by JA Huss
And I try to imagine her old, and happy, and over me. Maybe moved on with a new guy who can give her what she deserves. Someone who’ll love her the way I wanted to. And I’ll just become a footnote. A long-forgotten someone that she knew for a little while and thought was kind of OK. Someone she saved. Someone she healed. Someone to whom she brought peace.
And I can see that life for her. I see it in my mind as clearly as I see the blood I’m starting to cough up. And I know it’s real. I know she’s going to be all right. She’ll be safe. She’ll be saved. And if my life is the cost for that, so be it. I’m so, so, so very honored to be able to pay it.
Thank you, angel. Thank you for everything. I’m sorry it all worked out this way. But it’s OK. I love you.
I’ll see you again.
And that’s when the explosion happens.
It’s like a fireball exploding from somewhere deep inside the suddenly molten earth. It puts a hard stop to everything else happening right now. It blows both me and Logan back about ten feet. The shooters too. It roils up and swoops over us like the devil himself is spitting at us in anger and frustration. Like he’s pissed that we’re disturbing his rest.
Maybe he’s just trying to wait for Santa too.
The flames are all around us in both great, sweeping waves, and in tiny, standalone puddles.
What. The. Fuck. Just. Happened?
Doesn’t really matter, as two of the shooters have turned and started to run back into the house/mansion/hotel/whatever-the-hell but are confronted by billowing smoke. Huh. I guess Maddie’s little decoy fire must have gotten out of control in there. Shooter one and shooter two break left and take off around the side of the property and go running for the beach.
The other shooters are burning alive.
The flames catch them, either by the rapid way it’s creasing a path along the gas-soaked concrete or in tiny fireballs that continue to spark and shower down all around us. I can’t see through the fire in front of me. I can’t tell if Maddie is OK. I can’t tell if Ricky is either, but I care a fuckton less about that.
I can see that Carlos is still unconscious, lying right in the pathway of the spreading inferno. Logan is lying next to me where we were blown back and it looks like he’s trying to stand up. I am too. The difference is that his bat is resting next to me now, and I can take it up and use it as a staff to help me get to my feet. So I do.
And, look, it’s not cool, and it’s not classy, and I’m not super proud of it, but I bring it down hard one time on Logan’s stomach and he whines like the little twat-blossom he is. And again, not proud or dignified, but it feels fucking good.
What does not feel fucking good is everything inside my own body right now. But. Carlos is still there. And… goddamn it. I gotta fucking get him up before he’s caught by this still-baffling eruption that keeps growing in our direction.
I race over to get hands on him, but as I do, another eruption of fire sends me back. Where the fuck is this coming from? I go in again and manage to get my hands on his wrists. The screaming of the other guys who are being burned up is super distracting. I know it’ll stop in a second, but for now it’s making it hard to focus.
I turn my head for the briefest of seconds and see Logan, now unconscious, and realize that I’m probably not going to be able to get them both. It’s wild. The fire has spread in almost like a semi-circle around us. A literal ring of fire. Like the Johnny Cash song. I fell in to a burning ring of fire. I went down, down, down, and the flames went higher. Only less fun and without Johnny’s sonorous baritone to bring it along.
Nobody could get to us if they tried, and I don’t see any way out of this except back towards the ocean, where I know for a fact guys with guns have just skedaddled, or through the burnin’ fuckin’ ring of fire.
And then I realize...
This is like my DREAM. THE DREAM.
In that dream, I had to run through fire and burning flesh to reach my angel. But also, of course, in that dream, she blamed me for everything bad that had happened. Are Maddie and I through that yet? If I run through this, are we through with that? The suffering and the pain? Could this be the last trial for us?
Shit, man. Let’s fuckin’ find out.
I eeny-meeny-miny-moe it to decide if I’m gonna try and drag Carlos or Logan out with me. Ultimately Carlos wins. Which is fair. Carlos is who Ricky wants to take down. Logan is just a dipshit I want to punch in the dick over and over. So I go in one last time and reach for Carlos. I get him, drag him up, and—with an unreal amount of physical discomfort—I sling him over my shoulders and see if I can find even a sliver of something that looks like a way of egress through the flames.
