Chapter 15
Air had never been such a precious commodity.
Alicia rolled out of bed and dropped to her floor, gasping for any tincture of breath she could find.
Not much, unfortunately. Smoke poured in beneath her door.
She crawled toward the window, choking, coughing, and struggling to remember whether a fire escape existed outside her window.
“Hey!” What was that in the background? Was that fire licking at the door? Alicia couldn’t tell! “Hey, hey! What’s going on? Thanks, bitch!”
Alicia thought of those safety videos shown at the beginning of airplane flights. Help yourself before anyone else. Pete would have to wait. Oh, my God, I’m so sorry, Pete.
The window didn’t budge. Alicia’s attempts to pry it open were met with little groans – oh, that was her making those groans. Oh, well.
She fell onto the floor again. The room was so dark. Was it always this dark?
“Hey! Whatcha doin?”
“Get back from the door!” someone shouted. Before Alicia could think too hard about what was going on, the bedroom door kicked open, the biggest body she had ever seen barreling in and swooping down to grab her.
Good thing Dee was so damn big. The window was nothing to her.
“Take deep breaths,” the paramedic coached Alicia.
An oxygen mask was stuck to her face, pumping the elixir of life while crews of firefighters yelled at the flames overtaking the apartment building.
Evacuated residents lined the closed street, some of them tended to by other paramedics, but most of them sobbing in their bathrobes and pajamas.
Alicia didn’t feel much better. Even with a thick blanket on top of her, she still shivered in her T-shirt and pajama bottoms. “That’s it, honey.
Keep breathing for me. You’re gonna be all right. ”
Dee sat on the ambulance bumper, holding her own mask to her face.
Sometimes she took it off to shout at someone – mostly the police that kept badgering her about who the hell she was and what right she had to run into a burning apartment – but mostly she spoke to Alicia.
Five minutes later, she had a freaked-out parrot on her shoulder, an animal control officer chasing poor Pete down.
“Thanks much, bitch!” He said it so cheerily that Alicia could only infer the best intentions… even with the slurs that made Dee glare at him. “Thanks, thanks, thanks!” Pete attempted to dance but stopped when he realized he didn’t have enough breath to do so.
“Come here.” The animal control officer caught him as someone else arrived with an oxygen mask for the bird. “You may have a foul mouth, but we’ll make sure you breathe right again, buddy.”
Alicia wanted to collapse from the confusion.
So happened that’s what her personal paramedic wanted her to refrain from doing.
“Alicia, honey?” she kept saying, as if calling her honey would get her to cooperate.
“Stay with me, baby.” Oh, it got better.
“You’re gonna be okay!” Why the fuck was she yelling?
For a second, Alicia panicked about Candice. Where was she? Was she okay? Did someone find her? Did she make it out in time? That’s right. She went to Las Vegas yesterday. Alicia was ready to pass out on her stretcher when she heard some rough, male voices start talking to Dee.
“What’s your name again?”
“Deanne McCormick. How many times do I gotta tell you?”
“Tell us what you saw again.”
“Look, I’m this lady’s bodyguard.” Dee took a moment to use the oxygen mask before continuing.
“I’m paid to watch over her. So, I watch over her.
I was standing out in the hallway ‘cause she didn’t know I was here, and I didn’t want to freak her out.
So when I saw smoke, I did my fucking job.
We did this training all the time when I was in the military.
You know how many times I’ve run through burnin’ buildin’s grabbin’ unconscious people? ”
“You didn’t see how the fire started?”
“Nope. Not my problem, either. Why don’t you go talk to the fire marshal?”
One police officer put his notepad down with a huff. The other took over the interview. “Who pays you to watch over this woman? Why?”
“This woman is Alicia Colbert, or do you not read the tabloids?” Dee scoffed – and coughed. “She’s Danica Moreau’s girlfriend. She’s the one paying me to guard her.”
“Danica…”
“Moreau…”
The policemen exchanged a look before taking off.
“Idiots,” Dee muttered. “You okay back there, ma’am?”
The paramedic looking over Alicia nodded. A huge spray of water lifted into the air as another hose turned on against the fire licking the fifth floor of the apartment building.
“I’ll be fine,” Alicia insisted. Shit, it wasn’t easy speaking.
She closed her eyes. What she would give to have Danica with her now.
