1. A Clean Exit #2
He stopped at the edge of the steps and turned around. Through the doorway, his eyes darted down to my swollen stomach, then flicked up to meet mine.
He pressed his lips together, his gaze hardening into something cold and unrecognizable.
Instead of reaching for me, Chase grabbed the edge of Esther’s heavy cedar bench. The wood gave a violent screech against the deck boards as he dragged it directly across the threshold.
“Chase!” I screamed, lunging forward.
He grabbed the heavy, outward-swinging cabin door and pulled it shut in my face.
I hit the solid wood a second later, shoving my shoulder against the planks. The door didn’t budge. I watched him through the small, reinforced window pane at eye level, helpless as he jammed the thick edge of the cedar bench beneath the exterior iron handle to wedge the latch.
“Chase! The baby!” I pounded both fists against the wood. “Open the door! Chase!”
The smoke inside the cabin was thickening rapidly, banking down from the ceiling in dark clouds. The air in the room was already baking my skin, growing hotter by the second. I pressed my face close to the narrow crack between the door and the frame.
Chase was standing right on the other side.
“It’s cleaner this way,” he said.
His voice slipped through the narrow crack in the door, low and gentle despite the deafening roar of the flames. It was the exact voice of a man closing a profitable contract.
“It’s the smoke that takes you,” he added. “You fall asleep first.”
The breath caught sharply in my throat, and not from the smoke. He was doing this on purpose. If the wildfire killed me, he wouldn’t face a messy divorce or a division of assets. He would inherit the trust as the ‘grieving widower’.
“I’m your wife,” I choked out, coughing as a lungful of smoke hit me. “I’m carrying your daughter.”
“Chase, we have to go, NOW!” Sienna shrieked from the yard.
Gravel sprayed against the porch lattice. I heard the solid, weighted doors of his Range Rover slam shut. The engine roared, tires spinning in the dirt. The sound of the vehicle faded rapidly down the mountain road, swallowed by the noise of the inferno.
I slammed my shoulder against the door again.
The impact sent a jolt of agony down my arm, but the cedar bench held firm.
I grabbed a brass lamp off the side table, tearing its cord from the wall socket, and swung it at the small window set into the door.
The reinforced safety glass spiderwebbed, but it held tight.
The back wall of the cabin went up in a tearing roar.
The heat spiked instantly, turning the living room into an oven. The smoke blinded me, stinging my eyes so badly I couldn’t keep them open. My lungs burned with every shallow breath.
My legs gave out. I sank to my knees on the floorboards, curling into a tight ball near the base of the door where the air was slightly clearer. I wrapped both arms tightly around my stomach, pressing my forehead against my knees.
The baby kicked again, a weak flutter against my ribs.
“Stay with me,” I whispered into the smoke, coughing violently as bile rose in my throat. “You stay right here.”
The ceiling groaned above me. The heat blistered the skin on my arms. I closed my eyes, the thick smoke making my head spin. I focused entirely on the frantic beating of my own heart, waiting for the smoke to put me to sleep just like he promised it would.
Then, the wooden door shuddered and was violently wrenched open.
The iron handle and a large chunk of the doorframe gave way with a deafening crack, dislodging the cedar bench directly onto the porch boards. Wood splinters rained across the floor, bouncing off my sweater.
A figure stepped through the ruined doorway, silhouetted against the blinding orange glare outside.
He wore rugged canvas work gear coated in ash, his nose and mouth hidden behind a half-face rubber respirator. A heavy-duty safety camera was clipped securely to his chest harness, its small red light blinking steadily through the smoke. He dropped to one knee right beside me.
He slid one arm under my knees and the other around my shoulders, lifting me against his chest. As he stood, he turned, placing his own broad back between me and the burning living room wall.
The sharp tang of soot, pine pitch, and the rubber of his mask hit me. A heavily callused hand pressed flat across my back, holding me firmly against him. My cheek rested against his collarbone. Beneath the thick layers of his jacket, his heartbeat was slow. A steady, measured thud against my ear.
“I’ve got you,” the man said. His voice was muffled by the mask, low and grounded. “Can you run?”
“Pregnant,” I gasped out, coughing up black soot. “Seven months. I can’t.”
“Then we don’t run,” he replied, his tone never wavering. “Face against my chest. Hold your breath when I say.”
I clung to the thick material of his jacket. “He locked it. He locked the door.”
“I know,” the stranger said. “Hold—now.”
I buried my face in his chest and clamped my mouth shut. He moved fast, carrying me out of the doorway and down the wooden steps just as the porch roof gave way in a shower of sparks and flaming timber.
He carried me out into a yard glowing like an open furnace. Burning pine needles rained down on us, hissing as they hit the dirt. Over his shoulder, the cabin’s roof sagged inward. The fire erupted straight up through it, devouring the place where my grandmother used to read to me on the porch.
I looked down the dirt road. It was empty. Chase’s taillights had already disappeared around the bend as he sped down the mountain toward town.
The stranger’s heart beat slowly and steadily against my cheek. Mine wouldn’t slow down at all.
“He locked the door,” I whispered into the canvas of his jacket. The roar of the inferno swallowed the words. “He locked the door.”