Searching for Love

by Christine Zolendz

  Then it hit me, the smell of something burning.

  I whirled to the direction of the hallway where billows of white smoke made it impossible to see past the bathroom. “Cameron, let’s go,” I said, waving my arms for him to come toward me.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” the woman growled. I spun around to wisps of smoke and thinning air, circling around her, as she held her arms straight out at me and pointed the barrel of a gun in front of my face.

  My hand immediately went for my firearm, but my hands came away empty. I didn’t have it on. I had nothing to defend Cameron or myself with.

  “Who are you?” I asked, holding my hands up at my sides.

  “You’ve been fucking my husband for months. Take a guess.”

  A wave of horror and nausea rolled through the pit of my stomach with her words. Through the building smoke, I took in her face and trembling hands, and the horrible realization that she was pointing a Beretta Panther at me.

  The same type of gun that was used in the murder of two of my cadets.

  “You’re Captain Anderson’s wife,” I stated, my voice thick with relief.

  This had nothing to do with Ryan, she didn’t have anything to do with Ryan.

  I swallowed back the lump of emotion that was bubbling in my throat, because I really liked him. I really did. There was nothing to process, nothing. I wanted him to love me. I didn’t want to find out he was anything like Harris. That’s a great thing to figure out a few minutes before I was about to get killed.

  She stepped to the side and began to circle around me. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done to my family?” she asked, gesturing the gun at me as she spoke.

  Cameron jumped up to his feet, screeching out inaudible sounds as he covered his ears. His body flailed at the sight of the smoke, and he was in full-blown, breakdown mode. “Cameron,” I tried to call his name as calmly as I could, waving him away. “Cameron, honey. Go out to the car.”

  He started slapping his chest, pounding it over and over again. Behind him, thin ropes of fire chewed through the hallway runner, blackening and charring the wooden slats beneath. A smoky haze quickly thickened through the room and sparks of drifting ash swirled in flames in the air.

  I looked at her in horror. “This has nothing to do with him. Let him out of here.” Paint bubbled and blackened along the walls. The room was getting hotter and hotter. My skin tingled, and my throat felt parched.

  “Fuck you and what you want. Whore,” she laughed, bitterly.

  “It’s been you following me and taking pictures?” Could I make her talk? Could I buy Cameron some time?

  “Everyone needed to see what a whore you are,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes and indexing the front site of her gun on me.

  Somebody taught this woman to shoot.

  A flash of sparks shot out across the ceiling in the hallway as the light exploded, shooting glass and flames around us. Cameron screamed and crouched near the corner, thudding his head against the wall.

  I don’t want him there. I don’t want him inside the apartment, but at least he was out of the path of bullets.

  “Just put the gun down, and we can talk about this,” I said, knowing full well it was only a small amount of seconds before she was going to pull that trigger. The thought of those being my last moments made my heart explode fire through my chest and I struggled to breathe. “I never knew he was married,” I said, breathlessly.

  A loud, sudden crash burst through the apartment as the ceiling in the hallway came collapsing to the floor. Smoke instantly filled up the living room, blinding me. I scrambled for the kitchen. My arms were out straight, feeling for the table and for my purse—where I had my off-duty firearm. The wood of the table was warping, and the frame of the door turned into giant pillars of flame that spread across the kitchen curtains in a rippling sheet of fire.

  Gasping for breath, I crawled along the floor back inside toward the corner. I could still hear Cameron screaming. I needed to get him outside. I needed to get him somewhere safe. “Cameron?” I coughed and wheezed through the haze. I yanked at his shirt and pulled it up over his mouth. “Keep this over your mouth and come with me.” In the middle of the room, something dripped and hissed into a puddle of melted liquid, and the walls around us creaked and groaned. The blaze engulfed us.

  His eyes widened at me, yet I didn’t know if he was registering what was really happening or how to deal with it. It didn’t matter. I didn’t have time to think it all out. I needed to get him to the door. He wrapped his arms over his head and continued screaming as I pulled him along the wall.