Alicia didn’t fight the paramedics who took her to the hospital for further observation. She was too tired, too weary, and too full of paranoia to insist otherwise.
Fuck. The paranoia.
Something wasn’t right. She had no further information about the fire, but her gut told her that it started too close to home. I saw the fire. Alicia lived on the fifth floor. Aside from what spread to other apartments, hers was the only one truly affected.
She supposed it could’ve been an accident. Wouldn’t be the first time the toaster sparked, after all. That was why they always unplugged it after use. Alicia unplugged it after her morning toast, right?
Nobody was forthcoming with more information.
They were more concerned that she was comfortable in her cheery private room and that she was happy with the staff assigned to her, the most competent team of nurses with the kindest bedside manners.
Danica. Did she own this hospital? How about the wing?
It would probably be named after her soon.
Where is she? Alicia’s phone was gone. Had someone texted her?
If she had anything to do with Alicia’s current accommodation, then she must have known.
So where was she? Would she tear herself away from her precious meetings and corporate takeovers for a whole hour to come check in on her very public girlfriend?
Shit. That’s probably why everyone was so nice to her. They recognized her, and nothing more. “Don’t let Ms. Moreau find out that we were anything less than hospitable to her girlfriend,” Alicia swore she heard one nurse say. “Her father is a gracious donor.”
Aside from Dee, who had been released the same night she was admitted, Alicia had no visitors the first day she was in the hospital.
Not until the early evening, when she argued with a nurse about whether to leave the curtains open to watch the sunset.
Couldn’t a girl get some form of entertainment?
The TV was stuck on freakin’ baseball 24/7. Was it a ploy to make her sleep?
“Baby!” Was that… well! “Alicia, honey!” Linda Colbert barreled over a nurse in pink scrubs the moment she saw her daughter lying in a hospital bed.
“Are you okay?” Short, brown, curly hair bounced through the air as the stout woman in cheap jeans and a thin T-shirt rushed to Alicia’s bedside. “What happened?”
“I’m fine.” Alicia fought back tears at the sight of her mother.
While she had spent most of her adult life living fine without Linda hovering over her at all hours of the day, Alicia had to admit that there was no better face to look at right now.
Tell me it’s going to be all right, Mom.
Alicia hadn’t felt like this since she broke up with Matt an eon ago. “I promise, Mom. I’m fine.”
Still, Linda wouldn’t listen to the nurses who begged her not to squeeze her daughter so tightly.
Alicia folded into the maternal embrace that smelled of Avon perfume and school nurse sterilization practices.
It was a weekday. Had Linda taken time off to drive down from Long Island?
Who had called her? The police? Were Dad and Terrence okay?
They were all fine, as Linda tearfully told her daughter when she finally sat down in a folding chair.
Terrence hadn’t heard about the fire yet.
He hadn’t been feeling well recently, so Linda didn’t want to throw him into a fit over his sister’s well-being.
Alicia’s father was his usual stoic self.
He went to work that day on both of their behalf.
Students would’ve worried if both the nurse and her schoolteacher husband were gone without warning.
“I came as soon as I heard.”
“It’s such a long drive, Mom.”
“What happened? Is your roommate all right?”
“Candice is fine. She was in Las Vegas this weekend.” Alicia motioned for a drink of water. “Pete is in protection until she can come claim him.”
“Pete?”
“The parrot.”
“Right, right.” Linda squeezed her daughter’s hand. “Thank God you got out of there.”
“I hear nobody was hurt too badly.” Mrs. Jenkins was in another room down the hall. Not one half as nice as Alicia’s. The old woman wasn’t happy that her apartment was burned down, too, but she and her cats were alive. “It was a freak accident.”
“You come home with me if you need a place to stay.”
For the millionth time that day, Alicia thought of Danica. Would she let me stay with… Russell Moreau appeared in her head, shaking his head. No. Alicia didn’t want to stay in a place where the man who tried to have her killed lurked.
Alicia was convinced. The longer she had to think about it, the more she realized that Russell’s threats had finally manifested into something beyond idle.
He had said it himself. “The third warning won’t be so cordial.
” This was the man who paid someone to walk up to his ex-wife and set her on fire.
What made Alicia so special that she didn’t deserve the same treatment?
She was beyond a nuisance now. She was a threat.
A threat to the Moreau legacy. How many times had Russell told her to get the fuck out of Danica’s life?