by Jane Blythe
Still, he had been completely unprepared for what he found when he walked through the front door.
The house had been quiet. And dark. Usually when he arrived home, the smell of dinner came wafting from the kitchen to meet him at the front door. But that night there had been nothing.
Ryan had called out for Katrina, wondering whether she had gone to bed because she was unwell and that had been the reason for her distracted tone on the phone.
So he had sprinted up the stairs to their bedroom.
Where he found his fiancée.
But not curled up in bed, asleep.
She was dressed in her wedding dress, sprawled over the antique quilt her grandmother had made her when she was a little girl, which covered their bed. An empty bottle of sleeping pills lay beside her.
Ryan wasn’t sure how long he had stood there, in shock, staring at the scene before him. In reality, he guessed it couldn’t have been more than a second or two, but at the time it had felt like an eternity.
When at last he regained control of his body, he had all but thrown himself at his fiancée. His quaking fingers had searched her neck for a pulse. He had found one, but it was little more than a faint flutter.
He had screamed at her to wake up.
Yelled at her not to die.
Begged her not to leave him.
But in his arms she had taken her final breath.
Even though he knew he was fighting a losing battle, the bottle of pills had been full the day before, Ryan knew this because he was the one who had picked up her prescription. The bottle was now empty, and there was no way anyone could survive swallowing an entire bottle of sleeping pills. Still, he had dragged Katrina's body to the floor and begun to perform CPR. It was too late, though. She was already gone.
It had been a shock to him when paramedics arrived. He didn’t remember calling them, although in fact he had. They had gently pulled him away from Katrina. Repeating patiently to him over and over again that they were sorry but his fiancée was dead.
Paige arrived shortly after. Then his family. They had all tried to help, to say and do the right thing, even though no one knew what that was. But Ryan had never felt so alone. So helpless.
And now there was every chance that history was going to repeat itself and he was going to walk into the Everette estate to once again discover the woman he loved lying there dead. He had been too late to save Katrina by mere minutes.
Ryan prayed that this time there’d be a different outcome.
Tires squealed as he stopped the car in front of the house, not bothering to turn off the engine as he beelined for the door. Smoke was already billowing from the building, and as he yanked open the door he could see spot fires sprouting up. It looked as though Isabella had set fire to the basement, the flames now spreading to consume the first floor. It wouldn’t be long until the entire house was a raging inferno.
Retrieving a bottle of water from the trunk of his car, Ryan poured it over a handkerchief and then tied it around his face, hoping to filter some of the smoke. Entering the house, visibility was low, but it didn’t take him long to locate Sofia.
He found her in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the stairs.
She wasn’t moving.
Heart in his mouth, Ryan flung himself down beside her.
“Sofia?” Hand on her neck, feeling for a pulse, thankfully he found one. She didn’t answer him. Her breathing was shallow and labored, whether from the smoke or an injury, he couldn’t tell.
Beginning a systematic check for injures, her head and face were caked in blood. There appeared to be at least two different impact sites. There was a large gash on her left temple, and another on the back of her head that was the cause of a small pool of blood. There were also bruises forming on her face, including a large lump on her right cheekbone. One of her shoulders was dislocated. When he rested a hand on her chest it felt like she may have broken some more ribs in her fall. Her right leg was twisted out at an unnatural angle. He looked closer and a strangled gasp escaped his lips when he saw Sofia’s leg was broken so badly the tip of the bone had come clear through the skin.
Muttering a curse under his breath, Ryan knew he needed to get Sofia out of the burning building, and yet moving her could cause further damage. There was no way to know whether she had injured her neck or spinal cord in her fall. Waiting for the paramedics was out of the question. Who knew how far away they were. If he didn’t get her out now, then the whole house could come crumbling down around them.
Praying he wasn’t doing more harm than good, Ryan ever so gently eased an arm beneath her knees, then his other around her shoulders, and carefully lifted her off the floor. Sofia hung limply in his arms as he carried her toward the door. The air was now so thick with smoke that visibility was down around zero. By memory he retraced his steps, hoping he wouldn’t crash them into any walls or furniture.
At the door, he realized that he hadn't seen any sign of Isabella. He had forgotten about her, his focus had been on Sofia. There was no point going back to look for her. Fire had the walls cracking and gave the floor an almost springlike quality as it weakened the wooden floorboards. The estate was about to implode, and he wasn’t going to risk going back inside it.
Instead, he carried Sofia what he hoped was a safe distance away from the inferno, then carefully laid her out on the lawn.
Breathless from both the smoke and fear, Ryan choked on the fresh air and erupted into a coughing fit. When it passed, his fingertips pressed to Sofia’s neck to make sure she was still alive. Detecting a pulse, weak but there, he lay down beside her, exhausted, waiting for help to arrive.
* * * * *
2:00 A.M.
Something was burning.
That was the first conscious thought that registered in Sofia’s mind.
Absently, she wondered what it might be.
Deciding to find out she tried to move her body, but pain tidal waved over her. White hot, burning agony. Enough to make her almost pass out again. Every single inch of her hurt. From the tips of her toes all the way up to her head.
