Coldness swathed her. It was hard to think around the pounding in her skull. Grasping at the threads of thoughts was difficult.
Wheeling back to face her, Robert paused and waved a gun in the air. Where had that come from? “It’s your fucking fault, you cunt! I lost my clients, my shop. All because of you!”
She slipped and fell down hard, hitting her head against the truck. Glass scraped up the back of her legs, and something warm and sticky soaked the seat of her jeans.
“Robert.” She held her hand up as if she could ward him off.
“Shut the fuck up!”
Someone off to her right began sobbing. The stunned bodies all around them were regaining a semblance of life, or at least most of them. She didn’t want to think about the ones not moving.
From behind Robert, Brian hobbled up, the baseball bat they kept behind the counter in hand. Robert’s mouth was moving, but the blood rushing through her ears drowned him out. She watched in slow motion as Brian wound up and swung, hitting Robert across his shoulders.
As if it were a signal, the more able-bodied victims scurried or crawled toward the broken shop front. She grabbed hold of the grille and pulled herself to her feet. She had to save Brian from Robert, she couldn’t let him get hurt.
Robert staggered from the blow, doubling over with his hands braced on his knees. Brian wasn’t fast enough to get a second hit in before Robert swung around, waving the gun wildly and yelling. The gun firing in the enclosed space boomed in her ears, startling a shriek out of her that turned into a scream.
She lurched toward the men as the fluorescent lights began to flicker, making the shop spin around her. Stumbling, she caught herself against the busted-out display case. She looked for Brian but didn’t see him.
“Brian?” she croaked out.
Red hazed over her vision. Brian was gone. That was the thought on loop in her mind. The thing that drove her over a precipice. Screaming, she launched herself at her former boss, fiancé and tormentor.
Robert spun toward her and swung his fist. She felt the brush of it across her cheek and neck but he’d missed. He shoved her back, growling and spitting curses. She stumbled and hit the swag chain, now stretched taut between the cases. Flailing, she grabbed the counter to slow her fall. Landing on her hip, she yelped in pain. Partially hidden by the case that had separated the artists’ area from the public area, she looked at where her station had been.
The rolling shelves with their equipment were in a pile, the chairs overturned and the ground splattered with mixing inks. The lights flickered overhead, blinding her more than helping.
She could hear Robert yelling, the scrape of more debris across the ground. Her body hurt everywhere. Her old injuries and new ones throbbed. It was finally sinking in that what had happened to her was going to be meted out to all of the people in the shop unless Robert was stopped.
Hauling herself up using the display case, she leaned over the top, ignoring the broken surface smeared with cake, and wavered on her feet.
Robert stood silhouetted by the headlights of the truck, which hadn’t been on before. Two red gasoline cans were in his hands. He upended one of the cans on the far display, gasoline chugging out in a thick stream. He flung it out, hitting bodies, people and everything in the shop with the gas.
He spun, holding a Zippo lighter she bet was the same one he used to force her to hold her hand over until it left blisters. To prove herself. He flicked it open and a light blossomed at his fingertips.
“Pandora, Pandora, fly away home.” The light cast an eerie shadow on his face. He grinned. “Your house in on fire, and your clients are gone. All except you.”
Pandora stumbled back, out of the reach of the splashing gasoline. Her back hit the wall and something rattled. She sucked in a deep breath, the dizziness she was already experiencing made worse by the fumes.
“What’s the matter? Don’t like the fire?” He cackled and tossed the empty can on the ground. Another can sat on the hood of the truck, uncapped and ready for him.
“Robert, put the lighter down. You don’t want to catch yourself on fire, do you?” Her words slurred together as she spoke.
He stopped at the chain, glaring at it, then her. The grin disappeared, replaced by a silent, ugly snarl. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, bitch. No one tells me what to do. No one!” He tossed the gas can down at his feet. Liquid chugged out, creeping toward her.
“Hey!” Brian lunged at Robert from behind, swinging a fist.
She gasped, not having seen Brian coming. Her heart leapt into her throat as Robert and Brian collided. The sound of fists hitting flesh, cracking against bone, pushed her over the edge. Doubling over, she vomited bile.
