“Emilia…where—”
Again he went unheard. Whether his words were lost in the chaos or damaged vocal cords made him inaudible, he wasn’t sure. All he could be sure about was the pain in his head and chest and the fact that Emilia still wasn’t accounted for. It seemed to him as if the fire department were more concerned with securing the property than clearing the manor itself. While to their credit they seemed to have cleared the stables, shed, and garage, Kasper could not understand why there were so many of them on their walkie-talkies and such—concerned about putting out the fire when Emilia was still not at his side.
Though the paramedics were only distracted for a moment, it was enough for Kasper to use his remaining strength to push himself from the ambulance. His wobbling legs and weak knees cooperated with him just long enough to take a few steps around the ambulance—giving him an ample view of his blazing house. How had the inferno erupted so quickly? Raging gusts of fire and smoke were impossible to differentiate from the kitchen, dining room, and foyer. Where did one begin room begin and another end? Had it climbed upstairs yet? Was Emilia unconscious in one of the bedrooms? Unable to pry open a window? The closer he came to the inferno, the more the smoke burned his eyes and the panic blurred his mind. He glanced upward, hopeful and frightened at the prospect of seeing her trapped on the balcony or roof, but the billows of smoke and his stinging eyes prevented even this.
Kasper could see that the windows of both the downstairs study living room were gone. Whether it was from the efforts of the firefighters or the blaze itself, Kasper remained unsure. Through the flames had partially gone down, Kasper was unable to clasp onto a window’s ledge due to two firefighters pulling him back and shouting various obscenities at him. Strangely he did not struggle as his mind wanted him too, but instead allowed them to pull him back, a new idea springing to his mind when he saw the unsupervised cellar door.
***
The first thing was the smoke. Through the untamed forest and down the long dirt road, Emilia could smell it easily through the clear night. Originally thinking it was some celebratory fireworks, she ignored it for the first minute or two, half expecting flames of purple and blue to be falling down from the direction of the closest residential area. Clearly holiday festivities were going on somewhere close-by. Judging by the wailing of sirens, Emilia guessed there had probably been alcohol or faulty new electronics involved, her natural empathy rising at the thought.
But when the smell of the smoke continued, grew stronger even, she dismounted Nefertiti and pointed her flashlight towards the main road. Knowing its beaming could never even begin to touch a broken down car or the nearest neighbor, she considered a more sinister prospect. Shivering from head to toe, she looked back in the direction of the house and clutched the flashlight closer to her chest.
Emilia had hoped to run into Kasper while riding Nefertiti yet had not done so. And if he had left by car, the odds were that she would have heard him drive away. Even as she remounted the horse, she told herself that maybe she had missed him and he was on the other side of the property. Or maybe he was bunking down in the wine cellar, getting a buzz because of their fight…
The flames were the second thing. Nefertiti saw them before Emilia did of course—or sensed them rather. Once the horse did, they spooked her so efficiently that the animal nearly threw Emilia off. Shaking and just as frightened as the horse, Emilia told herself to remain calm and climbed off, stepping back a few yards before tying Nefertiti to a steady looking tree as best she could before heading out on foot. For an instant, she saw small sparks rise above the tops of trees, instantly realizing the only building close enough to emit them was the manor.
Emilia stopped running only when her eyes caught sight of the police cars, parked in long lines along of the edge of the gravel path. A memory went through her mind, and she distinctly recalled the first time she drove up to Iram Manor—a nervous housekeeper, terrified of getting the wrong address and worried about finding time to sleep.
Now the possibilities seemed innately worse.
“Miss? Excuse me, Miss? You can’t be here!”
Emilia turned to see two police officers hardly older than herself jogging at her from a distance, her mind still unwilling to accept the sight of crime scene tape and reflective cones being welded out to prevent possible onlookers.
“I-I live here,” she stuttered.
