Page 64 of Run Omega Run
But none of us were okay, and we all knew it. The trauma in their faces would haunt my dreams for years to come. These children who'd already survived abandonment and loss were being forced to watch their sanctuary burn while the woman they'd come to see as a mother figure burned in the flames. Whatever healing we'd managed to achieve over months of careful rebuilding had been undone in a single night of calculated destruction.
Bennett's pacing intensified as another section of the roof collapsed. "Professional job," he said again, his voice carrying the clipped precision of someone cataloguing evidence for future use. "Must have been multiple ignition points, accelerants to ensure rapid spread, timing coordinated to trap maximumoccupants." His dark eyes swept the destruction with clinical analysis. "This wasn't random violence. This was an execution."
Cole nodded. "They made it personal when they targeted children," he said with the kind of calm that preceded surgical violence. "When they targeted Heather."
Dante moved among the children like a gentle giant, offering comfort even as his hands shook with suppressed rage. "They hurt children," he said simply, his voice displaying the weight of absolute judgment. "Children who'd already been hurt enough for several lifetimes. That's unforgivable."
But as the sound of the children’s cries began to recede, Dante's expression shifted from rage to alarm. He did a quick visual count of our group, his eyes moving from face to soot-streaked face with growing urgency that made my stomach clench with new dread.
"Where's Susie?" he asked, his voice cutting through the crackle of flames.
My eyes widened, jaw dropped. Where was she? I looked around our huddled group with desperate hope, certain she must be there, must be hidden behind one of the larger children or comforting someone in a way that had made her temporarily invisible.
She wasn't there.
Susie, who'd been in the house when the fire started, who'd screamed before any of us had smelled smoke, who'd been the first warning that something was terribly wrong, was nowhere to be seen.
"The scream," I whispered, memory returning with horrifying clarity. "I heard her scream, then a door slam. Right before the smoke got bad."
The terrible truth settled over us like a blanket made of ice and despair. Susie hadn't screamed just from fear of the fire. She'd screamed because someone had taken her, snatched heraway while the rest of us were distracted by smoke and flames and the desperate scramble to save the children we could see.
The fire had been a diversion. A deadly, devastating diversion designed to cover the abduction of a fourteen-year-old girl who'd never hurt anyone, whose only crime was belonging to a family that had inadvertently crossed paths with predators.
Bennett's expression shifted to something beyond rage, beyond fury, into territory that spoke of violence so complete it would leave no room for mercy or second chances. "They took her," he said, his voice carrying the kind of deadly certainty that made strong men reconsider their life choices. "While we were fighting for our lives, they took her."
The implications hit me. Somewhere in the darkness beyond our burning home, Susie was in the hands of men who'd been willing to murder an entire household to get what they wanted. Men who'd calculated that killing children was an acceptable cost of business, who'd shown the kind of casual cruelty that promised worse to come.
We'd saved everyone we could see, but we'd failed to protect the people who'd needed us most.
Chapter 27
Angus
Istood like a mountain carved from fury, watching the woman I'd claimed as mine kneel in the ruins of everything she'd built with love and determination. The acrid stench of burned dreams filled my nostrils, mixing with my chocolate scent that had sharpened to something darker, more primal... like burned sugar mixed with the metallic tang of blood I hadn't yet spilled but would.
When the fire department had finally managed to get around the debris, they had done their job with efficiency, drowning the flames that had devoured the orphanage until nothing remained but blackened timber. Water still dripped from the twisted metal that had once been window frames, each drop hitting the ground with a sound like tears falling on a grave. The morning sun cast long shadows through the skeletal remains, creating patterns of light and dark that reminded me of prison bars — fitting, since whoever had done this had just sentenced themselves to something far worse than incarceration.
Heather's strawberry and cream scent had been overwhelmed by smoke and grief, but I could still catch traces of it beneath the destruction. She knelt where the kitchen had been, her fingers sifting through debris with the desperate precision of someone searching for something that couldn't befound. I clenched my fists when I saw her shoulders shake with silent sobs that cut through me like blades.
Behind her, Cole draped a white sheet over the covered form that had once been Heather’s mom.
"Easy, love," I murmured when Heather's searching grew more frantic, her fingers cutting themselves on shards of glass hidden in the ash. But she couldn't hear me through the storm of grief that had wrapped around her like chains.
Bennett crouched beside her, placing his arm around her and pulling her into his chest.
