After Midnight

by Grimm, Sarah

  He’d loved before. He’d loved Beth, but she’d never made him feel the way Isabeau made him feel. It wasn’t just need and desire, it was a sense of coming home. A sense of completion that had been there since that fateful night he’d wandered into her bar. The night he’d looked up into the palest eyes he’d ever seen and fallen.

  She’d become everything to him.

  His heart.

  His oxygen.

  His future.

  He couldn’t let her go. Life without her was as empty as this house. Standing in it, with the silence settling around him, he came to a conclusion. It meant him asking something of her again, something he wasn’t certain she’d be willing to give. But he had to take the chance.

  Heading for the stairs, he ascended them two at a time. Hurried, driven by a need to have everything ready before he flew back to find her, he crossed to the front door and the car parked in the driveway. He needed to get back to Sacramento before the stores closed.

  He needed to see a man about a ring.

  ****

  Heat.

  After being cold for days, Isabeau was finally warm. She sighed in her sleep and rolled over, expecting to be pulled against Noah’s solid chest. It was a moment before the pull of sleep eased enough for her to realize two things. One, Noah wasn’t in her bed. He hadn’t been for days now, and no matter how many times she awoke in the middle of the night reaching for him, she always came up empty. Her pain was all consuming. Her lungs heaved. Her chest hurt. The second realization came to her, this one far more terrifying than the thought of spending another night without Noah.

  Her building was on fire.

  It wasn’t the pain of loss that tightened her chest, but the chokingly thick black smoke that surrounded her.

  “Oh, God,” she mumbled, only to start coughing.

  Simultaneously she reached for the cordless telephone on the nightstand and rolled to the floor. Her eyes teared as the dense smoke burned more than her lungs. Blindly, she pushed a button on the phone and lifted it to her ear. She stabbed again, frantic when the dead phone wouldn’t turn on.

  She scanned the room, checking for flame, searching for her way out. Fiery sparks danced in the air. A terrifying roar sounded just before the windows near her bed burst and flames licked in over the sill.

  Frozen in fear, she watched as they ate their way toward her mother’s photographs. How could this be happening? Why hadn’t her sprinkler system turned on, her alarm sounded? Without thinking, she lunged off the floor and toward her wall of memories. Her bare feet became tangled, the floor rose to meet her. Her arms shot out in front of her to protect her face as she skidded across the wood toward the theater chairs.

  The flames licked closer. Blinding pain shot up her arm and she screamed. Rolling off her stomach, she scrambled back, away from the wall. Reaching out blindly to tug at whatever had tangled itself around her ankles. The building groaned. Downstairs, glass shattered. But the smell was the worst, like nothing she had smelled before. And the pain in her arm…

  Nausea surged. Forcing it back made her cough harder. Panic built as she tugged at the leather around her ankles. Finally freeing her legs, she fisted her hand around the strap and began to crawl. Smoke filled the room, blinded her. She followed the rug that ran the length of her home, moving in the direction of her outside door. It was the darkest part of her apartment, indicating the fire had yet to reach that side of the building.

  Her lungs burned, her throat ached. Gasping for breath, she crawled a little faster when the heat of the floor penetrated her sweatpants. She didn’t have much time. She couldn’t stop coughing, and her body felt strangely disconnected.

  Stay on the rug. Stay. On. The. Rug. Without the ability to see clearly, she couldn’t risk veering off in the wrong direction.

  Body sluggish, limbs clumsy, it seemed as if she would never reach the opposite wall. She coughed steadily now. Her entire body ached, her head throbbed. The fire was loud, louder than she could ever imagine as it devoured the building around her.

  Her body cried out for her to stop, to rest a minute and allow her to catch her breath, but she recognized it for what it was. She was starving for oxygen. She wasn’t going to make it. Already she could feel her lungs shutting down, her airway swelling shut.

  She could feel consciousness slipping away.

  Suddenly, her hands came down on something cool and she breathed a sigh of relief. She was at her door, and it wasn’t hot like everything else in the room. Reaching up for the knob, she twisted and pulled.

  Nothing happened.

  A bubble of fear worked its way up the back of her throat and she cried out. Then her muddled thoughts cleared enough for her to remember to turn the lock.

  On her knees now, she reached out with her left hand and twisted the deadbolt, with her right she pulled on the door. The dense black smoke cleared for a moment, then the room behind her howled in such a way that she stumbled out the door in a rush. She was weak, clumsy, and moving much too quickly for her legs to keep up. About halfway down the back stairs, her legs gave out completely.

  Pain.

  It exploded throughout her body as she tumbled down the stairs, desperately tucking herself into as tight a ball as possible. She landed hard on her hands and knees, the jolt that shot through her limbs enough to make her gasp. But she didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Now that she was on the ground, she was even closer to the flames. The wall next to her moaned, and she scrambled away as quickly as she could, dragging her leather tote behind her.

  She gained her feet about ten yards from the building. Her shoulder ached, her forehead stung, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t sweat that she kept blinking out of her eyes. But it was the pain in her right arm that had her cradling it protectively against her body as she stumbled, coughing and choking her way toward the street.

  Red lights were flashing everywhere. Men in turnout suits were swarming out of fire trucks. One of the men saw her and grabbed her shoulders, causing her to cry out. He said something, but she couldn’t hear him over the roar of the fire and the noise of the sirens as more emergency vehicles pulled up.