Gasping for breath, she groped along the wall, feeling for the counter. Her hand closed around a package of needles from a box she’d pulled out earlier to restock her drawers. Her knife was trapped in her box, which was useless right now.
Screaming erupted behind her, and a sudden burst of light and heat flattened her against the cabinets. Her eyes watered as the fumes became more powerful and smoke clogged her lungs. Turning, she gasped. Fire ran across the floor, eating up the gasoline and catching on the furniture and everything in its path. She’d seen wildfires on TV, but nothing compared to having it eat away at her shop and endangering people.
Brian’s body hit the display case and cracked the rest of the frame. Robert descended on him, throwing fists as if Brian were a punching bag.
Pushing off the wall, she launched herself at Robert and hit him with the only thing she had. Screaming, she slashed at his arm, using her thumb on the back of the needles to force them in as deep as she could go, just as he had when he carved his name into her arm. She reached over the display separating them and grabbed a handful of his shirt.
“Ow, you bitch!” He swatted at her, catching her with the back of his hand and snapping her head around.
She didn’t let go of his shirt. Digging her hand into his collar, she stabbed blindly, aiming for his face and driving the needle deep into soft flesh, as hard as she could make it go. His hands went from trying to hit her to clawing at her arm and pushing her away.
Releasing him, she stumbled back until she hit one of the chairs. The smoke was thick in the air, clouding her vision and making it hard to breathe. The fire had caught on the ceiling tiles and her paintings on the wall.
“Brian?” she croaked.
He rolled out of the cradle that had been created from the display case frame and doubled over coughing. Shuffling forward, she kept her head down. She didn’t know where Robert was and the ceiling tiles were beginning to rain down around them.
“Look out,” Brian said, half lunging across the case.
She stumbled sideways as a chunk of a tile fell.
“Pandy, I’m coming.”
“No.” Grabbing the support they used for doing clients’ arms with her right hand, she turned it over and used it to push the tile away from her, clearing her path to the case. The fire on the tile caught on her brand-new chair, melting the plastic in long strips.
Limping to the case, she held out her good arm to Brian and crawled over it. He half hauled her over, but could only grasp her with one arm. They fell in a heap on the floor. Pandora turned her face in his shoulder and coughed.
“There’s people in there,” someone cried from outside the shop.
Lifting her head, she didn’t see Robert, but the flames were everywhere.
“We need to get out of here,” Brian yelled. He rolled them to their sides and rose shakily to his feet.
Turning onto her stomach to leverage herself up with her good arm, she glanced under the truck at the flames dancing dangerously close to the tires.
“Carly!” Time slowed to a crawl. She dove under the truck, sliding on glass and ignoring the pain in her shoulder.
Carly’s eyes fluttered open, soot and blood mixed on her face, matting her hair to her skull. Pandora patted her bare shoulders, tears streaming down her face.
Brian wedged past her, forcing her back from under the truck, and grasped the petite girl under her arms.
“I’m sorry, Carly,” he yelled over the flames.
He hauled back, dragging her across the debris, streaks of blood left in her wake. Carly’s head tilted back and she let out a blood-curdling scream. Pandora sobbed harder and tried to help, but didn’t know if what she was doing made it worse or better.
They collapsed in a heap in the middle of the floor, in the only clear space. They bent to gather over Carly, sheltering her body with theirs and coughing.
“Fire department, anyone in there?”
Her heart leapt to her throat. “Yes,” she screamed, the sound coming out more like a hoarse yell. “Here, help!”
The lumbering figures of firemen wedged between the side of the shop and the truck. Pandora was more than willing to allow the fireman to bear her weight out into the parking lot. Her vision faded in and out as she was bumped and transferred to another set of arms before everything faded.
Chapter Thirteen
Tattoo Removal: Fucking painful.
Pandora pushed the flimsy curtain aside. A nurse glanced up and scowled at her, but she had eyes only for Brian.
“Hey.” His face was pale and pinched. One of the dreaded oxygen masks lay on the bed beside him.
She slowly approached the side of his hospital bed and stared down at the white band circling his arm. Her stomach rolled like as if she was going to be sick again.