And I really wish I hadn’t taken that extra second to try and figure it out, because in that moment of hesitation… Another explosion. I have no idea where this one emanates from, but it’s a fucking doozy. It sends me back on my ass and causes me to drop the shit out of Carlos.
I look up at the clear, starlit sky and begin howling with laughter. Yeah. It’s weird. I know. But it’s what I do. And then I look over and see that Carlos is now engulfed in fire. He’s still out cold, so he doesn’t know it, and I’m glad of that. Getting burned alive is… Well, there’s no one on the planet who doesn’t have an idea of how horrifying that is. Until you’ve seen it, there’s no way to even begin to really understand, but it’s… it’s bad.
Am I sad that Carlos is leaving this mortal coil right now? Nah. Not really. Just being real with myself. He was a bad dude and the world will be a better place without him. Plus, he repeatedly terrified and hurt the woman I love. So yeah. Fuck him.
But am I glad he’s being spared a painful death? Yeah. I suppose I am. Because… Shit. I guess because there’s enough suffering in the world. I dunno. I ain’t no philosopher. I’m just me. But these are the thoughts I’m thinking as I watch him turn to ash.
Logan on the other hand… Yeah, I wouldn’t mind sticking around and watching that cocksucker get barbecued. But I have to see if Maddie is still whole on the other side of this… flame tsunami. Or whatever the fuck it is. I’m not thinking right and out of words.
Oh. And also I just realized that my shirt is on fire. So I need to get the fuck out of here.
There is no way around it I can see except to just go straight through. I don’t know how deep the wall is because I can’t see past it, and I don’t know if by running straight ahead, I’m just guaranteeing myself a grisly fucking end. But if Maddie is there, on the other side, then it’ll be worth it. Because I don’t know what waits for us down the line either, but I know the only way to find out about that is also by just running headlong into it. Shit. That worldview got me this far.
Whatever, motherfucker! You’re on fire! Make moves!
OK. On three. One. Two. Oh, fuck it. Go!
And forward into an unknown fate, I flamingly charge.
“... Here.” That’s Ricky. He’s holding a bottle of water and a Vicodin. I take the water. I wave off the Vicodin. “You’re gonna want something for the pain.”
“You work for the DEA and you’re giving me a Vicodin?”
“It’s not illegal.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you guys should take a look at that. And anyway, I’m gonna try and lay off the scripts for a while and see how I do.”
“OK,” he says. “But you should probably get x-rays when you get home.”
“X-rays, sex-rays,” I say. Which doesn’t make sense but makes Maddie smile.
“We’ll be at McCarran pretty soon. If you guys wanna try and sleep…”
I wave that off too. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” There are so many different ways everybody could respond to that that nobody says anything. “How much trouble are you in?” I ask him.
Ricky shakes his head, takes a sip of his own water. “Dunno. Brought in an untrained civilian to a deep-cover op, burned down the estate of our target while simultaneously allowing him to suffer a fatal injury, thereby totally sandbagging
years of work and millions and millions of taxpayer dollars? If I was a Congressman, I’d say I’d get off scot-free, but I’m just the guy putting his life on the line every day, so… probably pretty fucked. We’ll find out.” He smiles. He should smile more. It’s nice.
“Well. Sorry,” I say.
“It’s all good,” he says back. He’s wrong. It’s nowhere near all good. But I get it.
Emily, Ricky’s little sorority cohort, comes walking down the aisle of the Cessna. “Agent Martinez, the assistant director is on the phone for you.”
Ricky raises his eyebrows at me. “Yep. Guess we’ll find out,” he sort of sings, and then heads to the front of the plane to take his call. As he passes by Emily, their fingers touch. I think. Pretty sure. Not a hundred percent, but. Whatever. That’s them.
“You doing OK?” That’s Emily asking Maddie.
