Chapter 7 Angelie
ANGELIE
I lie still on the bed, the quads curled up around me.
They’ve all fallen asleep by now, their little chests rising and falling slowly as they let the day slough off of them.
I know I will need to find some more formal sleeping arrangements for them in the near future, if we’re going to be kept away from our home for a while, but this will have to do.
As long as they’re safe and comfortable and fed, I’ll take whatever I can get.
Or maybe it’s just easier to believe that than to contend with what might happen if I dare to acknowledge what I’ve just told Joe.
He brought me some food, enough for the children and me, without a word.
Then he closed the door behind him after telling me in a low voice that they would check in on me later.
I don’t know where that leaves me—if he’s going to tell all of them what I said, or if I should just stay locked up in here and hoped that it somehow stayed a secret.
I’ve been turning it over and over in my head, the choice I made to come clean to him.
Should I have hidden it for a while longer?
Maybe. But would good would it have done?
They would have found out eventually, and when that happened, it would have been all the harder for me having tried to keep it under wraps.
No, easier to lay it all on the line now, even if the roiling feeling in my belly begs to differ.
All at once, a sound cuts through the quiet. It sounds like an alarm, and I spring to my feet without thinking. Chrissie lifts her head, and I smooth her hair to try and keep her from panicking.
“You’re alright, sweetheart,” I tell her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Will you keep an eye on your brothers and sister for me? Let me see what’s going on down there…”
She looks up at me with that serious expression that toddlers get sometimes when they’re being asked to do something they treat with the utmost importance, and she nods. “Yes, Mommy.”
“Good girl,” I tell her, forcing a smile onto my face, though it feels more like I’m just turning up the corners of my lips rather than expressing any kind of happiness. “I’ll be back to check on you in a minute, okay?”
I hurry down the stairs, the alarm still filling the house, until it suddenly clicks off.
When I reach what must be the ops room, I find Joe and Carlisle standing in front of the large map, consulting papers that are spread out on the table, a few lights lit up in places they weren’t when I looked in that direction before.
“What’s going on?” I demand, drawing their attention. They both turn to me in the same moment, and I feel a little rush of dizziness as their eyes lock onto mine, the memory of what it felt like to be the focus of their shared attention suddenly rushing through my head.
“The sensors picked up on another fire moving in toward the town,” Joe replies, gesturing to the map.
My heart drops in my chest. Even if they’ve managed to get my place out of the worst of it, that doesn’t mean that the rest of the town will be left unscathed.
I know so many people here, so many families who have made this place their home, and the thought of any single one of them landing in the firing line is enough to make my stomach clench with fear.
“Where?” I ask, moving over to the map to join them. I can’t make much of the lights or where they’ve picked up the fire, but as Carlisle taps his finger against the familiar town layout, my stomach sinks.
“Here.”
“That’s….that’s where my parents’ house is.”
“Didn’t they get evacuated along with your sister?”
“Yeah, and I told you, good luck getting them to leave their place without a fight,” I reply. “My mom, she’s lived there her whole life. If she thinks they might lose it, she would do everything she could to get up there and try to save some of the family heirlooms—”
“They were taken to a motel out of town,” Joe replies. “Carlisle—can you contact them, see if her parents are there?”
“We don’t have time for—”
“If they’re not there, then I’m coming with you,” I reply, lifting my chin defiantly. “I know this town better than any of you do, at least these days. I want to make sure they’re safe.”
“There’s no way in hell you’re going to come on this call with us,” Carlisle replies, almost laughing, though there’s little amusement in his words. He grabs his phone and pulls up a number, lifting it to his ear and not breaking eye contact with me for a second.
“Hi, Johnathan,” he greets whoever’s on the other end of the line.
“I need you to check something for me. Do you have the Brown family with you? Settled in a room at the motel, maybe? Okay, thanks, yeah, if you could check…” He drums his finger on the table before him, shooting me a look that’s clearly intended to remind me that he’s doing me a favor.
My heart is thudding in my chest as I wait for an answer.
As much as I’d like to believe that my parents wouldn’t be foolish enough to try and make a break for it back to their home after they’d been evacuated from town, I know how much my mom loves that place, all the history that’s attached to it.
If she thought for a second that any of that was under threat, she would be the first person there to try and rescue as much as she could.
My father, as solid of a man as he is, has never been good at standing up to her when there’s something she sets her mind on, and I doubt that he would be able to dig his heels in enough to keep her where she needs to be.
Finally, Carlisle mutters his thanks to the man, and hangs up the phone. The grim expression on his face tells me everything I need to know.
“They’re gone,” he replies bluntly. “Said they had relatives nearby they could stay with—”
“The only family close to them are me and the quads,” I reply, jerking my head upstairs. “They’re going back to the house, I’m sure of it.”
“Those damn—”
“So what I’m hearing is that there will be people we’ll need to get out of there too?” Joe demands, focusing on the practicality of the matter at hand.
I nod. “I know that’s where they’ll be,” I reply. “They live in a little gated community, used to be farmland before they let the forest come through. I can show you where it is. The signs got pulled down in a storm last winter, so you might not be able to find it unless I’m there.”
Joe and Carlisle exchange a look, neither of them saying a word.
I can tell they want nothing more than to tell me that I’m crazy, that I would be better off staying here with the quads, but if they think I’m going to sit around and do nothing when my parents might be in danger, they’ve got another thing coming.
The silence is punctuated by the sound of the door opening, and Dylan strides inside, dusting off his hands, his brow sheened with sweat. I can’t help but notice the way his arms bulge against the confines of his tee, the muscles defined and glistening beneath the light.
“We’ve got the tanks filled and loaded,” he announces. “Ready whenever—”
He realizes I’m standing there, Callum stepping in behind him. For a moment, he just stares at me, clearly trying to make sense of what I’m doing here.