She must have gasped aloud because someone suddenly loomed over her. Fingers pressed to her neck, in the distance someone called her name. Maybe Ryan? The pain was making her groggy, making it difficult for her to think.
Tapping on her cheek seemed to reverberate inside her aching head.
“Sofia? Please, please, open your eyes so I know that you're okay. Please, cupcake. Open your eyes for me. Come on, Sofia. Wake up. Please, wake up now.”
Ryan’s voice was so desperate that she tried to comply with his commands.
Scrounging up all her energy, she tried to force her uncooperative eyes open. She was surprised, and pleased, when they did.
It was indeed Ryan kneeling over her, and when he saw her eyes open relief radiated off him.
“Oh, thank goodness,” he murmured. His fingers brushed at her face, their touch feathery soft as though he were afraid of hurting her. “You had me so scared, cupcake,” he said, mustering up a small grin.
“What happened?” she tried to ask, it came out as little more than a croak.
“You had an accident,” Ryan answered vaguely, clearly trying to hide something from her. “Don’t worry about that right now. Just rest. Paramedics are on the way, we’ll get you to the hospital, get you all fixed up.”
Sofia wanted to do as he suggested. Wanted to let her eyes fall closed and unconsciousness take away her pain, but something was bothering her. Something she thought she should know but couldn’t recall.
“Something’s wrong,” her voice sounded feeble and insubstantial, the effort of talking agitated her smoke-filled lungs and she broke into wracking coughing fits that hurt so badly tears streamed from her eyes.
Ryan held her face between his hands until her breathing returned to somewhat normal. “Nothing for you to worry about,” his smile tried to be reassuring, but it did little to ease her jangled nerves. “You need to rest.”
/> Nodding, this time she was going to allow herself to slide back into peaceful blackness when images started to flash into her mind. At first they were nothing more than disjointed fragments.
A headache.
Ropes.
A baby crying.
Isabella with a knife.
Blood everywhere.
Crawling down the halls.
Falling.
Fire.
Slowly, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, the images began to join together to form a picture. Isabella had knocked her out. Then tied her up in a small room. Brooke’s baby had been there. Logan, too. He had told her that he and Gloria were her parents. Then Isabella had killed him. Stabbed him over and over again until the small room was covered in blood. She had passed out, awakening to find herself alone and no longer tied up. Summoning all her strength, she had dragged herself through the house in a desperate bid to escape before Isabella returned. But her sister had found her. And she had fallen down the stairs. Once again she had awakened from the darkness to find herself alone, lying in pain at the bottom of the staircase, unable to move, the house full of smoke.
Panic and adrenalin had her forgetting all about the pain, and she tried to push herself into a sitting position. Isabella and the baby could still be in the burning house.
Ryan’s hands were on her shoulders, pushing her back so she lay against the grass, holding her firmly in place as she struggled in vain against him.
“I have to get inside,” she heard her near hysterical voice insist. “Isabella could still be in there.”
“I didn’t see her,” Ryan told her.
“The baby, the baby could be there.”
“Brooke’s baby?” Ryan looked confused.
“Yes, Isabella had it. They could still be in there. Let me go, Ryan, I have to go back inside, I have to see if they’re still there. I can't let them die in there. Let me go, please,” she begged.
“No, cupcake. I'm not letting you go anywhere. You’re injured, you need to stay still until the paramedics get here.”
More tears seeped from her eyes, “She killed him. Isabella killed him.”
“Killed who?” Ryan asked, keeping his hands on her shoulders.
“Logan. She stabbed him. Over and over and over and …” her mind stuck firmly on the image. Isabella bringing the knife up and then plunging it down, repeating so many times that blood streaked the ceiling and the walls and Isabella herself.
“Sofia,” Ryan shook her gently. “Stop it. Stop. You have to calm down, you're going to hurt yourself.”
But she couldn’t calm down. She was completely out of control. “There was so much blood,” she sobbed.
“I'm sorry, baby, I'm sorry you had to see that,” he took her hand, squeezing it tightly. “I'm sorry you had to see Isabella kill your brother.”
Shaking her head, ignoring the pain it caused. “Not my brother, my father. Logan was my father. And Gloria. She was really my mother. And I hated her, Ryan. All those years I hated her. Because she never acted like a mother to me. But now I understand why. Because Logan raped her. Her own stepson. He raped her and she ended up pregnant. How could she love me after that? Every time she looked at me it would have reminded her of what Logan did. And now she’s dead and I’ll never get a chance to know her as my real mother.”
Although in her mind she was making sense, Ryan looked like he was struggling to follow her guilty ramblings. “Shh,” he soothed, patting her hand. “Shh, cupcake. Just rest, try to calm down. I hear sirens, EMTs will be here any second.”
All Sofia could do now was cry. Pain and grief and fear and the horror of the last few weeks mingled into her tears.
Then there was nothing.
Just nothing.
The next thing she registered was a mouth over hers, and a puff of air being forced into her lungs.
Then pumping on her chest. The movement making the pain in her ribs come back with a vengeance.
Somehow her eyes popped open.
The blurry circle above her slowly morphed into Ryan’s terrified face. “Don’t you ever do that to me again,” he ordered shakily.