  The dark shadow of another person flashed in front of us, the floorboards moaned and screamed out. Then, an earsplitting explosion slammed me backward, my ears instantly muted and ringing. There was a split-second before I registered it as a gunshot and felt the burning rip of agony as I buckled to my knees unable to control my body or the pain that had sliced right through me.

  Behind my head, a lamp shattered and above me, flames devoured the ceiling. Next to me, Cameron hunkered down, his arms clinging to one of my legs. Pain and heat radiated through my body. I was too shocked to pinpoint where it was all coming from.

  I bit back the dizziness and pain, clambering desperately on my hands and knees, dragging Cameron toward the window. The room was consumed with fire, the heat unrelenting. My lungs twisted so tightly that they couldn’t take any more breaths. It was all happening too fast. I pushed Cameron toward the window and lifted the hot glass, clawing my fists and nails at the screen until I broke through. Above us, the rod that held the blinds crumpled and crashed down around us.

  I shoved his head out the window just as another shot rang out and ripped another white-hot trail of agony over every inch of my skin. My head slammed against the floor, but I raised my gun and aimed at the darkening shadow that loomed over me.

  Over the crackle of flames, sirens wailed in the distance. But I knew they wouldn’t get there in time. The only thing that was going in circles in my mind was that Cameron was going to fall out the window and get hurt. I was afraid for him. I had to keep him safe.

  And Ryan.

  I really wanted to see what happened with us. What kind of a life we could make together—if we only had a fighting chance? I didn’t want our little love story to end like this. Even in my last moments, it was always about love for me—I was always searching it out, wanting to find that special something I felt like I’d been missing my entire life.

  I held Cameron’s leg as he hung half way out of the window, but I felt my grip become less and less tight. A sharp, chemical odor burned my nose and throat, gagging me, until I tasted the saltiness of my own blood. Then, as if the ocean had risen up around my body, I felt the sensation of being swept under water in an uncontrollable riptide. Warm thick darkness pulled me under, and everything just ended. I was weightless and empty.

  And the last thought I had was, Dying isn’t so bad.

  It just sucks doing it alone.

  Chapter 20

  Ryan

  I was left staring at a puzzle of melted metal and broken glass, listening to the soft dripping of a fire hose and the gentle sigh of steam. It had started to snow at some point during the chaos, and a dusting of fine white covered the charred remains of everything, and it still spiraled down in swirls of soft starlight.

  Paramedics surrounded a gurney, rushing and yanking it up into an ambulance. Its white sheet blackened with soot and soaked with blood. An oxygen mask was pressed to her face, and her eyelids fluttered, but the blood—there was just too much blood.

  The sight so heavy in my heart, it pulled me to the ground.

  My brother sat on the back edge of an ambulance, playing with the oxygen mask he was supposed to be wearing over his mouth, watching them work on Brooke. I’d never seen him focus on something for so long.

  He helped me save her life.

  I’m not sure he even realized it.

  He pulled her through the win
dow and carried her across the roof and onto the fire escape until I could reach her. His shirt was covered in her blood, deep-dark spots that made my heart ache. He was afraid on the ladder and kept trying to wake her up to get her to climb down. I carried her down, and the paramedics met me on the ground, head-to-toe covered in blood.

  She hadn’t woken up.

  She was limp and lifeless in my arms.

  But her eyes fluttered.

  “She lost too much blood,” Dean choked out next to me. On the asphalt in front of us, pieces of glistening glass lay scattered like stars across the sky. Our cars idled in the middle of the street at angles, abandoned in the rush to help. Dean’s door was left open and the bing, bing, bing of the alarm bleated through my brain.

  “Get in your car, let’s go,” I grunted, climbing to my feet.

  Stunned, he looked up at me.

  “She’s going to need blood. Let’s give it to her,” I said, holding out a hand to help him up. My voice sounded calm, yet I was anything but. I didn’t want to lose her, not when we just got started.

