Chapter Seven
Something blew up. Not large enough to destroy the house but enough that flames were already lapping at the wall on one side.
Price had felt the impact in his truck. At JJ’s side, he could easily see the chaos.
“Are you okay?” He used one hand to pat her back and arm, even as she nodded. That was all the confirmation he needed. Price pushed his phone in her hand and started to run.
“Call this in and get back,” he yelled over his shoulder.
He didn’t know if she responded. There was no time to talk about anything.
A car was in the driveway of the affected house.
Someone was probably home.
The heat from the fire met Price as his feet hit the driveway.
The front porch wasn’t on fire, but it was close enough that Price didn’t slow down until he was rounding the side yard and tearing through the back.
He tripped in his haste but started yelling out for the homeowners before he was at the back door.
“Sheriff’s department,” he yelled in reflex. “Is anyone inside?”
Glass was breaking somewhere, probably from the heat, but no other sound came through. Price tried the door. It was locked. He called out again but nothing. He took a few steps back and checked the only window next to him. It was also locked.
He was going to have to break either the door or the window.
Price ran the fastest math he could and decided the window would be the best option. No sooner than he went for the flowerpot he intended to use to break it did someone push past him.
JJ had something in her hands and set to the door without a word.
“What are you doing?” he yelled out. “You need to lea—”
The door opened. JJ cut him off with her own shout.
“Jamie Bell and his boyfriend might be in here!”
Then she turned and ran right into the house.
Price’s lack of time, once again, kept him from reacting the way he wanted to. Instead, he followed her.
The layout of the house was nearly the same as Price’s. The back half of the house had a small bathroom, a dining room and a kitchen opposite the living room. Stairs ran between the latter two.
The explosion had originated in the kitchen. Heat and smoke radiated into the hallway with intensity. Price placed an arm over his mouth and peered into the destruction.
No bodies as far as he could see.
JJ must have concluded the same. She was already running up the stairs.
Price followed, skipping two steps at a time.
Once they were at the landing, they split up. JJ went to one of the doors on the left and Price went right.
It was a bedroom and, thankfully, there wasn’t much to it either. A bed, dresser, and nightstands.
No Jamie Bell or his boyfriend.
Maybe the car Price had run by in the driveway had been left behind and there was no one in the—
A scream came from somewhere else on the second floor.
It was JJ.
Price backtracked faster than he had run into the bedroom and went to the room opposite. It was a lot less simple.
The bedroom was twice as large, had more furniture cluttering the open space, and had, not one, but three people in it.
One was a man on the ground.
One was a man in a hooded jacket.
One was JJ and she had her hands on the jacket of the latter while standing over the former.
“Price,” she yelled.
There was no directive in it, but he understood the assignment, even if he didn’t have the context. He closed the space between them, just as the man in question threw out a punch to get JJ off him.
It was a hit that didn’t land. At least not against JJ.
The man’s fist connected with Price’s open palm right before Price sent out his own hit. The man staggered as the punch landed against his jaw. The sudden imbalance knocked JJ off the hooded man’s jacket.
But she wasn’t done.
Price watched as she launched an all-out attack.
An attack that wasn’t bad at all.
The second she was in striking distance, she struck.
When the man dodged and returned a hit, she dropped down.
Before Price could intervene, she swept her leg out.
The hooded man fell to the floor.
Price would have congratulated her, but his reactions were doing their very best to catch up as it was. He grabbed the strap of the bag across her chest and with a good amount of force, he slung her back toward the door.
“Leave now,” he yelled.
Price watched a range of emotions pass over her face amid the growing smoke eking in. It was the only reason he knew about the incoming attack before he saw it.
Price whirled around, arms up in defense, and blocked the baseball bat as best he could. Pain slammed into his forearm. Price couldn’t help but yell from it.
The pain and yelling cost him another reaction.
Not JJ.
Without a sound, JJ was back in the fray.
And boy did she make it flashy.
In one fluid movement she seemed to climb the hooded man like a dang tree. Then she slung herself around until she was on his back, arm around his throat. The man didn’t like that one bit.
He dropped the bat. Price grabbed it, ready to use it to end their distraction from escaping the smoke and, no doubt, growing fire.
Like the entire scene that had played out since spotting JJ on her run, Price was once again utterly surprised.
With smoke above their heads, a man unconscious near them on the floor and a siren starting up in the distance, Price watched as the hooded man propelled himself backward with noticeable force.
That alone wouldn’t have been that interesting of a turn of events.
Yet, he wasn’t alone.
Price lunged toward them just as JJ’s body connected against the wall next to the bedroom window.
The sound of the impact was loud enough to hear over the chaos around them.
But JJ didn’t make a sound.
Instead, she went limp.
Her body slid like a rag doll off the hooded man as he threw himself clear of Price’s lunge forward.
“JJ!”
The only thing Price managed to do was catch her head before it could hit the ground.