Sofia barely registered the medics who knelt at her side and began to tend to her injuries. Hardly noticed them starting an IV to give her fluids, or splinting her leg, or putting a collar around her neck, or the fact that the oxygen mask they’d put on her was helping her to breathe a little easier.
“Ms. Everette, we’re going to give you something to help you sleep now, okay?” one of the medics told her.
Sofia wanted to ask Ryan to stay with her, to tell him that she couldn’t handle being on her own right now, but she couldn’t seem to make her voice work.
Somehow he read her mind. “I'm not going anywhere,” he said, reclaiming his grip on her hand.
A sharp prick in her arm brought with it the merciful peacefulness that only unconsciousness gives.
* * * * *
3:38 P.M.
“How’s Sofia doing?” Paige asked as he slid into one of the seats around the conference table.
“She’s in surgery,” Ryan replied. “Her leg was broken so badly they need to put in a metal rod to stabilize it as the bone heals.”
Wincing, Paige asked, “What other injuries did she have?”
“Dislocated shoulder, cracked another three ribs, broken collarbone, a concussion, and lots of bruises,” Ryan summarized. “Plus some mild smoke inhalation. Luckily, she was passed out and lying on the floor where the smoke was at its thinnest; otherwise, her smoke inhalation would have been a lot worse. There were two bad blows to her head. One from when Isabella hit her earlier, and another from when her head hit the floor when she landed at the bottom of the stairs. She, uh . . .” he paused to control the quiver in his voice. “She stopped breathing for a moment there.” That had been the single worst moment of his life. Believing that it was happening again. That he was about to lose Sofia. That she was going to die right in front of him. That once more his efforts to save the woman he loved would be fruitless. But thankfully, this time the outcome had been different. His CPR had saved her life, and she had already been breathing again by the time the medics had reached them.
Reaching over to squeeze his hand reassuringly. “But she's all right now,” Paige reminded him.
“How’s she doing emotionally?” Belinda asked.
Ryan raked his hands over his tired face. It had been a long couple of weeks. The only thing keeping him on his feet right now was the knowledge that Sofia was going to be okay. That and the desire to know whether Isabella had been in the house when the building eventually collapsed. “She was pretty out of it when she came to out on the front lawn,” Ryan answered. “She was weak, groggy from the pain, dazed, and in shock. She was rambling incoherently, something about Logan and Gloria being her parents.”
“What?” the shock in Paige’s face was mirrored in Belinda and Stephanie’s.
“That’s what she said,” he shrugged helplessly.
“But she was in a lot of pain, maybe she was delirious, didn’t know what she was saying,” Stephanie suggested.
“I don’t think so,” he countered. “She said it again at the hospital.”
“She was conscious?” Belinda asked with a raised eyebrow.
“In and out. More out than in,” Ryan admitted, he had remained by her side until they took her into surgery. “Even when she was awake she wasn’t all that lucid, but she said it several times. She was upset that she had hated Gloria all these years for never being a mother to her, and then to find out after Gloria died that she was her mother.”
“Well that I wasn’t expecting to hear,” Stephanie looked miffed.
“I think that’s an understatement,” Paige chuckled. “How did Sofia find that out?”
“Best I could get out of her was that after Isabella knocked her out, she took her to a room in the attic. She already had Logan there, Brooke’s baby, too. Isabella made Logan tell her that he was her father and that he’d ra
ped Gloria, and that was how Sofia was conceived. Then Isabella killed him.”
“So, she heard Logan’s confession?” Belinda asked.
“Yes, Isabella’s, too. Neither of those confessions do us any good unless we know what happened to them.”
“I thought you said Sofia saw Isabella kill Logan?” Belinda pointed out.
“That’s what she said, but I’ll still feel better once we have a body.” Ryan wanted this case closed definitively so there would be no one left to hurt Sofia.
“People have been searching the building for bodies ever since the fire was put out and it was deemed safe enough,” Stephanie assured him. “Hopefully we have an answer …” she trailed off as her phone began to chirp. “Speak of the devil,” she smiled at him, then answered the call.
Ryan sat in agonizing anticipation as he listened to Stephanie’s completely unenlightening side of the conversation. After enduring nothing more than ‘yeahs’ and ‘okays’, Ryan pounced on her the second she hung up. “Did they find bodies?”
“One,” Stephanie replied solemnly. “Logan’s in the basement.”
His heart skipped a beat, “No sign of Isabella’s body?”
“No,” the CSU tech replied. “I'm sorry, Ryan.”
That meant Isabella had already escaped before he arrived at the estate. That meant she was gone. Possibly forever. And there was nothing stopping her from killing more people, including Sofia.
“They could still find something,” Stephanie told him hopefully. “The part of the building that collapsed has only been preliminarily searched. When they remove the rubble they could still find a body.”
“Yeah,” he nodded half-heartedly. The side of the house that had collapsed was the side near the front door, the side that coincided with the side of the basement where the fire investigators believed Isabella had started the fire. She would have known that. So no way would she have remained on that side of the building as fire consumed the house. Isabella was long gone and they all knew it. “Uh, I'm thinking of taking time off,” he announced.