Page 179 of Enemies

I jump in and navigate to the club. Even at three thirty in the morning, the drive is half an hour.

When I get there, the first thing I see are the flames. I hear sirens and see the lights of the approaching fire truck. They cut me off before I can turn off the road. I follow them in, my heart dropping through my stomach as I take in the sight before me.

The club is on fire.

Acrid black smoke pours out of broken windows. The sign isn’t lit, or the bulbs have shattered from the heat. The building is concrete, but the inside is wood.

Worse, Harrison’s car is in the lot, angled awkwardly with the driver’s door open.

There’s no sign of Harrison.

The sound of tires screeching in behind me has me whirling to find Leni, who I recall lives twice as far from the club as Harrison.

“Where is he?” she hollers, wide-eyed.

“I don’t…” I turn back toward the building in horror.

Firefighters pour out of the fire truck, a couple of them uncoiling the long hose from the vehicle’s side.

I start for the building and make it to within a dozen feet of the door before heat blasts open another window, glass flying outward. My hands fly up too late to shield myself, but the next second, Leni’s there.

“We need to get you back,” she says.

“But Harrison—he must be in there!”

I can’t breathe, and it’s not only because of the smoke.

I run to the firefighters. “You need to find him.”

Before the firefighter can say anything, two others bring Harrison out of the club. He’s stumbling between them, breathing through a mask, his arms clutched against his chest.

I’m over there in a heartbeat, and Harrison’s pushing something into my hands before they usher him into an ambulance.

“You were with him.”

I look up to see an officer blocking the hallway I’ve been pacing for the last two hours. It’s been a long night at the hospital while Harrison has been put through a barrage of tests. I’ve heard almost nothing about his condition except that he’s stable. The doctor told me that as if I should have been relieved—like the fact that the man I love running into his burning building had a happy ending after all.

“Who are you?” I demand.

The officer gives me his name. “I need to ask you a few questions. Let’s find chairs and talk.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He sizes me up, his gaze landing on my bracelet. He nods toward the side of the hallway, and I grudgingly step out of the way of traffic.

“You were the first person on the scene.”

“Second,” I correct. “Harrison got there first.”

The last time a police officer surveyed me so intently, I was a teenager at the front desk of the local branch, deciding whether to report what had happened to me. I was nervous, sweating. In the end, fear overtook me, and I turned around and never went back.

Not only fear of the police, but fear of being found out, exposed, judged, ridiculed, hated.

“How did it start?” I demand.

“It’s too soon to say.”

“Was it…? Tell me it wasn’t the marquee.” My voice fades to a whisper.

---