One of the officers said something into his walkie-talkie while the other one asked her for identification. Normally, she would have been willing to oblige them, yet given the circumstances, and still unaware of Kasper’s whereabouts, she ran past them, losing them in the mud and running the remaining distance to her home.
She was aware of them chasing her, but her attention, like that of everyone else, was lost to the blaze taking place inside the manor. Like a child daft enough to stare at the sun, she stared at the flames whipping and dancing their way around the firemen’s attempts to tame them. Even over the cold of night, heat radiated from the building, trying to pull her and everyone around her into its burning abyss. Though she was cold, sweat prickled at her palms and forehead, while the intolerable scent of smoke coated her nostrils and throat enough to make her dizzy.
“Miss?”
A heavy hand on her shoulder reminded her she wasn’t alone. Almost an instant later the hand was shooed away by one wearing soft mittens, and a wave of guilt washed over Emilia. For all the things she was worried over, Mrs. Levkin hadn’t even crossed her mind.
“Mrs. Levkin!” Emilia gestured wildly to the house, her eyes searching for Kasper and seeing nothing. “What—?”
The older woman shook her head and embraced Emilia in an unwanted hug. “Thank heavens,” she said breathlessly. “Where in the world have you been?”
Emilia ignored the question and called out for Kasper, the sound of eager sirens and shouting firefighters drowning out the sound of her voice. In spite of her increasing panic, she could easily see the officers investigating the stables and the inside of one of the sheds, making it obvious Kasper wasn’t in either of those places.
“Emilia.” Mrs. Levkin stepped in front of Emilia and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her much harder than she would have thought her capable of. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”
“I—in the house—”
The older woman sighed and released her grip on Emilia. “Of course it is.”
Before Emilia could figure out which direction to begin her search, a loud clamoring of something adjacent from her alerted her attention to the fact that the quickly moving fire had spread to the second floor, the likely noise being the collapsing of part of the staircase.
“Oh my God.”
With it, the remainder of the police officers disappeared, and the hard sound of metal whipping through the sky only had a few necks craned upward. It may have taken Emilia three or four seconds to realize it was a helicopter flying entirely too low. She sprinted back to the awestruck Mrs. Levkin and demanded answers.
“Where’s Kasper?”
Startled, Mrs. Levkin looked over Emilia’s shoulder with wide eyes. “Isn’t he with you?”
“No!” she screamed. “Why would he—”
“I just got here,” Mrs. Levkin explained quickly. “The security company has me on the contact list. I assumed you two made up.”
Emilia didn’t understand this. Her eyes roamed the chaotic scene, easily illuminated by the flames and the lights of the fire trucks. There were police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and officials from both the state and security company.
There was no Kasper.
She called for him more than once, shrugging off Mrs. Levkin’s hand and inhaling deep despite the smoke and wind that tried to ravish her.
“Kasper!”
Too busy to contain her, Emilia went unnoticed by firefighters and several officers who attempted to control the water pressure and the horses. She ran to the side of the stables, her lungs involuntarily inhaling sm
oke from the exercise and panic. In the back of her mind she heard one officer shout something to the other about calling animal control. Desperate and overpowered by anxiety, she pulled at the sleeves of one and tried to get his attention
“Have you seen my husband? He’s tall, wears a mask…”
Without a word, the firefighter shook her off and gestured for a paramedic to come over.
Seeing what was about to happen, Emilia ran from the side of the stables, back to the center of the action where firefighters still struggled to control the blaze. The small bare shrubs just outside of the kitchen were long gone now—the heavy pressure hoses managing to control the heat before it caught the dead grass.
“Kasper!”
The third and final thing was the gurney.
Like a well chorographic ballet, the paramedics heard something from the speakers attached to equipment and ran in one direction simultaneously. Emilia knew even then that they had found what she had been looking for, that without even saying it the situation was dire.
She pushed and shoved with the best of them, swearing and calling out when she tripped and fell over herself. This brief pain, however, was nothing compared to what she felt when the group of firemen hustled out the gurney and an injured body covered in a blue tarp.