Maddie nods. Emily gives her a small grin, gives me one, and heads toward the cockpit herself. Maddie and I are facing each other. I’ve taken a few chartered flights. The facing each other thing is like my favorite part. I dunno why. Feels old-timey. Like you’re on the Orient Express or something. Except you’re in the sky. And usually there isn’t some mysterious murder to solve. Usually.
Maddie’s sitting back, looking out the window. It’s still dark out. It won’t be light for a couple more hours, so she’s basically only seeing her reflection. I can’t blame her. If I saw that in the mirror, looking back at me, I’d look at it all the time.
“Whatcha thinking about?” I ask.
She turns her head to me. Leans in. Takes my hand in hers. Looks at our intertwined fingers. Smiles. “Nothin’.” she says.
She’s still wearing my watch. Nadir’s watch. “What time is it?” I ask.
She glances at it. “I dunno,” she says. “It stopped.”
“Really?” I look at it. She’s right. It did. It seems like it stopped almost exactly three hours ago. Would have been right around the time I was trying to save Carlos. I think.
Honestly, I’m not sure. I decide not to think about it too much.
Instead, I just hold her hand in mine and decide that the only thing I’m going to think about is this moment. This one.
Right here.
Right now.
In the present.
Chapter Thirty - Maddie
What I saw when he came charging through that curtain of flame was impossible. It was terrifying. It was in competition to become the worst moment of my life.
Because there was simply no way he could survive. The fire was too out of control. The burning wall too thick to break through. The wrath of the inferno too savage to overcome.
But he did. He did break through. He did overcome.
He just ripped off the burning shirt he was wearing, smacked it on his legs to put it out, ran over to me, and said, “Hi.”
Tyler fuckin’ Morgan...
And so, I don’t know how to tell him that what I’m thinking about now is that… I prayed for him. Not to any god or spirit or whatever, but for him. For him and me. For us. And that it may just have worked.
I don’t tell him because I don’t know if I believe it myself. It’s too out there to be believed. If I tell him that I was imagining us old and together and still in love, and… Nope. Not gonna say it. It’s weird. It’s crazy. And we’ve had enough weird and crazy, so I’m just gonna let this shit sit for now. I do have a question, though…
“Ty?”
“Yeah, babe?”
“That explosion. The fire.”
“Yeah?”
“What was that?”
He takes a sip of his water and nods his head back and forth. He winces a bit. I don’t give a shit whether he wants it or not, he’s getting fucking x-rays. “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah…”
“Tyler?”
“Yeah, I dunno. I’ve been trying to figure it out. I dunno.”
“Well, we were standing on top of that whole fueling thing. Maybe one of the bullets started a—”
He shakes his head. “Nope. C’mon, babe. You’ve never seen Mythbusters?”
“No. What’s that?”
“Show on TV. Fuckin’ awesome. But no. That’s bullshit. Movies and shit when something gets blown up by getting shot? No way. There’s oxygen, and surface area, and heat diffusion and… No. Not possible.”
“K. So what caused that?”
“I have no earthly idea. I’ve been studying this shit my whole life and I was thinking maybe the fire you started inside might have somehow done something to a fuel line that, in turn, was connected to the fuel reserves under the filling station, but… I dunno. None of it makes sense. Sure did blow the fuck up, though.”
“Yeah. Sure did.” I look back out the window to reflect on this. But I find that I can’t. “And you saw Carlos die?” He nods. “Was it—?”
“Don’t, babe,” he interrupts. “It’s… Don’t. He’s gone. And, no, honestly, it wasn’t that bad. I can say with absolute confidence that he didn’t feel it. K?”
I nod absently. Then, “Logan?”
Tyler sighs. “Uh, I didn’t see him… go. But he was unconscious, and then it was all spreading his way, and… I dunno what to tell you, Mads. I was on fire and shit. I wasn’t at my clearest level of thinking. But the point is, even if he somehow survived—which there’s no way he did—it’s done. This chapter of your life is over. K? I promise.”
I nod, a bit less than certain. He leans forward and takes my hands again, wincing the whole time.
