“But . . . I can’t talk to the police,” Cuddy stammered. “I moved the car. I moved the car so Keegan wouldn’t take the baby. But they won’t believe me.”
“None of that matters now. I need you to call the police, and then wait for them. Wait for me. Don’t go inside the salon!”
“But Mercedes is in there. I know it. Miss Cora is with her, but it’s hard to breathe,” Cuddy wailed.
Noah didn’t want to believe him. He wanted to put a hand over Cuddy’s mouth and tell him to shut up, to stop scaring the shit out of him.
But he did believe him.
And that belief meant Mercedes was inside a burning building and Keegan Tate was unaccounted for.
“Call 911, Cuddy!” Noah demanded, and without waiting to see if Cuddy obeyed him, stepped through the gaping hole they’d made in the glass.
The smoke was so thick he pulled his T-shirt up over his nose and mouth and ran forward, looking for signs of life. The building was old, but the surfaces were stone and glass and faux wood floors. Ceramic sinks and metal chairs were all less flammable than the ceilings, and the flames had traveled upward, licking up the more incendiary surfaces. Noah felt for the row of sinks he knew should be just to his right and found the nozzled end of a long hose. Turning the water on full he doused the area around him, soaking himself and everything within range.
“Mercedes!” he roared. The back wall was on fire, and the flames had climbed to the ceiling tiles. On the other side of the wall was the stockroom—the stockroom would be full of accelerants—and beyond that, the rear exit that led to the employee parking on one side and the warehouse/Cross-fit gym on the other. The locker room and a row of smaller rooms for waxing, facials, and massage were to the right, just across the hall from the stockroom.
“Mercedes,” he shouted again. He could smell hairspray and something else. He’d smelled it in the hospital in Kabul. Burnt flesh.
“Oh no,” he groaned, choking. “Mercedes! Where are you?”
He stumbled forward several steps, trying to see through the roiling waves. He would never find her. She could be lying five feet away, and he would never see her.
Suddenly smoke became form, the flames to his right becoming the streaming hair of his late wife.
“Cora?” he whispered, and for a moment he considered that he was already too late, that he’d slipped from one dimension to the next without even realizing it. She beckoned him forward and he followed. She glimmered and shifted, and he took several more steps, tripping over something—someone—crumpled in his path. He sank to his hands and knees, the air clearer closer to the floor, and found Mercedes, her hair lank and soaked in blood, her white blouse black with it. With a cry of both horror and relief, he scooped her up in his arms and turned toward the front of the salon, moving as fast as his oxygen-starved lungs would allow, begging Mercedes to hold on even as he choked and clutched her still form to his chest. He staggered through the smoke, the distance to the entrance feeling like a city block. He fell against the front doors, only to have them wrenched open by a fireman on the other side.
“Anyone else inside?” the fireman shouted, reaching for Mercedes. Noah clutched her, unwilling to release her, as he turned his head and peered through the gloom, looking for Cora.
“Anyone else?” the fireman repeated.
“I don’t know,” Noah said. “I don’t know.”
“We’re going to get you and the lady to a hospital, okay?” the fireman said. “Can you tell me your name?”
“I need to stay with her,” Noah rasped.
“We’ll do our best, okay?”
Then ambulance workers were running toward him, a gurney between them, and Noah relinquished Mercedes to the professionals. She was breathing on her own and her pulse was steady—he heard that much—but she was unconscious. They slid an oxygen mask over her head, and before Noah knew it, they were slipping one over his head as well.
“It’s for the smoke inhalation. We treat it with oxygen. Just breathe deep, man. You can sit up here by the lady. We’re going to get you guys to the hospital.”
Noah lifted the mask, needing to check on Cuddy. “There was another man here. Did you see him?”
“We got him. He tried to go inside—he was the one who told us you were there—but we kept him back. There’s another ambulance pulling up now. We’ll make sure he gets checked out. Now put the mask back on.”
Mer was intubated en route, and Noah closed his eyes, gripped her hand, and prayed that she wouldn’t leave him. She didn’t appear burned—miraculously—and her color was rapidly improving, and as they pulled into the emergency room entrance, she opened her eyes and looked at him.
* * *
Noah was treated for smoke inhalation in the ER at the University of Utah, and released hours later with medicine to ease his raw throat and his pounding head. Mercedes had been immediately admitted and undergone a series of tests and treatments. He’d called Alma and Heather, who’d come at once, with Gia in tow. Alma had stayed with Mercedes, Heather, upon seeing that he would be just fine, took poor Gia back home, and Noah, still grimy, his clothes foul with smoke, found his way to Mercedes’s bedside. She opened her eyes and lifted her hand in greeting. They’d removed the tube from her throat, but when she tried to speak, Alma shushed her.