Instinctively she tried to go to him, but a familiar pair of arms held her shoulders.
“Let them do their job, dear,” Mrs. Levkin insisted. “Give them room to work!”
The hysteria threatened to take over, and she only caught a glimpse of oxygen masks and needles, of IV bags and disinfectant swabs. Sounds rang in and out of her ears, but she hardly heard any of it, staring continuously at Kasper’s soot covered clothing and reddened face. Voices asked her questions about allergies, age and health conditions, but they meant nothing to her—and she suspected she was just as useless as if she was not there at all.
Mrs. Levkin’s voice fielded the questions, and maybe if Emilia wasn’t so terrified, she would have known enough to be grateful. But as it was, the center of her focus was on the stillness of her husband, excluding the erratic movement of his chest. Emilia shook herself from Mrs. Levkin and knelt on the ground beside him. Even though he had just emerged from the flames, his skin felt oddly cold to her. Was this the icy grip of death?
From the corner of her eye, the manor still burned, and if Kasper died, Emilia knew she would have wanted to be right there inside of it.
Chapter 14
Before anything else there was the beeping. Incessant and overwhelming, it was difficult to pinpoint the exact source of the noise. He attempted to locate the source, but was ultimately unsuccessful. Still, despite this frustration, there was something else that plagued his mind, something lingering just on the edge of his memory…
Emilia!
Where was she? Was she safe? Had she been injured in the fire? Was she on a slab in the morgue? Within an instant, his mind was flooded with the possibilities but couldn’t decide the conclusions. Only now did he start to become aware of the darkness that invaded his vision, of the inky black he seemed to be submerged in. Terrified, he tried to call out, but failed. After several attempts, he tried a different tactic, and when his efforts to move also failed, Kasper considered that perhaps he had died in the fire.
Perhaps he was in hell.
The mere thought was hardly surprising as he had always expected to end up there. Still, in all of his imagination, he had never anticipated the feeling to be so frightening, so downright horrific. Ironically, the more he contemplated it, the more intense the wretched beeping became, sending his mind into a frenzy of pain.
As intense as the hurt was though, Kasper could not help but become aware of the sound of voices. Combined with the shuffling of feet, it was now obvious to him that he was not alone.
“Mr. Zafar? Can you hear me, sir?”
Once again, Kasper tried to blink, this time at least moderately successful. Blurbs of gray contorted his vision, and his eyeballs stung with the onset of oxygen and light. He closed his eyes and tried again, and this time the blurbs of gray took the vague shapes of human beings.
Unfortunately, none of them resembled Emilia.
Even with this terrible knowledge, Kasper did not completely lose hope. Frantic, he tried to pull away from the cold fingers on his arms. As though they were made of Velcro, every attempt to blink felt as though his eyelids were being peeled from the lashes. For every second he kept them open, his stinging eyes felt increasingly worse. Regardless, the blurry human shapes began to sharpen to the point that he could make out a woman in nursing scrubs and two men in white coats. He tried to look beyond them, but still could see no Emilia.
“Hello, Mr. Zafar,” one of the bodies said. “I understand you’re very lucky.”
This time, Kasper did not struggle at the feel of something tight and plastic being taken off his face—the odds of him being in hell were growing steadily less likely. “Can you tell me how you feel on a scale from one to ten?” one of the white coats asked. “Just use your fingers to communicate your pain level.”
Pain? What did his pain matter when Emilia’s fate went unanswered? With a dry and scorched throat, he found himself unable to ask. Maybe this would be hell then? Always wondering if his wife was alive or not and never knowing?
“Do not try to speak. You had to be intubated and your vocal cords are probably still swollen.” Aasif emerged from the corner slowly. Even with his disoriented eyesight, Kasper could clearly see the concern on his friend’s face.
