I heard it like a crash of lawlessness. A shearing of peace.
Everything seized for one shocked second.
Salem’s spirit frozen—frozen in terror—my heart frozen in the same.
Then she started to mumble, “No. No, no, no, my baby.”
Torment clouded her expression.
I shot into action when I realized it was the fire alarm from downstairs in the shop going off.
On instinct, I grabbed Juni.
The little girl curled her arms around my neck and buried her face in my beard. My attention shifted to Salem the second I had the child in my arms.
Salem.
Salem who was nothing but panic. Her face was a sheet of white. Like she’d run headfirst into a ghost that’d come to claim.
Her eyes filled with what I knew deep down she believed was inevitable—she thought she’d been discovered.
My own wounds throbbed. Curdled my senses into a wad of old disgust.
Bile rose in my throat, and I wanted to succumb.
But I had way more important things to protect than my past mistakes.
I grabbed Salem by the hand. “Follow me,” I shouted over the alarm.
The siren blared. Banging off the walls and amplifying. Blasting so loud it twisted the air into a daze.
The world in confusion.
Salem clamored along behind me toward the set of emergency steps that ran out the backside of the laundry room. I flung the door open and bounded down the stairwell that crisscrossed three times.
Juni curled her arms tighter and burrowed her face deep into my neck, like she trusted me to silence it, keeping her harsh, hard breaths silent, like she’d been taught how to hide.
All while I could feel the crush of Salem’s heart. The desperation in her steps.
I held them tighter, shouting, “I have you. I have you,” over the clatter.
We busted out at the bottom and into the waning day. Twilight hung over the earth, slipping behind the trees and casting the world in a kaleidoscope of golds and purples and deepening blues.
Salem heaved a breath as soon as we were outside, and I tightened my hold on her as I raced us around the side of the building toward the woods that separated Iron Ride and Absolution.
Where it was secluded.
Where neither of them would be seen.
Salem was gasping, choking over her fear.
Wanted to wrap her up. Promise she was safe. That I would never let anything happen to her. Instead, I spun her, passed her daughter into the well of her shaking arms.
“Do not move!” I told her. I grabbed her by the outside of her upper arms to emphasize it. “Wait right here. It’s going to be fine. I promise you.”
Her nod was jerky, Salem in shock as she clung to her daughter.
I warred, not wanting to move, but the alarm was still screeching through the coming night.
I ran back that way, hitting the button on my phone that controlled the garage bay doors.
All five of them began to lift.
A small strain of smoke billowed out of the one closest to the lobby.
I ran along the front of the building. My heart seized when I realized where it was coming from.
Salem’s piece of shit car that was still on the riser smoldered, the barest smoke wafting out from the driver’s-side window that had been left down.
Dipping inside the shop, I grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall, fighting a war of my own fear, my own regrets.
Felt like the ugliest, dirtiest parts of me had found their way free and were taunting me.
The small fire a jeer that threatened to erupt to an all-out inferno from Salem’s car.
I hit the button to the riser to lower it, and I jerked out the pin on the extinguisher and sprayed the foam over the flames.
It was out as fast as it’d started.
Strain heaved and shock clutched my chest, this crazy-ass billow of relief mixed with the disorder.
Sweat dripped from my forehead, my blood a boil of aggression and adrenaline.
I swallowed it down and looked inside the window of the old car.
The remnants of a charred, oily rag were on the seat.
My gaze whipped around, searching for a reason.
An explanation.
Dread curled and trembled the ground beneath my feet.
The extinguisher slipped from my hands and clattered to the concrete. It rolled under the car while bile throbbed in my throat.
A warning.
A hiss.
Nothing added up.
I moved through the shop, hitting the stop button on the alarm as I passed. The silence roared. A ringing in my ears as I began to search every nook.
Every cranny.
Any possible spot someone could hide.
I came up short, nothing else out of place.
I scrubbed both hands over my face before I dropped them to peer through the empty shop.
My stomach was in knots. Nausea burned through the middle. I swallowed around the ball of razors in my throat.
It had to be an accident.
A slip up.
A misstep.
That rag left in the wrong place.
But what would have sparked it?
“Fuck,” I spat then I inhaled, trying to get my head on straight as I barreled out of the bay and toward the only destination I knew.
To where Salem and Juni were hidden in the cover of the dense thicket of trees.
My heart battered and crashed, and every single muscle in my body bowed in possession.
Salem was there. Her daughter in her arms, hiding her face but still peeking out as I approached.
“It was just a small fire caused by an oily rag. Alarm is super sensitive to protect the shop.”
It was true, but it still felt like bullshit.
Salem knew it, too.
She was shaking. Shaking and shaking.
She spun a circle, her black hair whipping around her shoulders like a darkened, chaotic storm. “No.”
Panic built, and her fear compounded.
“No,” she said again before she darted around me and took off running. With Juni held in her arms, she headed back toward the side stairway.
I kept up behind her. “Salem. Wait. Let me check it out to make sure it’s safe before we go back inside.”
I might as well not have said a thing because my words didn’t penetrate the wall of her panic.
She never put Juni down the entire way up to the loft, her feet banging the stairs and her distress clawing the white bricks.
She burst through the laundry room door, ignoring me as I tried to stop her.
“Salem, please. Calm down. Let’s take a deep breath. A minute to think this through.”
The distress radiating back was her only answer.
Seeping from her pores and burning from her flesh.
“Salem.”
She was already in the guest bedroom, snatching up Juni’s bag, then she blew out and into my bedroom. The only thing she took the time to grab was her purse.
She didn’t look at me as she rushed back out the door and across the loft.
“Salem. Fuck, please. Stop. Look at me.” I fumbled behind her. Trying to break through. To climb over the barriers and find my way to her. To where it was me and this girl who’d changed everything. One who’d rearranged every loyalty.
I didn’t make a dent.
Without slowing, she darted back through the laundry room and into the stairwell, her footfalls frenzied as she careened down the steps.
“Salem…please. Listen to me. I have you. I have you.”
“Please, Jud, don’t.” It was the first thing that came out of her mouth, and she tossed it out without looking back as she banged through the bottom door and out into the deepening night.