Dark Love (The Two Sides of Me Book 3) (41 page)

“Auntie Mia” Tanner pulls on my sleeve and I smile down patiently at his angelic face.

“Yea buddy?” He slips his chubby hand in mine pulling me down until I can hear him better.

“I smell smoke, do you smell it?” It takes me a second but yes, yes I do smell smoke and it’s becoming stronger. I smelled it a few minutes ago but attributed it to the candles on the altar that were blown out but no, this is more.

“Gabby, smell that?” Both of us are alert looking around now trying to find the source of the smoke smell. Sage has been listening to our conversation and our anxiety is contagious.

“We have to get the kids out of here, Mia, this place is filling up with smoke something must be on fire!” I look toward the door where the guys are already outside with the casket and the urgency to move somewhere, anywhere is overwhelming. There is no clear path, the aisle is clogged with bodies all going in the same direction that we want to go. Other people are realizing something is wrong too and begin to push those in front of them to escape. I turn to see if we might be able to get out through the doors on either side of the altar. Smoke is rolling from both of them. The fire has been set on purpose, blocking us in, trapping us between flames and a mob of frantic people.

My family stands around me in full panic mode and I know I need to get my shit together and use the survival skills I’ve learned being a nurse.

“Ok listen to me. We have to keep calm, get down low where the oxygen is.” I push the kids to the floor, this fucking place is as old as time and burning hot and fast.

“Watch the kids!” I tell Sage and my Mom

“Come with me, Gabby.” I grab her hand and start peeling off my sweater and motion for her to do the same, she’s looking at me with question in her eyes but follows along anyway. The smoke is thicker and blacker on the altar but the huge bowl of holy water is off to one side and that’s where I’m headed. We cover our mouths coughing and choking when we reach the solid granite bowl and I dunk our sweaters into the water and pass her one of the sopping wet garments. I point to the floor and we both get down as close as we can where the air is clear and work our way back to the kids, Sage and Mom.

“Here, stay close together and hold this against your mouths.” I hand one sweater over to the kids who are crouching down at the end of a pew three or four rows closer to the exit, the crowd is moving just not fast enough. Each row files out from the sides congesting the center aisle more. Some younger people have opted to hop over the seats but most are too old, the church is big and the aisle is long and the pews extend all the way to the walls on either side there’s no way out but down the middle.

Kaylee is crying and my mother is clearly distraught clawing at Sage’s arm she grimaces.

“Mom, you’re hurting, Sage. We need to keep calm, people are moving we’re going to get out of here just fine don’t worry just keep low and breathe through a piece of your clothing for a filter if the smokes gets too thick.”

“Why is your sweater all wet?” Kaylee squeaks

“To keep you safe if the room gets too hot but we’re going to be fine, we just have to wait our turn, honey, it’s ok.” The words are barely from my lips when we hear a huge crack overhead and look up in time to see an enormous wooden beam splitting, threatening to fall. It’s clearly been set on fire, nothing else around it is burning.

“Keep the kids back!” I yell and we all move as a unit covering the heads of the children with the wet sweaters to protect them from embers that are raining down over us. We crouch together next to the first pew now closer to the heat and smoke rolling off the altar.

“Oh my God!! Watch out, Mia!” Gabriella yells pulling me toward her, saving me from being crushed by the beam that’s giving way, crashing down. It’s now a mammoth torch blocking us from the exit. There’s no way out, scorching hot flames behind us burn the altar and now the beam stretches across the width of the church.

“MIA!!” I hear Evan yelling my name and part of me is relieved, but another part knows he would move heaven and earth to get me out of here including killing himself to do it. I say nothing but Gabby screams

“HERE!! EVAN WE’RE OVER HERE!”

“WE’RE COMING!! STAY DOWN LOW AND DON’T MOVE!” He calls back over the roar of the fire. The kids are both sobbing now and I can’t think of a single comforting thing to say to them, this is really looking bad and I’m a terrible liar. The smoke is getting thicker, everyone is coughing and covering their mouths with edges of their clothes. The kids tremble huddled together under the dripping sweaters with their mother and grandmother’s arms around them. Out of nowhere I feel someone touch my shoulder, I can’t see through the smoke but I hear her voice.

“I told you they had bad smoke, you had good smoke but now devils grow inside of you.” Fuck! That psycho smoke lady did this, she’s here with us, she set the fucking church on fire!

I turn to grab at the space where the voice came from but my hands come up empty, she’s gone, if she was ever there in the first place. Am I hallucinating? Did I really just hear that?

“Mia…Mia!” Gabby scoots closer to me and we can hardly see each other even though our sides are touching.

“Did you hear that? I swear I just heard that nut ball from the hospital in Italy say something about the smoke, please tell me I’m imagining things.”

“No, I heard her, she’s here and she set this fire!” Suddenly, from our right glass explodes. Shit, this place is going down, the heat is breaking the windows now.

“MIA! GABBY!” It’s Isaac…I hear him calling out to us and not from the other side of the burning beam his voice is coming from where the glass just shattered. Disembodied cool hands circle my waist from behind me and begin to pull me away from the group and I thrash and claw at the force removing me from my family.

“NO!!!” I scream out but the voice in my ear now is familiar and blessedly familiar, it’s Isaac.

“Mia, it’s me, don’t fight! He told me to get you first no matter what, if I don’t we are both as good as dead!”