“I’m coming with you,” I announce. Better that they hear it from me as a certainty instead of letting the guys get ahead of me and convince them that it’s a crazy idea.
“What the fuck?” Callum growls. “No, you’re not. Jesus, Carlisle, Joe, what did you tell her?”
“The fire’s close to my parents’ place,” I explain. “I know that area better than any of you, in case you forgot. And—”
“And her parents left the evacuation point to go back to their home,” Joe fills in for him.
Dylan groans, rubbing a hand over his face.
“She’s staying here,” Callum shoots back. “We can’t have anyone else with us. It’s tight enough as it is in there without—”
“Someone has to stay behind to look after the quads, anyway,” I reply, cutting him off before he can go any further.
All of them tense. I can feel it in the air—none of them want to be the one to turn me down. Now that the truth is out, the least I can do is use it to my advantage, see if I can convince them to protect the children they have only just discovered are theirs.
Joe steps forward, moving to my side. “She’s got a point,” he remarks. “She’s been here more recently than us, and some of the signage was torn down. If we miss a turn, it could cost us valuable time.”
“What, you mean like the time we’re wasting now even discussing this?” Dylan snaps back. “No. No fucking way. She stays here, where she’s safe.”
The protectiveness in his tone would be enough to make my heart flutter, if I wasn’t so damn pissed at being brushed off like this.
Carlisle has hardly said anything, but he doesn’t need to; his thoughts are written all over his face. He agrees with Dylan, wants me locked away here, even if he can’t justify it as anything more than a gut reaction.
Callum speaks up again, his face set with grim acceptance. “Angelie’s right,” he agrees. “The more information we have, the better our chances of getting this under control. Especially if there are people involved. Going to be easier to convince them to leave the house too, if we have her with us.”
Carlisle’s lip curls in disagreement. “We’ll find our way around fine,” he replies. “We lived here for years—”
“Yeah, but I bet you hardly spent any time on the north side of town,” I remind him. “Not exactly your neighborhood, right, Carlisle?”
His jaw clenches, and I wonder if I’ve somehow landed on a sore spot without realizing it. Whatever it is, it seems to be enough to get him to drop this sureness that they don’t need me, and he jerks his head toward the door. “Then let’s go.”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Dylan replies, stepping out before him. “She needs to stay here. With the kids. We just got her out, we don’t need to dump her right back into the middle of—”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” I cut in. “I know what the dangers are. I’m not a freaking child.”
Dylan’s eyes lock with mine, searching my face for something he can use to undercut me, something he can say or do that will make me rethink this, in whatever way he can. Instead, he’s met with my steady certainty, the sureness that I’m not going to let anyone turn me away from this.
“Fine,” he mutters. “Joe, Callum—you stay here. Carlisle and I can handle this.”
Relief washes through me. I know for damn sure that my mother is not going to be willing to leave that place unless someone from the family is there to coax her.
If I tell her that I need her to help with the quads, she’ll drop everything and come running, but it’s not the kind of thing that can come through another source.
I hate that she’s stubborn enough to go running back to her house in the middle of this, but that’s just the kind of woman she is, the kind of woman she raised my sister and me to be.
The kind of woman who would never leave behind what you’ve worked so hard to make, no matter how much danger it puts you in.
“The kids, they’re—”
“We’ve got it,” Callum assures me, briefly resting his hand on my shoulder as he moves past me toward the stairs.
I bite my lip as I watch him go. It still feels strange to know that one of these men is their father, and that my kids, though unknowingly, are meeting the man who helped bring them into this world.
But that’s the least of my worries right now, by a long shot. Dread grips my chest as it suddenly hits me what I have just fought to do, running into the middle of a fire with Dylan and Carlisle, but I’m being kitted up so quickly that I hardly have time to think twice about it.
“Put this on,” Carlisle grits out to me, tossing a jacket in my direction. Dylan reaches for a pair of flame-retardant gloves that he drops on top of the coat.
“I don’t know if this will fit me—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Carlisle retorts. “This place isn’t kitted out for anyone other than us. You’ll have to take what you can get.”
“Uh, right,” I blurt out as I pull on the jacket, the stiff fabric enveloping me completely. I pull on the gloves, and they sag at the tips of my fingers, even as I try to yank them down to cover my whole hand.
“Van ready?” Carlisle asks.
Dylan nods. “As it’s ever going to be.”
“Come on,” Carlisle insists, grabbing my arm and steering me toward the door. “We need to go. Now.”
I lock eyes with Joe for a moment, silently imploring him to take care of my children for me, but I hardly have time to catch his eye before I’m through the door and being steered toward the van that I was just pulled out of.
I try to catch my breath, and I’m not sure if it’s the smoke in the air or the fact that I’m suddenly so close to these men again after so long, but I can’t.
“Dylan, I’ll drive,” Carlisle says as he throws open the door. “Angelie, next to me, if you’re so intent on giving directions.”
He still doesn’t sound pleased, but at least he’s not actively fighting against this now.
I scramble into the front of the van next to him, the coat almost tripping me up as I go, and I strap myself in just a moment before he tears away from the cabin and starts toward the road.
I hear Dylan knocking on the inside of the roof, confirming that he made it in one piece, though right now, I’m not sure if Carlisle even notices.
I fix my gaze on the road ahead, doing my best to calm myself. My parents need me right now, maybe more than they ever have. And after everything they’ve done for me over the last few years, it’s the least I can do to make sure they get out of that place alive.
In the distance, as the van crests the hill, I can see the flicker of flames on the horizon, the perspective making it look as though the fire is closing in on Devin Ridge. All at once, the town that I’ve loved for so long looks as though it’s moments away from being enveloped in flames.
I do everything I can to keep the tears from springing to my eyes at the thought of it.