Prologue #3
Caleb’s vision was blurry, his eyes streaming from smoke and heat.
He blinked, trying to focus. The man came into view slowly, features sharpening.
Blond hair that seemed to catch the firelight like spun gold, calm blue eyes that held no fear or panic despite the inferno raging behind him, a face that was neither young nor old, but somehow ageless.
He wore simple clothes. A white shirt that should have been filthy with ash but wasn’t, jeans, nothing remarkable.
But there was something about the way he stood, the way the smoke seemed to part around him like water around stone, that made Caleb’s battered brain stumble over the word impossible.
“Easy,” the stranger said. His voice was unhurried, cadence slightly formal, like someone reading from an old book. “You’re safe. They’re all safe.”
Caleb tried to speak. His throat was raw, scraped clean. He managed one word: “How?—”
“Help is coming.” The man knelt beside him. His hands were clean, with no soot, no ash, as if he’d materialized from clear air. “Rest.”
More sirens now. Fire trucks, the deep bass horn cutting through the night. Caleb could see paramedics working on the woman, the red lights already painting the darkness.
“The kids,” Caleb managed.
“All alive.” The man’s hand rested briefly on Caleb’s shoulder, the bad one, and the grinding pain eased. “You saved them.”
Caleb wanted to laugh. It came out as a cough. The stranger’s touch was cool against his burned skin, impossibly gentle. Like his mother’s hand when he’d been small and sick.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
The man’s smile turned noncommittal. “Someone who was in the right place at the right time. Just like you.”
Caleb tried to push further, tried to understand how he’d gotten out when the stairs were gone and he’d been dying, but his vision was tunneling, gray creeping in from all sides.
The female paramedic he’d pushed past minutes ago appeared at his side, her partner right behind her. They’d been working on the woman and children, but now they turned their attention to him.
“Sir, I need you to look at me.” She was leaning into his field of vision, blocking his view of the stranger. “Can you tell me your name?”
“Caleb,” he rasped. “Caleb … Byrne.”
“Good. Caleb, do you know where you are?”
“Tennessee.” A pause. His brain felt like cotton. “Maybe.”
“Close enough. Virginia, actually, just over the border. Can you tell me what happened?”
“Fire,” Caleb heaved. “Went in … Got the kids … And the woman … Then …” He trailed off, his brow furrowing. “Then … I don’t know.”
The paramedic exchanged a glance with her partner, a tall man with steady hands who was already prepping an IV line. “You don’t remember coming out of the house?”
“I was … trapped,” Caleb insisted, his voice gaining strength even as his body failed. “Second floor … Stairs collapsed … I couldn’t … there was no way out.”
“Well, you’re out now,” the male paramedic said gently, fitting an oxygen mask over his face. “Just breathe for me, okay? Nice and slow. We’re going to take care of you.”
But Caleb pushed the mask away with his good hand, his eyes searching the darkness beyond the fire trucks. “Where did he go?”
“Who?”
“The man who—” Who what? Saved him? Pulled him from an impossible situation? “The man in the … white shirt … He was just here.”
“Who?” the male paramedic asked, following his gaze.
“The man who—” Caleb’s voice caught.
The first responders looked at each other, and Caleb recognized that look. The look that said smoke inhalation, possible head injury, unreliable witness.
“Sir, there was no one else here when we arrived,” the man said carefully. “Just you and the three victims. You did an amazing thing tonight, but you need to let us help you now, okay?”
“He was here,” Caleb said, but even as the words left his mouth, doubt crept in. Had he imagined it? Had the smoke and the carbon monoxide and eleven months of barely holding had his grip on reality finally slipped?
The oxygen mask came down over his face again, and this time he didn’t fight it.
Clean air flooded his lungs, cold and sharp.
The paramedics were moving now, lifting him onto a backboard, strapping him down.
Caleb’s vision blurred, the world reducing to fragments.
Red lights spinning, the female paramedic’s voice asking him to stay awake, the smell of smoke still thick in his nose, firefighters running hoses toward the inferno.
He turned his head, as much as the collar would allow, and caught one last glimpse of the burning farmhouse. The fire crew was attacking it now, water arcing through the air, but the flames were still winning. And there, at the very edge of the light, he thought he saw something. Someone.
A figure in a white shirt, walking away across a field.
Or maybe nothing at all. Maybe just smoke and shadow and an injured man’s confusion.
Caleb’s eyes closed.
The last thing he remembered before the darkness claimed him was the faint impression of a touch on his shoulder, gentle and cool, and a voice he couldn’t quite place, saying something he couldn’t quite hear.
Something about not being lost anymore.
Or maybe that was just the oxygen deprivation.