“Doctor says no, Mercedes. Your throat needs to heal.”
Mercedes kept her hand extended, and Noah sank into a chair beside her bed, taking it and pressing his lips to her palm, needing to tell her how sorry he was, how much he loved her, and how scared he’d been. Alma stood, rounding the bed to reach him. She ran a hand over his filthy hair, kissed his cheeks like he was precious to her, and whispered her gratitude.
“You found her, Noah. You saved her. How will I ever repay you?”
Noah could only shake his head, guilt and grief making him resistant to her praise. Alma told him she would be back with coffee and fresh clothes for him to change into, and left them alone, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s forehead. Mer waited for her to leave before she disregarded the doctor’s orders.
“I saw her,” Mercedes whispered, her eyes steady on his. They were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and two dark circles were forming beneath them. His had looked the same when he’d encountered his reflection in the bathroom mirror.
“Who?”
“Cora.” Mer blinked rapidly, trying to hold back the tears, but they escaped and slid down her cheeks and hid in her dark hair. Someone had washed it, and it lay damp against the white pillows.
“I froze,” she continued, her voice rough. “I was in that room, terrified that if I moved he would hear me and come back, but knowing I had to get out or I would burn.”
“Mer,” he moaned, wanting to beg her to stop, but her words kept coming, washing him in horror.
“Keegan was there with someone. A man. I couldn’t see him. But he killed Keegan. Shot him right in the head. And then he made a bonfire. I was hiding under the shelves,” she rushed. “I managed to slide out, and I called 911, but I couldn’t wait for help, and I couldn’t go out the door without walking through the fire. So I went up.”
“Up?”
“I climbed the shelves, and I pushed out a ceiling tile and crawled out on one of the rafters. There was so much smoke, and I was coughing. I was afraid I’d fall. Then I saw her. I kept crawling toward her. I shouldn’t have been able to see her. I couldn’t see anything else.”
“She was part of the smoke,” he said, overcome.
“Yeah. She was,” Mercedes agreed tearfully. But she continued, not asking him how he knew. “Once I was up, I had to get back down. I slipped. One minute there was a beam beneath me, the next minute there wasn’t. I remember falling right through the ceiling tiles, but nothing after that. They think I hit my head and knocked myself out. But I know what I saw.” She was quiet for a moment, her eyes fierce, her lips trembling.
“I saw her too, Mer.”
Their eyes met and held, and for several heartbeats, they said nothing and everything without exchanging a word.
“I didn’t know for sure you were even inside. But I saw her . . . and she helped me find you,” Noah said. “I didn’t save you . . . Cora did.”
“Of course she did.” Mercedes whispered. “We always save each other, remember? It’s what we do.”
For a moment they clung to each other, their emotion making conversation impossible. But after several minutes, Noah pulled back, anxious to speak.
“I’m sorry, Mer, for all the things I said,” Noah choked out. “I was angry. Hurt. Embarrassed. But none of this was your fault.”
“I made such a mess of things,” she said. “I was trying to fix something that I couldn’t fix, and I made everything worse.”
“We save each other, remember? It’s what we do,” he repeated, but this time his voice was wry. “But we can’t save Cora from this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve spent my whole life not having a clue who my dad is. I don’t want that for Gia. Someday I’m going to have to have a conversation with her and explain things like infidelity and use words like ‘bio dad.’ I hate that. I am her father, but I will have to strip that from her, I will have to take that from her. The comfort, the sense of self, her place in the world. It will all be shaken. Even if she’s the most confident, well-adjusted kid in the world, even if I love her as hard as I can, she’s going to be hurt by that revelation. Cora put me in a position where I have to harm my daughter, and that just sucks so bad. The betrayal—the fact that she messed around on me—that was the easiest thing to face. But she robbed Gia. And that’s going to take me a while to get over.”
“She robbed you both.”
“Yeah. She did. And yet . . . I’m still trying to protect her. You’re still trying to protect her.”
“Old habits.”
“Yeah. So you didn’t tell me what you knew. And I didn’t tell you what I knew. We just suffered and worried,” he said gently. “We can’t do that anymore.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“Okay?”
She nodded slowly, her throat working. “Mami said the police want to talk to me.”
“They’re going to want to talk to us both. I talked to them a little already,” Noah agreed, nodding.
“Do they think I killed Keegan?”
Noah reared back, stunned. “Why would they think that?”
“Because I . . . paid him . . . to leave. And he came back. I had good reason to hate Keegan, and I was there when he died.”
“You paid Keegan to leave?” Noah gasped, incredulous.
She nodded, wincing with the movement of her head.
“Mercedes,” he breathed. “Why?”