“I’m not leaving my family!!” I bite down on his arm and he screams out in pain but doesn’t loosen his grip at all in fact he squeezes me harder dragging me toward the broken window where I can make out the silhouettes of fire fighters crawling through the wide opening. Oh God they’re going to get them, they have to get them out. Please, please God, let them make it in time. I’m thrown over Isaac’s shoulder and hauled out the window into the cold air gasping and gulping for breath when we finally hit an area that’s clear of the billowing black smoke. Isaac slides me from his shoulder to cradle me in his arms, I have no fight left and my body sags against his bouncing as he runs to pass me off to even more familiar hands. This is home, these hands are where I belong. I’ve been returned to my life force inside the arms of the man who quite literally causes my heart to beat.

“They were all alive, I think the firefighters reached them.” Isaac is speaking to Evan while they both continue to move away from the church.

“Fuck, are you ok, Mia, talk to me, baby. Please! God, tell me you’re ok.”

“I love you.”

“Oh, thank fucking God!” He’s nearing an ambulance now, one of several that I can see in the clearing. Smoke and fire trucks are everywhere.

“Open the fucking door, she’s pregnant, she needs help!” Doors swing open as we approach and he jumps inside gracefully.

“Just lay her here, sir.” The paramedic says pointing at a crisp white gurney.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital, please, Evan, go back for them, make sure they are all safe!”

“They are getting them out now, I am not leaving you, look what happens when you are out of my sight for a mere five minutes!”

“They are my family! You have to help them. Go back! Please, go back!”

“Mia!!” The timbre of his voice snaps me from my moment of hysteria and I look at him wide eyed while the paramedic looks like he’s afraid Evan might hurt me.

“They will all get out. They will all be ok, I promise, now calm the fuck down.” He cursed at me. Of all the things I could focus on right now, it’s that that I choose to think about.

“You cursed at me,” I say pathetically and I feel my eyes fill with tears that spring forward when he kneels down in front of me yanking me into his arms.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought you were going to leave me. I thought the curse had finally claimed my happiness. I couldn’t get to you. I tried but they pulled me out.” The paramedic nods his head up and down

“He knocked two guys out cold, they put him in hand cuffs.”

“What?” He won’t release his hold on me. “I sent Isaac in, I told him he was a dead man if he didn’t get you out alive. He already had a plan, though. I don’t think the threat was necessary. I know he loves you, Mia, and if I couldn’t get you, he would.” The medic bravely reaches over Evan and applies an oxygen mask to my face while he clings to me clutching clumps of my hair and inaudibly mumbling into my neck.

“Evan, please go see about my family.” I beg but there’s no way in hell he is letting go of me.

“I’ll go check for you, Miss.”

“Oh thank you so much, it’s my mother and my sister and sister-in-law and two kids, a boy and a girl. Please bring them to me if they are able. I need to see for myself that they’re ok.”

“Sure thing, are you feeling all right? Blurry vision, burning throat?”

“My throat hurts a little, but please just check on them,” I beg and he agrees climbing out of the truck.

“Look her over. I’m going to see about her family.” He speaks to someone outside and a female medic replaces him.

“Evan!” I try to shake free of his hold when I remember the smoke lady. “I know who set the fire, I know who’s been following us!” He slowly moves back so he can see my face.

“Who?” He spits the one word question with more venom and hatred than I’ve ever heard from anyone before, ever.

“The crazy smoke lady from Italy. She spoke to Gabby and I a couple times there and she was in the fire today, she touched me, she spoke to me!”

“What fucking crazy smoke lady? She’s in there? Right now?”

“Yes! Somebody needs to get her out, they won’t know she’s there!” An evil calm seeps across his face before he speaks again. “Let her burn.”

By the grace of God, almost everyone made it out of the fire alive, a few elderly people were injured by the falling beam but nothing serious. We all suffered from smoke inhalation and the kids will most likely never set foot inside a church again. One body was removed from the building, it was a small framed female who was eventually identified as Bridgette Marie Lawson, escaped life-long resident of The Victoria Crown psychiatric facility in Utah. She has been on the run
for over a year now after escaping in an outgoing food truck.

Evan had no idea he had an older sister, she was kept hidden from the world, committed at the age of 10 when she began showing uncharacteristic early signs of schizophrenia. Evan’s father shipped her to the States and told his mother she had run away. By the time Gabriella and Evan were born, no one spoke of Bridgette anymore. She was as good as erased and forgotten because she was mentally ill and undesirable. Bridgette knew what had been done to her, she may have been sick, but she remembered and when she was older she began obsessively researching Evan and Gabriella. She kept journals and developed an elaborate plan to hunt her brother and sister down and murder them for being evil and stealing her parents away from her.

We were shown stacks and stacks of written journals full of gibberish about white smoke and black smoke, good and evil, lists of people who needed to die for various bizarre sins they committed and those who would live and worship at her feet when the world as we knew it came to an end. Her hatred combined with her mental illness and incredibly high IQ made for a dangerous combination. She figured out a way to secretly contact Mr. Saint many years ago and she offered him over a million dollars of money that was set aside to pay for a lifetime of psychiatric care.

She told Saint he could have everything if he helped her get close to Evan and Gabriella. Mr. Saint was the mole who allowed Bridgette into my bedroom that night last year causing me to run and nearly ruining my relationship with Evan. He arranged for a delivery truck to help her escape Victoria Crown and then he put her in touch with terrorists. She paid them to build the bomb that killed Cecelia thinking that we were still with her in the hospital room. I’m positive there are hundreds or even thousands of instances where Mr Saint looked the other way setting Evan directly in the path of danger. He even had a part in causing the car accident that killed Cameron and ironically brought him to me.