Kasper shook his head despite the ache it caused him. One of the white coats was conversing with the nurse while the other white coat placed his attention to his beeper. Kasper would scream at them all if he could have, but the only alternative was to clench his fists and listen to the wretched beeping.
“Other than a lack of sleep, she is perfectly fine,” Aasif said, as if reading his mind. “If you get yourself worked up, they’ll sedate you”
No, Kasper thought. None of that sounded right at all. If Emilia was all right, if she was safe, sound, and unharmed, then why wasn’t she with him?
“Em—” Sure enough, his effort to speak resulted in an immense amount of pain. He shuddered and closed his eyes, failing to subdue the haze of red that crashed inside his eyes.
Impatient, the remaining white coat put down his clipboard and spoke louder. “Sir, are you in any pain?”
Of course he was. Without Emilia he would always be in pain.
The thought alone inspired him to try to sit up. Instantly, he realized that more than an IV kept him tethered. He blinked hard and forced himself to reach for the plastic device attached to his face. Thick plastic straps assured it was fastened far beyond his reach, and he cursed to himself over and over.
“It’s an oxygen mask. Please don’t attempt to remove it.” The white coat opened his mouth to say more, but the sound of an alarm going off over the intercom pulled him and the nurse away. Kasper was immediately grateful to whoever it was dying down the hall, the mere absence of two strangers had him feeling absurdly better.
“You really need to calm down.” Aasif sighed and pulled a chair to Kasper’s bedside. “The fire marshal hasn’t concluded his report yet, but he and his team seem quite sure the fire is the result of arson. Needless to say, every precaution has been arranged.”
Kasper squirmed with discomfort and raised his heavy hands closer to his face. They were swollen but otherwise fine. A large thermal blanket covered his body as far as his sight would allow, but from what he could tell, he only had some mild first-degree burns on his arms and neck. The most selfish parts of him wanted to sigh in relief, but the majority of him still begged for answers.
“Where…she?” he managed to say.
Aasif sank into the chair and smiled freely. “Mrs. Levkin nearly dragged her out of here about an hour ago. It was her last attempt before slipping some Ambien into her tea and making her go to the hotel for a proper sleep.” The attorney laughed lightly to
himself before yawning casually. “Apparently Emilia only agreed to go for a respectable shower and change of clothing, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Mrs. Levkin slipped her something anyway.”
It sounded logical enough, but without definitive proof, without her hand in his, Kasper remained unsure. In a powerless body, he was forced to try and believe the answer.
Aasif continued talking. “I have already been in communication with the insurance company and the police. Iram is still technically a crime scene, but as long as the police are present they are allowing Mr. Rivas to look for anything salvageable.”
Kasper rolled his eyes. “Don’t. Care.”
“I must say, you are far more pleasant to be around when you are prevented from speaking.” Aasif laughed lightly before continuing with his explanation. Kasper closed his eyes, hoping that Aasif would think he was trying to absorb it all. But in reality, Kasper lacked the ability to think or want anything else but Emilia.
Surprisingly, the world faded away easily, tinted by dreams of Emilia and images he couldn’t quite reach. His body was absent from the rest of him, his limbs stuck beneath a sea of something dark and deep. Every now and then Kasper would try to make them cooperate, but failed time and time again. Amazingly, after all his attempts, the only thing that finally did get through was the sound of her voice.
“They told me you ran into the fire.”
Emilia! She was alive and well, but more than that, she was right there with him, the smell of her perfume and the soft tone of her voice unmistakable. Kasper implored his limbs and senses to work overtime, but like so many other times in his life, his body failed him.
“You’re such an idiot,” she said, sniffing. “Don’t you know you could have died? The doctors say you should be all right, but I—I won’t be able to believe it until you wake up and talk to me. Oh, Kasper, I’m so sorry. I promise I’ll never buy another Christmas tree again, I’ll curse poinsettias until the day I die, just be okay. Please?”
Adapting Desires (Endangered Heart Series Book 3) Page 15
