Page 99 of Meet Me in Montreal

Santino didn’t need to ask. He knew who he was.

The golden-haired man’s blue eyes snapped to the dead man, the bloody axe. Finally, he raced to Antoinette’s side and scooped her up. He held her close and ran out, right before the living room ceiling collapsed and rained fire down on everything it touched.

The four of them got out of the kitchen into the fresh open air. The man and his prize disappeared into the ether.

Santino was on his way down the side path in time to meet the crew from the local company coming in. These were men he knew, despite working for a different crew in the city. He’d been to some of their houses for barbecues, had had a beer with them at their favorite local bar.

“There’s one more in the living room. He attacked my wife. He’s dead,” Santino said to their Captain Tanner when he rushed up.

“Died in the fire?” Captain Tanner asked. He was eyeing Santino’s clothes, taking in the blood spray on the bottom of his jeans and smeared on his dirtied shirt.

“He’s dead.” Santino chest heaved with Vanessa cradled against it. He knew it wasn’t an answer to the question, and he knew Tanner was smart enough to realize it.

Tanner expelled a deep breath, then nodded. “Police and Cause and Origin are on their way. Go with your wife to thehospital, Donahue. Get yourself checked out.” Then he went to the crew to start issuing orders while two more engines arrived with ladders and got the hoses out.

Santino ran to the ambulances waiting out front, noting that Antoinette’s Volvo had disappeared. Bobby was in the back of the closest ambulance, staring inside and crying while Zoe was on one of the beds already wearing an oxygen mask. Someone checked her vitals while she coughed and tried to speak. He ran to the next truck, where two unfamiliar EMS workers waited.

“My wife,” Santino told them, his entire body quaking. “My wife.”

“Any injuries?” This was a woman bearing a name tag that read “Hernandez.”

“She has a bump on her head,” Santino said. “She was assaulted. I think she inhaled a lot of smoke.”

“I mean you, too.” She indicated his face, and he touched it, surprised to see blood on his fingers.

“I’m fine. Check her. Check her!” he insisted, thrusting Vanessa toward them.

The surging panic in him must have come out in his voice. Hernandez put a comforting hand on his arm. “Don’t worry, sir. We’re taking her right to the hospital. Hop in the cab.”

Vanessa was clinging to his hand as he put her carefully on the gurney. Tears ran through the soot on her face, leaving clean tracks.

“Don’t…” She tried to talk, but a coughing fit took over and wracked her body.

“Excuse us, we’ve gotta get the oxygen going. Move, sir, please,” Hernandez ordered with more force when he wouldn’t let go of Vanessa’s hand. “Now.”

“I’m coming with you, okay, baby?”

They got an oxygen mask on her face, covering her nose and mouth. His vision blurred and bent until everything was wavylines and scalding wetness on his cheeks. But he stepped away so they could get on with caring for her instead of struggling with him. When she was strapped securely and placed into the back of the ambulance, he jogged to the front and hopped in the passenger seat. They pulled away when he was barely buckled in.

Then everything became a blur. The wail of the sirens, the stench of smoke still clinging to his shirt and his hands, the taste of ashes in his mouth and at the back of his throat, all became part of that background.

The only clear center was Vanessa when he jumped out of the ambulance and rushed with the paramedics into the ER. He noticed Bobby sitting in the waiting room but had no words for him, too busy arguing with the paramedics that he had to go in with Vanessa even while they told him to stand down and he couldn’t go in any further.

“We need to take a look at that cut on your head, sir. And we need to check your lungs for—”

“I’m fine.” Santino pulled away with a growl, not wanting to be touched. “Please, just focus on my wife right now.” The nurse raised her hands in surrender and left him alone. Before she got far, he remembered she was only trying to help. “Thank you.” She gave him a look of sympathy, indicating she was used to hysterical pricks, and left through the swinging door.

Heavily, he sat down beside Bobby, who was staring at the floor dazedly.

“Zoe?” Santino started.

“I don’t know. She…” Bobby swallowed, his Adam’s apple moving along his throat. Quietly, so that only Santino could hear him, he whispered, “She was babbling. Incoherent. She said she started it. She didn’t mean to, but she did, somehow.” He leaned forward, rubbing his face wearily with the sigh of a man who’d aged twenty years in twenty minutes. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know it was this bad. I knew she had this thing about Vanessa.Ling, what happened with you, it all must have pushed her over the edge.Ipushed her. This is on me.”

Another fire broke out at that knowledge, but this one was inside Santino’s belly. He doused it as quickly as it flared. Any anger or resentment he felt toward Zoe could be worked out later. The same went for Bobby’s guilt. Right now, Vanessa was all that mattered. He had to reserve his energy for making sure of it.

“Who was that man?” Bobby asked after wiping his nose of the tears that had dripped from it. “Was that Antoinette’s psycho?”

“No, but he was there. He saved Ant. Just showed up out of nowhere, grabbed her and took off. Or at least I assume that was him. He fit the description. The guy who attacked them… I don’t know. Unless Malone sent him, but that doesn’t seem like something he would do.”

---