It wasn’t until he had her securely against him that he realized one problem had just jumped the other.
The fight with the hooded man had ended. He ran out of the bedroom door without a look back.
The fire, however, was just getting started.
* * *
Strawberry shampoo.
At first, it was a joke. It smelled so much like an actual strawberry that it was more distracting than refreshing.
There they would be, sitting around the dining-room table eating or lounging on the couch watching TV, and the smell of strawberries would mingle in between them.
Even in public, the smell was noticeable.
“Who’s eating fruit at a football game?” the man sitting behind them at the stadium had asked once.
It was a poignant scent.
Then, one day, it became a part of their family’s fabric.
Elle Ortiz was the smell of strawberries, and her husband and daughter began to love strawberries all the more for it.
So that night years ago, JJ didn’t need to open her eyes to know her mother was near her. She smelled the strawberries before she smelled the smoke and blood. Before she opened her eyes and screamed. Before she realized her entire life had stopped and she’d never see her parents again.
Strawberries.
It had been nice.
Now, with her eyes closed, she smelled them again.
It’s Mom, JJ thought. She’s near me.
She was pressed against warmth. Moving with their breaths in and out, rumbling against her body as they spoke.
And strawberries.
There was no denying that’s what she smelled.
JJ almost smiled.
But then the pain started. It pounded against her skull and radiated down her back. Her elbow ached. Her throat hurt.
Was she back in that car?
She couldn’t have been. That had been years ago. It had been raining, it had been night and her godfather had been so loud. Yelling, screaming at her to get out. To leave her parents behind. To run and never look back.
Now the sounds were different.
There was a man, but he wasn’t yelling. He wasn’t trying to scare a little girl into safety.
He wasn’t trying to save his best friend’s daughter.
Instead, the warmth against JJ had a low rumble. One that was almost soothing.
If she hadn’t smelled the strawberries, she might have stayed wondering.
Still, there was enough of a hope that JJ opened her eyes slowly.
The car was supposed to be upside down, her hair and arms were supposed to be hanging down toward the ground, glass and blood across bent metal.
The glow from the headlights bouncing off a tree was supposed to show her the outlines of her very still parents and the terrifying and growing cloud of smoke from the engine bay.
However, the world was right side up.
A seat belt wasn’t holding her, it was a man.
He had her cradled against him like a father would a child, an arm beneath her legs and an arm fastening her upper body to his.
He wasn’t eerily still like her parents, and he wasn’t yelling at her like her godfather.
He was speaking softly to someone, somewhere around them.
It was daytime too. Warm even.
There was smoke but it was a good distance off, eating at a house, and not an ominous growing cloud a few feet away.
But.
There was the smell of strawberries.
It just wasn’t Elle Ortiz’s shampoo.
The ache that ran wide and deep, unimaginable in size and depth, filled with a tidal wave of sorrow.
“It’s my hair,” she said aloud.
JJ’s head swam. The body she was attached to moved. Not enough to jostle her but enough to bring her attention to the face peering down at her.
Price Collins was all concern in his eyes.
He didn’t understand.
How could he?
She didn’t mean to, but the finishing thought slipped out while looking into those eyes.
“It’s my shampoo,” she said. “Not hers.”
Then it was over for JJ.
She placed her head back against his chest and closed her eyes. She was crying next.
“It’s okay,” Price said. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”
JJ’s head swam. She felt nauseous.
The sun overhead bothered her.
She turned her head into Price’s shirt and balled her fist into the fabric next to her eye.
He didn’t talk to her for a long time or, maybe, it wasn’t that long at all. The world felt fuzzy. She felt hungover. She felt drained.
It wasn’t until sometime later that Price notably lowered his voice.
“The ambulance is here,” he said. “You need to go in it. Who do you want me to call to meet you at the hospital?”
JJ didn’t open her eyes. She answered honestly. Her voice had a rasp to it.
“There’s no one to call,” she said. “I can go alone.”
Price made a noise of confirmation. She was about to tell him to let her down, but he started walking.
It wasn’t until the ambulance siren was closer that JJ started to come back to the world around them.
“Where’s Jamie?” she asked with a start. “Is he okay?”
JJ opened her eyes and found Price’s gaze was back on hers.
He searched her expression.
He didn’t avoid the question, but his answer was tight.
“He’s fine.”
JJ’s eyebrow rose at the way he said it. The small movement made the pain in her head flare. She winced.
“You worry about getting seen to,” he added. “Let me worry about everything else.”
JJ hadn’t known Price long at all.
Yet, for the first time in ages she felt something surprising.
Relief.
Maybe it was because her head was pounding, her elbow hurt something good or she had a sneaking suspicion her back was already black-and-blue, but JJ simply accepted his words.
For now, at least.
Once she found out if Jamie Bell was her brother, then the real work would start for her. And bright eyes or not, she wasn’t going to let Price Collins come near the chaos that would come after that.