that he no longer froze at the prospect of being shot. The woman thought she had him pinned. But Thane had been scanning the room the whole time, and he knew exactly what he needed to do to even the situation.
“Looks like your Thomas is bleeding out,” Thane said conversationally, lifting his chin to indicate the doorway behind her.
“I’m not going to be fooled by that,” she said. But she cast the briefest glance over her shoulder—instinct was hard to overcome.
At the same moment, Thane dropped to the floor, and grabbed the edge of the large rug, yanking it toward him.
Mrs Fairchild was standing on the other end, and she lost her balance when the rug moved underneath her.
She stumbled and fell to her knees. She didn’t drop the gun, but by then Thane was already moving.
He charged over to her, and stepped down on her forearm.
She couldn’t use the gun any more than she could stand up.
“Let me go,” she demanded as if he were some brute who attacked her.
“Tell me where Cat is.” He leaned down and plucked the gun from her.
“You’re too late. Even with your friends along to help you. They’re going to die too.”
She smirked at him, or rather she smirked until he laid a boot across her neck.
“Tell me where Cat is.”
“Dead, or on her way to dead. You can’t save her.”
“Care to wager?” he asked.
She choked as she tried to get in another breath, but her eyes blazed with triumph. “I used poison.”
Thane’s heart shuddered. Cat dying of poison? While her home burned around her? Well, if he couldn’t save her, then he could damn well serve her. He wasn’t going to let her die alone.
“Where is she?” Thane demanded, pressing harder.
Miss Fairchild snarled, until she began to choke.
“Tell me, or you run out of breath,” he said, keeping his tone even.
He couldn’t let her see how much he loathed using this method to get information from a woman, even in such dire circumstances.
“Funny, you dying in the same house as the woman you killed. Makes you look pathetic, as a murderer anyway.”
Her eyes were bulging when she finally wheezed out, “Parlor.”
Thane released the pressure on her throat and jumped toward the door. Behind him, he heard the woman roll over and let out a hacking cough in between gasps for air. Flames licked the walls, giving a hellish look to the place.
The parlor doors were shut, which was why Thane and the men had run past initially. Now he pushed them open, only to feel an immense gust of heat rush out. The parlor was on fire too.
Smoke plumed out of the doorway, and Thane ducked as he entered, holding his sleeve up to his mouth to give him something to block the smoke.
“Cat! Are you in here?”
He looked around the room, everything made hazy and orange-tinged from the spreading fire.
Christ, this was worse than the battlefield shells.
At least that had happened outside. The fire had spread thanks to a nest of curtains that had been half flung into the fireplace to function as a sort of fuse.
Now flames caught all along it, and they’d reached the furniture and the other window curtains as well.
“Cat!” He couldn’t see any sign of her. Had the woman lied after all? “Cat, answer me!”
Then he noticed a slight rise under a blanket thrown onto the couch. The curve of a woman’s hip.
He rushed to the couch, at last seeing Cat’s unconscious form and her pale face at one end, head cradled by that hideous pillow.
“Cat! Wake up!” He reached for her shoulder and shook her. God, she wasn’t dead already, was she? Poison, smoke, fire. Any one of those could finish her.
She coughed once, weakly.
“Cat!” He reached down to scoop her into his arms. “You’re alive. Thank Christ. I’ve got you, love. I’m getting you out of here.”
“Go away,” Cat whispered. “I don’t…want you….”
Ignoring the sting of her slurred words, Thane lifted her up. She didn’t have to love him to be worth saving. He’d run into fire for her even though she despised him.
The foyer was thick with smoke. He could see no one, though he heard the shouts of his comrades.
Thane turned to the right and took the final distance at a dead run.
He didn’t dare breathe, and the added weight in his arms made it feel as if he were running underwater, his legs heavy and his feet dragging.
Then someone pushed him from behind. A low grunt of encouragement as an arm went around his shoulders, steering him.
It was Calan, providing the extra force Thane needed to get free of the smoke-choked building and out into the night air.
He stumbled across the street and laid Cat down on the ground. Her head lolled to the side, and she didn’t open her eyes.
“Cat? Cat!” Thane tipped her head and saw her mouth open. She coughed out a grey mist—smoke from the fire. He told himself that was all it was. Not her soul.
“I need a doctor!” he yelled to the gathering crowd, remembering Miss Fairchild’s smug reveal of using poison. Thane couldn’t save Cat from poison. He never felt so helpless.
“Cat, it will be all right. I’ll make it right. I promise.”
“Get away,” she whispered, her eyes opening. But she didn’t focus on him. She seemed to be staring beyond.
“Cat, a doctor will be here soon. Please just stay with me,” he pleaded.
A neighbor thrust a cup of water toward him, and he took it, lifting Cat enough to help her drink. She sipped and spat it back up. “Bitter.”
“Try again, love. If you drank something bad, the water may help dilute it.”
Beyond him, he was dimly aware of Duncan yelling something, and bucket after bucket of water being hurled at the house, and the fire hissing like a dragon each time.
He heard Kai and Calan struggling with a woman, her cries sounding inhuman.
Then Struan appeared from somewhere and simply caught the woman in an embrace that might as well be iron.
“You killed him! You killed him!” she continued to shriek, flailing against Struan’s bulk without effect.
Thane ignored the rest, and turned back to Cat. She managed a few sips of water, but he hated the ashen tone of her skin.
He didn’t know how much time had passed when an older man edged up to him, holding the leather bag that seemed to be the badge of the medical profession.
“This young lady was injured in the fire? Breathed in smoke?”
“Probably, yes. But she was also poisoned.”
“Poisoned!”
“We think. The woman screaming over there…she said she poisoned Miss Ross.”
“With what?”
“I’ve no idea.” Thane called for Calan, who came over instantly. “Find out the name of the poison Fairchild used.”
“Aye.” Calan went away, his face like stone. He’d get the answer.
Thane looked at the doctor. “What can I do?”
“One of the neighbors offered the use of her house.” The doctor pointed to the home two down from Cat’s, a safe distance from the fire.
“Can you pick her up? Good. Take her inside there and I’ll do what I can,” the doctor said with a bleak expression.
Thane had seen that expression many times during the war, on the faces of doctors and nurses who worked at bedsides where they knew Death waited on the other side.