Linda Jones - Raintree

He couldn’t put it out, not completely. For whatever reason, whether he was depleted or distracted or the fire itself was somehow different, he couldn’t put it out. He accepted that now. All he could do was hold the flames at bay until the fire department had them under control.

That was what he concentrated on, controlling the fire instead of extinguishing it. That conserved his energy, and he needed every bit he had, because the fierceness of the fire never stopped pushing back, never stopped struggling for freedom. Time meant nothing, because no matter how long it took, no matter how his head hurt, he had to endure.

Somewhere along the way he lost the line of division between himself and the fire. It was an enemy, but it was beautiful in its destruction; it danced for him as always, magic in its movement and colors. He felt its beauty like molten lava running through his veins, felt his body respond with mindless lust until his erection strained painfully against his zipper. Lorna had to feel it, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to make it go away. The best he could do, under the circumstances, was not grind it against her.

Finally, hoarse shouts intruded through the diminished roar of the beast. Turning his head slightly, Dante saw teams of firefighters advancing with their hoses. Quickly he let the bubble of protection dissolve, leaving him and Lorna exposed to the smoke and heat.

With his first breath, the hot smoke seared all the way down to his lungs. He choked, coughed, tried to draw another breath. Lorna sagged to her knees, and he dropped down beside her as the first firefighters reached them.

Lorna sat on the bumper of a fire-medic truck and clutched a scratchy blanket around her. The night was warm, but she was soaking wet, and she couldn’t seem to stop shivering. She’d heard the fire medic say she wasn’t in shock; though her blood pressure was a little high, which was understandable, her pulse rate was near normal. She was just chilled from being wet.

And, yet, everything around her seemed…muted, as if there were a glass wall between her and the rest of the world. Her mind felt numb, barely able to function. When the medic had asked her name, for the life of her, she hadn’t been able to remember, much less articulate it. But she had remembered that she never brought a purse to a casino because of thieves and that she kept her money in one pocket and her driver’s license in another, so she’d pulled out her license and showed it to him. It was a Missouri license, because she hadn’t gotten a license here. To get a Nevada license, you had to be a resident and gainfully employed. It was the “gainfully employed” part that tripped her up.

“Are you Lorna Clay?” the medic had asked, and she’d nodded.

“Does your throat hurt?” he’d asked then, and that seemed as reasonable an explanation for her continued silence as any other, so she’d nodded again. He’d looked at her throat, seemed briefly puzzled, then given her oxygen to breathe. She should be checked out at the hospital, he’d said.

Yeah, right. She had no intention of going to a hospital. The only place she wanted to go was away.

And, yet, she remained right where she was while Raintree was checked out. There was blood on his face, but the cut turned out to be small. She heard him tell the medics he was fine, that, no, he didn’t think he was burned anywhere, that they’d been very lucky.

Lucky, her ass. The thought was as clear as a bell, rising from the sluggish morass that was her brain. He’d held her there in the middle of that roaring hell for what felt like an eternity. They should be crispy critters. They should, at least, be gasping for breath through damaged airways, instead of being fine. She knew what fire did. She’d seen it, she’d smelled it, and it was ugly. It destroyed everything in its path. What it didn’t do was dance all around and leave you unscathed.

Yet, here she was—unscathed. Relatively, anyway. She felt as if she’d been run over by a truck, but at least she wasn’t burned.

She should have been burned. She should have been dead. Whenever she contemplated the fact that she not only wasn’t dead, she wasn’t even injured, her head ached so much she could barely stand to breathe, and the glass wall between her and reality got a little bit thicker. So she didn’t think about being alive, or dead or anything else. She just sat there while the nightmarish scene revolved around her, lights flashing, crowds of people milling about, the firefighters still busy with their hoses putting out the remaining flames and making certain they didn’t flare again. The fire engines rumbled so loudly that the noise wore on her, made her want to cover her ears, but she didn’t do that, either. She just waited.

For what, she wasn’t certain. She should leave. She thought a hundred times about just walking away into the night, but putting thought into action proved impossible. No matter how much she wanted to leave, she was bound by an inertia she couldn’t seem to fight. All she could do was…sit.

Then Raintree stood, and, abruptly, she found herself standing, too, levered upward by some impulse she didn’t understand. She just knew that if he was standing, she would stand. She was too mentally exhausted to come up with any reason that made more sense.

His face was so black with soot that only the whites of his eyes showed, so she figured she must look pretty much the same. Great. That meant she didn’t have much chance of being able to slip away unnoticed. He took a cloth someone offered him and swiped it over his sooty face, which didn’t do much good. Soot was oily; anything other than soap just sort of moved it around.

Determination in his stride, he moved toward a small clump of policemen, three uniforms and two plainclothes. Vague alarm rose in Lorna. Was he going to turn her in? Without any proof? She desperately wanted to hang back, but, instead, she found herself docilely following him.

Why was she doing this? Why wasn’t she leaving? She struggled with the questions, trying to get her brain to function. He hadn’t even glanced in her direction; he wouldn’t have any idea where she’d gone if she dropped back now and sort of blended in with the crowd—as much as she could blend in anywhere, covered with soot the way she was. But others also showed the effects of the smoke; some of the casino employees, for instance, and the players. She probably could have slipped away, if she felt capable of making the effort.

Why was her brain so sluggish? On a very superficial level, her thought processes seemed to be normal, but below that was nothing but sludge. There was something important she should remember, something that briefly surfaced just long enough to cause a niggle of worry, then disappeared like a wisp of smoke. She frowned, trying to pull the memory out, but the effort only intensified the pain in her head, and she stopped.

Raintree approached the two plainclothes cops and introduced himself. Lorna tried to make herself inconspicuous, which might be a losing cause considering how she looked, plus the fact that she was standing only a few feet away. They all eyed her with the mixture of suspicion and curiosity cops just seemed to have. Her heart started pounding. What would she do if Raintree accused her of cheating? Run? Look at him as if he were an idiot? Maybe she was the idiot, standing there like a sacrificial lamb.

The image galvanized her as nothing else had. She would not be a willing victim. She tried to take a step away, but for some reason the action seemed beyond her. All she wanted to do was stay with him.

Stay with me.

The words resonated through her tired brain, making her head ache. Wearily, she rubbed her forehead, wondering where she’d heard the words and why they mattered.