  Not now—not this way.

  Dean nodded, dumbly; eyes red with tears.

  “Can you drive?” I asked, watching the chaos in back of the ambulance. Brooke was too still.

  “What?” he asked, his gaze fastened to the same place I was looking. “Yeah. Drive. I can drive,” he said, grabbing onto my hand and pulling himself up to his feet. Liv climbed in the ambulance with Brooke, and the doors abruptly closed. Its sirens blared and honked as it raced down the street.

  Dean was inside his car instantly, pulling away without a seatbelt on, tires squealing.

  “You coming with us?” one of the paramedics asked, strapping Cameron into gray cushion of the ambulance. “You’re his brother, right?”

  “Yeah, I’m coming. Same hospital as her, right?” I pointed to the red and blue lights fading into the distance.

  “Yeah, Jamaica Hospital. It’s the best place around for gunshot wounds.”

  I choked back a curse, and climbed in to sit next to Cameron. The inside felt cold—sterile, and smelled of chemicals and cleaning fluids. I slid in across from Cameron, his face pale and confused.

  Before I could even strap myself in, the ambulance lurched into the streets, horns blazing. The ride was bumpy, and Cameron flopped all around the back, touching every piece of equipment he could reach with his fingertips.

  When we finally rolled up to the emergency room, the paramedics took their time getting Cameron out. Ahead of us, behind the automatic sliding doors I could see the pandemonium Brooke left in her wake, down to the long red trail of blood that was tracked in from the wheels of the gurney.

  The waiting room was full, patients crammed into seats with varying degrees of injuries or sicknesses, leaning on someone or something for support. By the front desk, Dean paced back and forth as Liv sat with a nurse, signing some papers. My eyes kept lifting toward the hallway that they took Brooke down, waiting for some asshole in a white coat to tell me nothing more could be done. The thought was sickening, and I leaned back against the wall and doubled over in pain.

  In one corner, someone gagged and vomited, the smell hit me hard, making my eyes water. Cameron sunk down on the floor beside me, covering his mouth with his hands and whined.

  “I know buddy, it stinks in here.” I rubbed his back, trying to comfort him.

  “Brooke,” he said, in his fuddled way.

  “They’re going to try to help her, okay? They’re trying to make her better,” I said, hoarsely.

  A symphony of questions and chaos slammed through the door as a sea of blue uniforms rushed inside. My team was there, coming at Dean and me with more questions than we had answers to. We could hardly talk. Brooke had been shot. That’s pretty much all we knew. Anderson’s wife was on the brink of death. Brooke aimed her gun at center mass like she was trained to. It would be a miracle if the woman lived. And my apartment was toast. That sick bitch poured gasoline over everything and lit it up.

  Liv was a godsend, heading everybody off while Dean and I made our way into the back rooms as a group of surgeons called us in. Okay, they really just called in Dean. But, I followed right behind him, terror flooding through me, ready to save her myself if I had to. Nobody tried to stop me.

  “…prepping her for surgery, immediately…”

  I held my breath, trying to listen to the words they were saying, but I couldn’t. Leaning against the wall and looking down the hallway, I could see her. Nurses and doctors moved around her urgently, attaching her to tubes and monitors and racing around the room, yelling out the things she needed.

  “…so much space in the abdomen for blood to pool, it’s extremely difficult to identify how bad the bleeding is…”

  My throat closed up with fear. I didn’t know where she was hit or how many times, and all the doctors we’re doing were speaking to us in tongues. Dean was next to me nodding.

  They wouldn’t let us ask any questions. There was no time. Brooke had lost too much blood and was in critical condition. We were asked to follow another nurse into a small surgical waiting area. “Have a seat. It might be a while until we could give you some updates. There’s a coffee and snack machine in the corner.”

  So we waited, sitting on those uncomfortable wooden chairs, not being able to do anything.

  Eventually, I bounced back and forth between my brother getting checked out in the ER and waiting for Brooke to come out of surgery.

