Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
MADDEN
“—I’m fine. I don’t need a bed.”
The voice cut through the dark before anything else did.
Firm. Controlled. Strained around the edges.
Rios.
“I said I’m not going anywhere.” He was closer now. “You can treat me right here.”
Someone else answered him, sharper. “You don’t get to make that call.”
Another voice—calmer, professional. “Sir, you’ve got burns that—”
“I said I’m staying.”
The words landed with a stubborn finality that my fogged brain latched onto like a lifeline.
Cool, dry air filled my lungs before I was ready for it. The faintly metallic taste made me wince, my first instinct to fight it—until I realized there was nothing to fight.
I was breathing on my own.
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
Light followed sound, sliding in under my eyelids until I blinked them open.
The ceiling above me was white and too close, the light flattened and unforgiving. My eyes burned as if I’d been crying for hours, though I couldn’t remember doing that. My throat was scraped down to something tender and swollen, and when I swallowed, it hurt.
My sluggish brain struggled to process. Hospital?
No. No hospital on Hatterwick.
The clinic.
Something tugged lightly at my face when I shifted again. I lifted a hand, disoriented, and stopped when warm fingers closed over mine.
“Madden. Hey. Easy. You’re okay.”
Rios’s voice was right there. Close enough that I felt it vibrate through his chest where he leaned over me. I turned my head carefully this time, slower, and found him standing at the side of the bed, one hand gripping the rail like he’d anchored himself there and refused to budge.
Only now I saw why someone had tried to move him.
He looked… wrecked. Soot streaked the side of his jaw and his neck, smudged into the collar of his shirt, which was burned through in places.
One sleeve had been cut clean off, revealing skin that was red and shiny, already swelling.
His wrist was wrapped in fresh gauze, the white stark against the grime.
A nurse stood a step behind him, clearly mid-task, clearly not winning whatever argument had just been happening.
“You’re okay,” he said again, like he needed me to hear it. “You’re at the clinic.”
I tried to speak. What came out was barely sound.
He leaned closer. “Don’t push it.”
I let my head sink back into the pillow, the effort of holding it up suddenly too much. My chest clamped tight, like there wasn’t quite enough room inside it, even with the oxygen flowing. The mask fogged faintly with each breath.
“What… happened?” I asked, the words rough.
His jaw tightened a tiny fraction, but I saw it beneath the scruff shading his jaw. “There was a fire.”
The word landed with a strange lack of impact. Fire was abstract. Fire was something that happened to other people.
Memory stirred anyway—oppressive heat. The air itself turning against me. The latch that wouldn’t move no matter how hard I pulled.
“And you—” I tried again. “You—”
“I got you out,” he said simply.
Something inside my chest lurched. I looked at him more closely and saw the tremor he was fighting in his hands, the way he was bracing himself like the ground might still give way beneath us.
“You scared the hell out of us,” Gabi said from across the room.
I hadn’t noticed her there. She gathered some kind of materials from a tray and advanced on her brother with a scowl that said she wouldn’t be put off.
“Us?” I echoed faintly.
She shot me a look as she reached for the burn on his arm. “Yes, us. And before you start arguing, you’re staying on oxygen. You had smoke inhalation, and you lost consciousness. You don’t get points for toughness.” Her gaze shot to Rios. “Neither do you.”
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
She didn’t even look up from the task. “You’re stable. That is not the same thing.”
Rios shifted, his thumb brushing once over my knuckles. “Just listen to her.”
There was no edge to it. No command. Only concern, bare and unguarded. It hit me harder than the reprimand would have.
For a few minutes, we stayed silent as Gabi efficiently cleaned the burns, dabbed them with some kind of ointment, and covered them with gauze.
The nurse came and checked my vitals, the cuff squeezing my arm until my fingers tingled. She murmured something to Gabi, something I couldn’t quite track, then adjusted the oxygen flow and smiled at me in a way that probably meant to be reassuring.
“You’re doing well. Keep breathing slow like that.” She glanced at Rios, then back to Gabi. “Fire department called ahead. Police are on their way.”
The word police cut through the fog in my head.
“The police?” I asked.
Rios’s eyes flicked to mine. There it was again—that subtle shift, the way his posture changed as if he’d taken on more weight.
He looked at Gabi. “Can we have a minute?”
Gabi’s mouth flattened. “One,” she said. “After that, they’re coming in whether you’re ready or not.”
She herded the nurse out with a look and pulled the door closed behind them. Background sounds dampened to a soft hum.
Rios didn’t sit. He stayed standing, close enough that I felt the heat that wasn’t heat radiating off him, the restless energy of someone whose body hadn’t yet accepted that the danger had passed.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
He took a breath. Let it out slowly, like he was bracing himself. “Madden, the fire wasn’t an accident.”
