25. Fire

TWENTY-FIVE

FIRE

CROSS

A WEEK LATER

I smell smoke.

The instant the tell-tale aroma hits my nostrils, I’m already wide awake. I never thought I’d be grateful for a lifetime of insomnia and shitty sleeping habits, but though I only went down about an hour ago, sleeping fitfully at best, I smell smoke and I’m up .

Where is it? I breathe in, trying to make sure that I’m not imagining it. I cough, and I know I’m not. That this isn’t just the remnants of a lifetime of remorse over surviving a fire by constantly dreaming that I’m in one.

Then my fire alarm starts to blare, the high-pitch nearly deafening me, and I know then that this isn’t my nightmare come true. This is happening, and I need to get out.

I fell asleep in my t-shirt and jeans. With Genevieve staying at her brother’s house last night because she’s going to meet with a new company in the morning, there was no reason to strip down, especially when I doubted I’d get any sleep at all. I need to be holding onto my butterfly for any peace, but as the alarm seems to quiet in my frantic mind, I’m so fucking grateful that I slept alone.

When I look at Genevieve, I see flames, but I never, ever want her to experience fire.

I don’t have any shoes. There’s no time to grab them. I don’t even think about necessities like keys or my phone or ID or any of that shit. It’s only about getting out before the fire finds me .

My apartment is on the second floor. I never minded the cramped space because I knew for sure that there was a window off my bedroom that led right to a fire escape, and to me, that was more important than more square footage. If my family had one, they might have survived, and in any place I lived after that, I always needed a way out.

Now I race for it, grabbing the edge of the window.

Shit. Whether it’s my fear spiking and my anxiety making my hands worthless, I can’t get a grip on the window. It’s like someone glued it down or something, and no matter how much effort I put into it, I can’t get it up.

Okay. Okay . The fire alarm is still blaring, the smoke is getting thicker, and since the upstairs consists of my sleeping ahead, my bathroom, and the kitchen, I can sweep my gaze over the entire space and see that there’s no fire up here.

That means the fire is downstairs—and so is my only other means of escape.

Hoping that the fire is mainly contained so I can get the hell out of here, I take the stairs three at a time. The doorknob that separates my studio from the stairwell is warm, not scorching, so I think… maybe. Maybe it’s a small electrical fire that’s only so bad because of the smoke.

The smoke is definitely something. As I pull open the door, I throw my hand up over my face, choking on the thick, black smoke.

The fire is everywhere . It looks like someone flitted around my space, leaving a trail behind them, and the fire is following that exact path. It hasn’t consumed everything yet, but give it a few more minutes, and the entire place will be engulfed in flames.

That means I have one shot to get out of here, and I’d feel a whole better if most of the fire cut me off from the front door.

The window, I think, stumbling toward it. There’s a clearer path to the shop’s glass window, and I’m thinking of ways to break it when I see the familiar face staring back at me through it.

For a heartbeat, I’m back in Hamilton. There’s the thick glass wall of our cage, and the leering bastard on the other side.

Only I’m in Springfield again, and someone is standing in front of my window, mesmerized by the flames.

Mickey fucking Kelly.

Oh, hell, no.

He sees me. He sees me bursting out of the smoke, trying my best to avoid the fire as I move toward him. He sees me, and he waves .

Later, I’ll realize that I never even thought about what I was going to do. As if on instinct, I whirled around, searching for the rolling stool I used for tattooing my clients. It has a leather, padded seat—and thick metal legs that end in wheels.

Grabbing it by the seat, avoiding the scorching metal legs, I start hitting the glass window as hard as I can.

The fire must’ve done enough damage to weaken the structure of the glass. After three hits, it splinters. Mickey’s amused expression dies, and the prick takes off down the street before the fourth strike has the glass raining down on me. I don’t even hesitate. Closing my eyes only long enough to make sure I don’t get any glass shards in them, I shake the glittering glass off the best I can, toss the seat behind me, and climb through the open frame.

I’ve inhaled smoke. I don’t know where the flames touched me, only that the adrenaline coursing through me is enough to postpone the pain wherever they licked at my skin. The glass could’ve torn my flesh to ribbons and it doesn’t matter. I take off running the second my feet hit the sidewalk.

Mickey had a head start. No doubt about that. But this is my turf, I’m at least a decade younger, and I’m furious . I catch up to him in no time, throwing all of my weight at him to tackle him to the sidewalk.

He’s gotta weigh at least two hundred pounds, but when he face-plants on the rough ground with me on top of him, I roll off, then flip him over before straddling his gut.

He smirks. His chin is split and his nose is already bleeding from the fall, and still he smirks. “Knew you were a fag. Just can’t wait to get on top of me, huh? Guess it’s better than you wanting my cock up your ass.”

Mickey thinks he can distract me with his homophobia bullshit? “You lit my fucking place on fire?”

He shrugs, and I lose any self control I might’ve had left.

I whale on him. Pinning him with my legs, I go for the face to stun him, then lower my aim to his chest when he starts bucking my hips, trying to shake me off of him.

I’ll give him credit. He takes the beating, only grunting as each hit lands, and when I take a second’s pause to see how he’ll responds, he sucks in a breath and asks me in a strangled voice, “Did you really think I was going to let what you did to me go?”

I hit him again, going for the gut. If he can still talk, I haven’t made enough of an impact on him “If you were smart, you would’ve. And you wouldn’t have stuck around after you struck a match.”