  We gave blood.

  We drank coffee.

  Then, when she was rolled out of surgery and into a recovery room, I crawled up in the seat next to her and watched her breathing, steady and strong, until my eyes could stay open no more.

  Later on when the sun was just breaking over the horizon, I heard a small gasp, and my eyes snapped open. Brooke coughed and let out a small pain-filled moan. Her mouth moved, her lips dry and chapped, but no sound comes out.

  “You want to tell me you love me, right?” I said bolting out of the seat I’d fallen asleep in. Carefully, I leaned my weight on the edge of the hospital bed. “Can’t live without me? Processing time is over?” I smiled down at her and tucked a loose strand of hair off her forehead. It was still red with blood.

  “Ass…hole.” That’s what I think she mouthed.

  She lifted her hand, fingers slightly trembling, and reached out to me.

  “But an asshole you might be falling in love with, right?” I said, smiling.

  “I never had a choice, did I?” she struggled with the words, which turned right into yelps of pain.

  I squeezed her hand softly, “Rest. Get better and heal. We have the rest of our lives to continue this conversation.”

  “You’re right though,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “I am falling in love you.”

  “I love you too, Brooke.” I’m not sure she heard the words though; it looked like she drifted back under the haze of pain medication and sleep.

  I stretched and yawned, stiff from sitting on the chair beside her for so long. My feet were numb, my legs asleep. I dragged them out into the hallway, wondering who else was around and if anything new happened. After Brooke got out of surgery, I stayed by her side in recovery. I wasn’t supposed to, but I needed to watch over her and make sure nothing else—nobody else—hurt her. In the hallway, wrapped in each other’s arms, Dean and Liv slept on a pair of uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs. Across from them, sat Dean and Brooke’s parents. Their mother was dozing off, but their father’s eyes were focused straight ahead, red and swollen.

  He stood up as soon as he saw me. “Detective Cage?” he asked, holding out his hand. “I’m Joseph Fury, Brooke and Dean’s father.”

  I took it with a firm grip. “Hello, sir. Please, call me Ryan.”

  “You saved my daughter’s life.”

  “Not really, Sir. My brother was the one who carried her out of the house. I just helped him get her off the fire escape.” My brother was in his own hospital bed, sleeping o
ff his smoke inhalation and all bandaged up with his tiny cuts and bruises.

  “Humble.”

  “That’s something I’ve never heard said to describe me,” I laughed.

  “And you love my daughter?”

  “You heard?”

  He nodded his head and smiled.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  Dean’s eyes opened as we spoke, and he stretched out his legs and detangled himself from Liv. He cleared his throat and stood up. “Hey,” he greeted me.

  “Hello, future brother-in-law,” I said with a smirk.

  “I’m going to ignore that,” he grit out.

  “Yeah, you do that. Did you hear anything else?” I asked.

  His father patted me on the back and slipped quietly inside Brooke’s room, “I’ll leave you both to talk.”

  Dean nodded quickly at his father. “Yeah. Anderson is suspended pending investigation. There’s been some pretty heavy allegations put against him, not only by Brooke, but from at least seven other women who work or have worked closely with him.” He smiled wide, like he was saving something even better.

  “What else?” I asked, getting excited seeing his expression.

  “He got taken out of the command in handcuffs. It was his gun that was used in the crime against the cadets.”

  “Where is the wife?” I asked, low.

  “Still in ICU. It’s touch and go. They’re hoping she makes it through the night. But if she does, she’s going away for a long, long time.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I growled.

  “Your brother did good, real good. We should give him an award for pulling her out of that building,” Dean said, softly.

  “Yeah, he was amazing,” I agreed, proudly.

  “And you, too. Thank you.”

  “What? What did you say?” I mocked not being able to hear him. “It’s totally okay with you if I date your sister? Great, thanks for welcoming me into the family.”

  “I said thank you, asshole.”

  “Yeah, well I’m kind of in love with your sister.”