The words slid into the space between us and stayed there.
I stared at him, my brain snagging on the wrong part of the sentence. Wasn’t an accident still left room for malfunction. Faulty wiring. A bad fuel line. Anything that didn’t involve intent.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The cabin door was locked. From the outside.”
My stomach dropped. “Locked how?” The question came out thin, like I already knew the answer and didn’t want to hear it anyway.
He shifted, and that careful pause told me he was choosing his words. “There was a bike chain looped through the handle. Padlocked to the rail.”
For a second, my mind refused to cooperate. Locked. From the outside. My thoughts skidded, trying to reroute.
“That doesn’t—” I stopped myself. Swallowed. Tried again. “The latch wouldn’t move.”
“I know.”
The memory surged up, vivid and immediate. Me yanking at the handle. The spike of irritation that had turned to fear as the heat pressed in. I’d told myself it was the boat. Old hardware. Something warped.
Not this.
“Someone…” My voice wobbled. I cleared my throat. “Someone locked me in.”
“Yes.”
The oxygen hissed steadily as my breathing sped up. I brought it back under control, one breath at a time.
The room was suddenly too small. The ceiling too close. My skin prickled as the rest of it sank in, fast and brutal. I squeezed my eyes shut and saw the flames consuming the boat. My temporary home. My last link to Gwen.
Asleep. I’d been asleep.
I’d queued up something mindless and let myself drift off without a second thought.
I could have died.
Something broke loose—not panic exactly, but a surge of emotion that had nowhere to go. My chest tightened, a sharp ache blooming beneath my ribs as the implications stacked up faster than I could process them.
Rios moved without hesitation. He stepped closer and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling me in carefully, mindful of the oxygen line. I leaned into him, my forehead pressing against his chest, breathing him in—smoke and salt and something solid underneath it all.
His hand came up between my shoulder blades, firm and steady.
“I’ve got you,” he said quietly.
For a moment, I let myself believe that meant everything.
A knock sounded at the door.
Rios straightened but didn’t pull away entirely. “Yeah?”
The door opened, and Grant Willoughby stepped inside, still in his cop’s uniform. I hadn’t seen him since Willie Sanders’s apartment. Had barely even given him a thought.
His gaze flicked to me, to the oxygen, the IV, and the way Rios hadn’t moved more than a step away. Something crossed his face—surprise, concern, maybe a flash of something he didn’t quite manage to shove down.
“Madden,” he said, carefully. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were this—”
“Hi, Grant,” I said.
He nodded once, visibly pulling himself back into professional mode. “I need to take a statement.”
Rios’s arm tightened slightly.
Grant noticed. His eyes lingered there for a fraction of a second before he looked down at his notebook. “You’re the one who called it in,” he said to Rios.
“Technically, someone on the dock called it in while I was retrieving Madden.”
Grant blinked. “Right.” His tone softened as he turned to me, but there was tension under it, like he was bracing for what came next.
“Madden,” he said, “what do you remember?”
I took a breath and tried to filter through the haze still covering my brain. “I was working earlier. Research. Then I shut everything down for the night. I was watching TV in bed.” I paused. “I must have fallen asleep.”
The memory sharpened, dragging sensation with it.
“I woke up because it was hot,” I continued. “And because I smelled smoke. I tried to get out, but the door wouldn’t open. I thought the latch was malfunctioning.”
My chest tightened as the panic resurfaced. Rios’s fingers brushed my arm, grounding without interrupting.
“It just kept getting hotter,” I said. “And I couldn’t get out.”
“You didn’t hear anything before that?” Grant asked. “Footsteps? Voices?”
I shook my head. “No. I was asleep. I didn’t know… I didn’t know I was locked in.”
Grant stopped writing, his gaze snapping to me. “Locked in?”
“So I was told.” I looked to Rios to pick up the thread of the narrative.
“Carrera, take me through it in order, will you?”
Rios gave his account without embellishment.
One cop speaking to another. Fire already established, smell of gasoline, blocked door, chain and padlock, getting me out.
Through it all, I felt the tension vibrating in Rios’s frame and watched Grant’s pen move faster as the details stacked up, his jaw tightening as the picture sharpened.
When Rios mentioned the chain, Grant looked up sharply. “Chained?”
“Yes.”
The word echoed in my head again, heavy and awful.
Grant exhaled slowly and resumed note-taking. “What happened next.”
Rios’s tone remained flat and businesslike as he walked through the rescue, but I could too easily imagine the roar of the flames, the heat he’d fought through to get to me. What he’d risked staying long enough to battle the chain, to get me out.
He’d risked his life to save mine.
The bloom of that realization left me breathless even before Grant quietly asked, “Is there anyone you can think of who might want to kill you?”