He reached for her and she took his hand in both of hers, pulling it to her face to kiss. He wasn’t dead.
Darting a glance at the nurse, he asked, “Can you give us a minute, please?”
“I’ll be back in ten minutes.” Her gaze drifted to Pandora. “Does your nurse know where you are?”
She didn’t look away from Brian. She could hardly believe that he was okay. “They released me.”
The nurse pulled the curtain behind her, leaving them in the relative aloneness of the ER. Pandora’s gaze skittered over the rest of him, taking in the red, angry burn marks, the gashes left behind by glass. She didn’t know where she could touch him. His face was bruised, they even had matching purple cheeks, and then there was the bandage around his arm that her eyes kept going back to.
Brian cupped her face. She squeezed her eyes shut and leaned into his hand. She didn’t deserve him. Being with her had nearly gotten him killed a second time.
“Hey, don’t cry,” he said. “The bullet went in and out. It fucking hurts, but I’ll be okay.”
She sucked in a deep breath and held it as pain shot through her chest. Her seams were unraveling. She reached up and dashed away the first tears.
“Hey.” His hand smoothed over her cheek, wiping the moisture away. “Don’t cry.”
He sat up and swung his legs off the bed stiffly. Pulling her between his thighs, he wiped her tears away. She wrapped her arms around his waist and buried her face against his bare shoulder. She was exhausted, her entire body hurt. She had two fractured ribs on top of everything else, and she still didn’t know where or how everyone else from the shop was.
“I’m okay,” he said and repeated himself over and over again while she cried herself out.
Pulling back, she looked at him. Searched his face. When she’d been in the flames, she’d thought about him. When she woke up in the ambulance, she’d demanded to know about him. When the nurse had been checking her injuries, she’d wanted to know how he was.
“I love you,” she said in a rush, and again, slower, “I love you.”
His mouth dropped open and for a moment neither of them said or did anything. His mouth slowly closed and he cupped her cheek.
“I love you too.” His smile turned into a wince.
They kissed gently, working around bruises and split lips. Hands carefully stroked down arms, backs, reminding them they were alive.
Someone cleared their throat, breaking the moment. The nurse stood at the foot of the bed, a clipboard in hand. “Sorry to disturb you two, but I need to clear you. The police officers want to ask you some questions.”
“Do you know how the others are?” Brian asked.
Her lips tightened. “No, I don’t, sorry.”
Brian signed the necessary papers and they slipped out to the waiting room to search for the others. Pandora held his hand, scared to hold on too tight and scared to let go. She wasn’t entirely convinced she wasn’t dreaming, that it hadn’t all been a nightmare, or perhaps she hadn’t woken up yet and was still back inside the shop.
“Oh my god, Pandora.” Autumn rushed across the waiting room, her left arm in a sling and secured to her chest. “How are you?”
Pandora’s left arm hurt to move, but she wrapped it around Autumn and squeezed lightly. “Two fractured ribs, some more bruises. Brian has a gunshot wound.” She tripped over those words.
“Yes, it’s a gunshot wound, but it’s not that bad,” Brian interjected, speaking in soothing tones. “How are the others?”
Autumn’s eyes filled with tears. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “It’s a lot to handle. People have been trickling out.” She thumbed over to one corner of the waiting room that had been taken over by clusters of families and a few people they recognized. A handful of cops were on the outskirts, talking to shell-shocked-looking kids.
“Let’s go see how they are,” Brian suggested and led the way.
In the end, there were mostly cuts and scrapes or no injuries at all, with a few exceptions. Kellie, Mary and Sam were completely unhurt, and had called the police and fire department first. Of the party guests, their injuries were varied.
“Where’s Carly?” Pandora asked after the initial flurry of updates.
People avoided meeting her eye.
“Sit,
mija
.” Mary gestured to a coffee table, about the only surface left to accommodate a person. She and Brian made themselves as comfortable as they could, hands still holding on to each other. Pandora leaned against his shoulder and braced herself. “She’s in surgery, that’s all we know.”
She sucked in a deep breath. People went into surgery and came out fine all the time. She glanced at Brian. He was proof, after all.