He grunts, but refuses to lose that mocking glare. “Can you blame me? I wanted a front-row seat to see you burn.”

“Well, I didn’t.” I tighten my fingers so that the next punch to his jaw hurts both of us. My fingers scream, but Mickey doesn’t. Not yet, at least.

He grins, his mouth bloody this time. I got a good, square hit and he thinks it’s funny . “For as much as that cost me, I’ll be asking for a refund then.”

I don’t understand. Is he insane? I plow my fist into his cheek, his head snaps, and as soon as he shook off the hit, he’s talking nonsense about refunds. A refund on what? The accelerant he used that failed to catch?

“Winter lost, you dick. Even he hasn’t come after me yet. If he’s smart, he’s written off Springfield and moved on. But you had to come back with fire ?”

“Got your attention, didn’t I? Besides, you’re the fucking moron who slipped up. You really think this is still about a job? Fuck, no. This is personal. And I’m going to make it personal if it’s the last thing I do.”

Oh, trust me. That was the last thing he did.

As though he really believes he’s getting out of this confrontation alive, Mickey laughs. His face is covered in blood, one eye already swelling shut from my fists, and he laughs.

“Beat the shit out of me if you want. That won’t stop what’s coming. You were only the first target. I’m gunning for that Libellula bitch next.” He spits in my face, the glob hitting me right in the cheek. “For Noah.”

Genevieve .

Bracing his shoulders with my hands, ignoring the spit dribbling down my cheek, I lower my face until we’re almost nose to nose. “I’ll kill you before I ever let you get near her.”

Mickey’s eyes are insane. That’s the only way to describe them, and he has to be because no one sane would taunt a Sinner while he’s at his mercy.

But that’s exactly what he does. “What you did to my cock was reflex. I was so big, you couldn’t help but bite down, da Silva. But killing anyone? You’re a fucking pansy. You ain’t got the balls. That’s why that cunt took out Noah. You couldn’t. Cocksucker .”

Throwing my trauma in my face would’ve been enough to earn him a death sentence. But threatening Genevieve?

I take two fistfuls of Mickey’s hair. Rearing back, I grab his head as I move, then shift forward, cracking the back of his skull against the asphalt. There’s a sickening crunch as his eyes flutter than roll back, showing off the whites.

My chest is heaving. Adrenaline has me smashing his head again once more for good measure before climbing off of him. I don’t know if he’s dead yet. He might be, but if he isn’t? He will be soon.

But I can’t leave him here to die. The cops in Springfield are crooked as hell. Devil has half the force on his payroll, with Damien owning the other. Sinners and Dragonflies can get away with a lot, but murdering a man in cold blood and leaving the body out for civilians to stumble over? Even a guy like Officer Burns, one of Devil’s most bought beat cop, would have to call that in.

No. I’ve got to deal with this.

Besides, it’s not like I can save my studio. I’m the only one on this strip who lives in an apartment over their shop, so the street’s empty. I hate to think that my neighboring stores might go up in flames because they have the misfortune to be built next to mine, but they have smoke alarms to go with their burglary ones. I do, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the SFD is already on their way to battle the blaze.

And that means I need to get Mickey out of here now .

My bike’s out of the question. My keys are still in the apartment upstairs, and I couldn’t leave Springfield with an unconscious body strapped to my back. I don’t own a car, and without my phone, I can’t call any of my fellow Sinners to help me with this. Rolls would drop everything in a heartbeat to help me fix this mess, but he’s all the way at Paradise Suites with his wife.

And this fucker made it a point to threaten the woman I mean to make mine.

Growing up in Springfield, a kid can pick up on quite a few skills. Especially when he graduated high school and, following after his friend, falls in with the wrong crowd. Rolls idolized Devil when he was a brawler fighting for cash, and he ended up using his quick fingers as both a pickpocket and the best three-card monte player on the streets. Me? In between doodles and the odd piece of graffiti before I met my mentor and got into ink, I stole more than my fair share of cars.

Chop shops paid enough for me to survive after I got kicked out of foster care. I stopped once I got my own studio and my career starting to take off, but there are some things you never forget how to do.

I grab Mickey by the feet, hauling him into the nearest alley. Once he’s out of sight, I go jogging up and down the row of parked cars that cover the street no matter what time of night it is. This is one of the only parts of Springfield where parking is always free, so even if the Main Street shops are shut-up, someone’s always gonna park out this way to avoid congestion pricing.

The first thing I learned when it came to stealing cars? Some people make it just so easy to do. All it takes is one idiot to forget to lock their door and I’m in. I don’t have a screwdriver to remove the panel of wires, so that might be a problem, but my faith in the sheer stupidity of civilians is proven once again when—after only hitting eight cars and not triggering a single alarm—I find an old ass two-door Hyundai with the key still in the ignition.

Yes .

I slip into the seat, starting the car right up. I peel out of the spot, adding the stench of burn rubber to the overwhelming fire on the air, and back up to the alley where I left Mickey’s body.

He’s still out. Obviously. The dead weight makes it a bitch to heft him up, but I’m particularly motivated. Plus, I didn’t really care if he gets banged up as I toss his top half into the open trunk, then shove in his legs until he’s folded up like a pretzel in there.

That done, I slam the trunk down and get back into the still running car. In the distance, I can make out the scream of a fire engine’s siren. Just before they appear in my rear view mirror, I shift the car into drive and take off into the night.