SMOKE

Stefan
Outside, lights flashed, and someone shouted orders.
“Veronica?” I touched her face, slid my hand to her chest to feel her heartbeat. I don’t know if it was ash or smoke or what that had my eyes blurry, but I picked her up. Charlie barked at my feet and followed as I covered her mouth and nose with my T-shirt and ran down the hall, fire raging inside the house now. When I got to the stairs, I backed away. Too late. I’d have to find another way. Back to the room where I’d found her, I went to the window and leaned out, breathed in the fresh air. I called out to the men below. Two fire engines and three police cars stood parked below, and in the distance, an ambulance was driving up to the house.
The instant they saw us, they raised a ladder. One of the men climbed up.
Veronica moved in my arms, choking, coughing. I looked down at her and couldn’t help smiling just a little.
She was alive. I wasn’t too late. She was alive.
“You’re here.”
A fit of coughing stopped anything more she would have said. When the firefighter reached us, I handed her to him. He hoisted her over his shoulder and descended the stairs. I looked down for Charlie, who’d gone back into the bathroom, backing as far from the approaching fire as possible.
Someone yelled for me to get out, but I ran back in, grabbed the sheet off the bed, and wrapped him in it, holding him to me. An intense heat had me running back toward the window, and, with Charlie bundled in my arms, I climbed out and down.
They pulled the ladder away from the house and trained their hoses on it, raining water down over it.
I went to Veronica, who was lying on a stretcher in the back of the ambulance with an oxygen mask over her face. Her eyes opened and closed, and she reached a hand toward me. Someone brought a bowl of water for Charlie, and I set him down to drink.
Veronica sat up and pulled the mask off. She looked at the house behind me, then looked to me.
“Stefan?”
That was when everything hit me. All of it. The fire, the timing of it, the destruction of Kingston Winery-because it was destroyed-the loss.
The near loss of her.
I stumbled and gripped the door of the ambulance to steady myself.
Was this Moriarty’s work? Was this the form his vengeance took?
Was this what I myself had planned to do? Had thought I could do?
“Stefan?”
I turned to see tears streaming down Veronica’s face.
I drove myself to the hospital two hours later, when the fire was finally under control and no longer threatened the adjoining properties. They’d given Veronica a sedative after checking her out, so she was asleep when I got to her room. She’d be fine. I was in time.
Stepping out of her room, I first called Robyn to tell her Veronica would be okay. She already knew about the fire. Of course she would. The manager would have called her grandfather as soon as he heard. After reassuring Robyn that Veronica would call her as soon as she was awake, I dialed another number, a man I knew who had ties to the police department, who’d done some investigating for me in the past. I wanted to know if the police ruled it arson. I’d smelled gasoline in the house. That meant someone had intentionally set the fire. I also told him what Robyn had told me and asked him to confirm. That Marcus Kingston was the one who’d been this close to buying Villa Bellini. After that, I went into the hospital room to wait for her to wake up.
I sat on the chair beside her bed for the next few hours, watching her sleep, still smelling the fire on her, on myself. I’d almost been too late. If Robyn hadn’t called, if I hadn’t heard Veronica’s cell phone and woken up, Veronica would have died up in that bedroom. That thought kept me from sleeping until almost dawn. It had me looking at her, watching the monitors measuring her steady heartbeat, making sure she was really okay.
The feel of her hand on mine was what finally woke me later that morning.
“Hey,” she said.
I straightened myself up, rubbed my face, and checked my watch.
“Hey.” My voice came out hoarse and groggy, much like hers.
“Thank you.”
Why did I think it was a strange thing to say? And what should I say back? Turned out I didn’t need to reply. She spoke before I could.
“Charlie?”
“He’s fine. Stephen picked him up and took him home.”
She smiled, then her face grew serious again.
“Is it gone?”
“Yeah.” I hated to be the one to tell her. “Everything is pretty much destroyed.”
She nodded. “How did you know I was there?” she finally asked.
“You’d forgotten your phone, and your sister kept trying to call you. It woke me up, and when I realized you were gone, I scrolled through your phone and found you’d called a taxi. It didn’t take me long to get the address they took you to.”
“My sister!”
She tried to sit up but then lay back down again.
“I have to call her.”
“I already did. Relax. You can call her later.”
“Thank you. Again.”
She tried to sit up again, and this time I helped her, adjusting the bed and pillows at her back.
“You shouldn’t have left.”
“I couldn’t stay.”
Awkward silence.
“I guess it was all for nothing, huh?” she asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t have to marry me after all. My inheritance is up in smoke.”
I studied her pretty caramel eyes, watched them fill up with tears, watched her hold them back.
“Oh, wait,” she continued. “Insurance. I guess you’ll be paid off with insurance money.”
There were a hundred things I could have said. I should have said. Things like “I’m sorry.” Or “I didn’t mean what I said.” Or “I love you.” But I didn’t say any of those things. Instead, when my cell phone rang, I looked at the display and left the room to answer it.
It was the investigator. “You were right,” he said. “Gasoline canisters were found throughout the property. The person who set this fire wasn’t hiding the fact that this was arson.”
“Which rules out Marcus Kingston.” I wouldn’t put it past him to destroy the winery, so I wouldn’t get my hands on it. So he could cash-out. But he would be careful to hide the evidence.
“And what the girl told you is right. Marcus Kingston is using the German company as a cover. He’s the one who put the bid in on your house.”
I’d told Moriarty the other day that I had a buyer. That he wouldn’t get the property because I’d already sold it. Could Moriarty have known all along that it was Veronica’s grandfather? Could this fire have been set to punish the old man?
“Thanks. Keep me updated, will you?”
“I will.”
When I opened the door to Veronica’s room, I found her sitting on the bed with her phone at her ear, her forehead wrinkled as she listened.
“Robyn, are you sure?”
The concern I heard in her voice made me curious. She met my eyes then shifted her gaze away.
“Okay. Okay, I have to go. Let me think about this. I’ll call you back.”
She hung up and looked at me a bit awkwardly. I wanted to ask what she’d been talking about with her sister. It had obviously upset her. But I didn’t feel that I could. A few minutes later, her doctor walked into the room to tell us she’d need to take it easy but that she would fully recover.
“When can I leave?” she asked.
“Later today,” the doctor said. “I’ll sign off on your paperwork.”
“Can I fly?”
The doctor seemed confused, so I stepped in. “You’ll stay at the house while you recover, Veronica.”
“But-”
“But nothing.” I walked out with the doctor to discuss a few things. When I returned, Veronica sat on the bed, her face unreadable.
“I need to ask you something,” she said.
“Ask.”
“Was it an accident?”
I studied her. Truth. I’d promised her truth. I’d already broken that promise once. I wouldn’t do it again.
“No.”
She swallowed, blinking several times, and looked away for a moment before returning her gaze to me. Her voice had an edge to it when she next spoke.
“Did you have anything to do with this?”
I snorted, shook my head, and quashed the emotion bubbling in my gut. The hurt at her accusation. “I never wanted you dead, Veronica.”