“You’re getting a goddamned x-ray.”
“OK, whatever, fine. Just listen.” He looks into my eyes and holds my gaze. “We are going to leave the past in the past. OK? And I mean all of it. New Year’s is less than a week away, yeah? OK, so I’m giving us exactly six days to take care of any unresolved bullshit that we need to take care of so that we can start the new year fresh and ready for whatever’s next.”
“Oh. You’re giving us six days. Like, that’s what you’re doing. Is that, like, an order, or…?”
“Don’t be a dick.” He slaps at my knee. “You know what I mean. There’s some shit I gotta handle and I wanna get it out of the way and be done, and if you can too, then… super. But hey, look, if you wanna keep being kinda miserable, be my guest. It’s a good look on you.”
I grin. Fucker. Then I reach up and tug at his beard. “This? Is this one of the things we’re putting behind us, because I would be more than happy to see this shit gone.”
“What? Are you crazy? I can’t shave that! I’m like Samson. My strength is in my beard.”
“Yeah, well then I may just have to Delilah the shit out of you while you sleep.”
“Damn. You is a cold woman.”
I laugh, lean forward, pressing onto his knees to support myself, and give him a long, well-earned kiss on his silly mouth. Then I sit back and look out the window again. I start giggling a little. I can’t help it.
“What? What is it?” he asks.
And now my giggle turns into a chuckle, and my chuckle into a laugh, and before I know it, I’m full-on belly-laughing and snorting. Which makes him laugh too.
“Ow, ow,” he says, laughing and holding his ribs. “Stop. It hurts. What are you laughing at?”
I let the laughter slow to a snicker again, breathe in, let it out, take a long look at him and say, “I dunno. I was just thinking… if this was Christmas… I can’t wait to see what fresh hell New Year’s Eve is gonna bring.”
As it leaves my lips, we both crack up all over again. And as Tyler grabs at his side and begs me to stop making him laugh, I smile a big smile, glance out the window one more time, and quietly whisper to whatever mysterious force controls the universe...
“You know I’m only joking... Right...?”
GET THE LAST BOOK, Passion Rising, HERE
END OF BOOK SHIT
Let’s talk about hope for a second.
I once had someone tell me that it seemed cruel to encourage patients with severe spinal injuri
es (paraplegics, notably) to believe that they could walk again. This turned into a broader conversation about chronic illness, terminal illness, and the like. The position being offered to me was that to encourage someone with virtually zero odds of recovery from injury or malady to believe that they could return to full form was just giving them false hope.
(For the purposes of what I’m talking about here, I’ll choose to overlook the notion that “recovery” is, in and of itself, a fallacy – moments, once past, cannot be recovered; nor can one retrieve one’s health, youth, or previous state of mind. Whatever form one currently occupies is one’s full form, and to resist the given circumstances of a state of being is to exist in conflict with that state, which further reinforces individual suffering. But I digress...)
Here was my argument in return: All hope is false hope. So why not just choose to believe?
By which I mean that until something is proven true or “happens,” it isn’t real. So, relative to the now, there is no likely future. It simply doesn’t exist. I mean, I hope I get to the end of this sentence, but there are no guarantees. (Oh, good. I did get to the end of it. Nice. I’ll keep going then...) And so, given that lack of even the vaguest possibility that we can know what’s going to happen as time continues passing, why not just choose to believe that the future can be the thing you want it to be? Because if you can grasp hold of that belief, you stand a chance of making the now a little more tolerable.
Here’s where it gets tricky: You also have to let go of the now.
You have to see this moment as just an ephemeral blink of the universe’s eye that has absolutely nothing to do with you, not take whatever is happening personally, and move on to whatever the next moment is that also has nothing to do with you. And this goes both ways. If you are sad now, but have been happy before, there is a reasonable chance that you will find cause to become happy once again. Obviously, the inverse is also true. Joy and suffering are by-products of the thoughts we think. And the thoughts we think are just tools we use. If the tools you are using are not accomplishing the job you want them to accomplish, you may want to investigate getting new tools.
