Page 88 of Slow Burn
It helped a little, though the scent of the chemical bit at her nostrils, snapping her back to reality easily enough. She recognized that smell from downstairs, the scent she hadn’t been able to place. Oh, God, he’d already doused it down there.
She opened her eyes to find Eric standing across the room from her, pouring the fluid in one spot like he’d lost track of his thoughts.
Think, Jocelyn, she told herself. She couldn’t let this happen, couldn’t let this be the end of her life, of Cole’s.
As Ward turned in a slow circle, drenching all of Cole’s furniture, she began working at the zip tie around her wrists again. Ward looked less like a man reveling in chaos and more like someone carrying out a sentence he shouldn’t have been saddled with, but he was still her enemy, the thing standing between her and life.
He lit a match; the sound of it catching made his pupils blow wide like a shark scenting blood. They were out of time.
She yanked at her ties more violently, desperation clawing up her spine.
The plastic zip tie gave with a sharp snap against her wrists, and Ward’s face jerked to her just as she lurched to her feet. With a cry torn from somewhere deep and desperate, she slammed her shoulder into him before he could react.
Ward staggered on the slick floor where he’d poured the lighter fluid, his eyes flying wide with shock more than fear. Her stomach dropped out as they both went down.
The crack of Ward’s head against the edge of the coffee table eclipsed the sound of flame catching the accelerant coating the floor, but she didn’t miss the sight of the fire as it curled up the curtains, licking higher with every second.
She scrambled off of Eric, who didn’t stir, and crawled toward Cole.
He still lay unmoving on the floor as the blaze raced across the room, igniting Jocelyn’s panic.
thirty-three
“Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.” - William Shakespeare
Pain dug through the back of Cole’s skull, spreading like tree roots clawing for soil. It dragged him up toward consciousness, slow as being hauled out of deep water.
Footsteps on the stairs jolted panic through him. Fear didn’t make sense—only folks he trusted came to his door. But his gut told him there was a reason. Something was wrong.
His eyelids fought him, heavy as lead, and the pain seared. The dark yanked him back under until a chemical stench hit his nose, sharp enough to twist his stomach. He groaned as the agony gripped him again.
“Cole!” someone called.
That voice cut through the haze, straight to his gut. But he couldn’t place it, not yet. Not when his head was under attack like this.
“Cole, please!” Desperation cracked the voice, nearly breaking it into a scream.
It’s her.A brief taste of that realization tinged his tongue. It was a woman calling to him. Someone who mattered.
Her whimper stirred him closer to the surface.
Something was damn sure wrong.
His eyes shot open, and sunlight stabbed through his skull like a pickax. Darkness swallowed him again.
“Cole, wake up!”
The words yanked him back, this time with the burn of smoke flooding his nose. Wood and chemicals cooking together, acrid and heavy. The woman was coughing now. He felt her hands on him.
“Cole!” she screamed.
It rattled in his skull, and he wanted to go back under. But the shape of a name formed.Jocelyn. The fear in her voice tore at him harder than the smoke.
“Please wake up!”
He tried to answer, tried to move, anything to calm that terror in her throat. Only another groan crawled out. But this time he stayed awake, awareness anchoring when he felt his hands bound tight behind him, his feet tied together. Memory slammed back—Eric Ward, the gun in his face. The lights going out with the explosion of pain in his head.
If Jocelyn was here, Ward had her, too.