  Isabeau shook her head, trying to communicate. Her vision grayed, her knees weakened, and he tightened his grip when she would have fallen over. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t draw enough oxygen into her lungs. Gasping, she put up no resistance when he scooped her off her feet and carried her to the nearest ambulance.

  Then, everything went silent as she slid into darkness.

  ****

  “You do recall there’s a three-hour time difference?” Noah stated, as he groggily answered his mobile phone. “I just got to sleep.”

  Silence was the only reply. Complete and total silence.

  “Dom? Are you still there?”

  “There’s been a fire, Noah. Around three o’clock this morning. At Izzy’s.”

  He sat bolt upright in bed as panic brought him full awake, his every sense alert. “Isabeau?”

  “There’s not much left. The place is…a burned-out shell.”

  Crippling fear froze the oxygen in his lungs. His chest felt like someone stood on it. “What about Isabeau?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? You must know something!”

  “I’m sorry, Noah,” Dominic rasped. “I don’t know anything. Pete’s making some calls right now, trying to find someone with information.”

  Noah climbed out of bed, frantically stuffing clothes into his leather duffel bag. She was fine, she had to be. He’d know if something had happened to her, he would feel it. Wouldn’t he?

  “Wait a minute,” Dom said, his voice grim, cold.

  Straightening, he waited. Voices sounded from the other end of the line. Not loud enough that he could make out the words. “Dom? Dominic?” His chest tightened. “Damn it, Dom, talk to me!”

  “A news report came on the telly. There were two people injured in the fire. One didn’t make it.”

/>   There was a big black hole yawning at his feet, and he felt like he was being sucked down into it. He gathered his courage and asked the question he didn’t want to hear the answer to. “Who didn’t make it?”

  “They didn’t say,” Dominic replied, his voice thick with emotion. “They won’t say until a positive identification is made, and the family is notified.”

  Noah swallowed down the bile crawling up his throat. “I’m coming back,” he said, his voice strangled. “Call Tony, let him know he’s on his own today.”

  “Sure.”

  He refused to accept that she was dead. Because then, he would never see her face again, hear her whisper his name. “Dominic?”

  “Yeah?”

  Pain screamed through him, growing louder, stronger with every ragged breath he took. His knees crumbled, and he sank back onto the bed. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything else?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Noah stared at the mobile phone in his hand. He swallowed past a throat that was much too tight, rubbed his hand over a heart he couldn’t believe still pumped. She had to be all right. She had to be. He couldn’t let himself think about her any way but alive—smiling and laughing.

  He couldn’t consider how frightened she must have been, trapped in a fire, struggling to breathe while heat and flames nipped at her. He couldn’t wonder if she’d thought of him at all, in those last moments. If she had any idea how important to him she was.

  Or if she’d died, never knowing how much he loved her.

  Standing abruptly, he rushed to the bathroom, bent over the toilet and vomited.

  ****

  Isabeau’s throat was on fire.

  She lay in the hospital bed, the blankets pulled to her chin, shaking, cold even though she’d been trapped in a burning building. Her entire body ached, throbbed, from her multiple injuries. Her right shoulder was scraped raw, her forehead cut. There were tiny little welts, dime-sized burns she’d been informed, all along her back where bits from the ceiling fell on her as she crawled along the rug. The largest of her injuries was the second degree burn on her right arm. At the moment, she couldn’t decide which hurt worse, her arm or her throat.

  But at least she was alive.

  Unlike Clint.

  Tears welled in her eyes when she thought of Clint, trapped in the hell she’d managed to escape. Of the panic he must have felt as he choked and gagged on the thick smoke.

  Unlike the police who’d just left, she believed Clint to be an innocent victim. She didn’t care that there were signs the fire was intentionally set. Even if the evidence showed it originated from inside the building, she refused to believe Clint had anything to do with it. Not Clint. Dear, sweet Clint who’d been her employee for years. Her friend.

  Of course, if it wasn’t Clint, then there remained someone out there who wanted her dead. Someone angry and twisted enough, that they were willing to hurt others, in their quest to get her. Nausea and fear churned in her belly.

  Suddenly uneasy, she rolled to face the door, cringing when pain knifed across her back. No position was comfortable, but at least if she remained still, the discomfort was kept to a minimum. A nurse had been by earlier and offered her a painkiller. She’d turned her down. She didn’t want numbness or sleep. She wanted the doctor to come and listen to her lungs again so she could leave.

  Her pain was extensive, her loss complete, and her emotions much too close to the surface for comfort. If she was going to break, which with every minute longer she waited she feared was closer and closer to happening, she preferred to do it in private. She didn’t want any witnesses to her grief. She wanted her own bed and Noah.

  Her eyes slid closed. Her heart clenched. Loss consumed her.

  She wanted what she no longer had. Her home and business had been lost to fire therefore she had no bed to curl up in. And Noah, he was in California, working on his future.

  A future she played no part in.

  She couldn’t, she admitted, even if she wanted to. Because her livelihood was not the only thing lost to the fire. She’d also lost the music that had been with her for as long as she could remember—even when she hadn’t wanted it.

  A constant, ever present piece of her.

  Gone.

  Leaving behind nothing but silence.

  Unable to hold it off any longer, Isabeau curled in on herself and wept.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “How long ago did you get back?” Dominic asked as Noah sank into the overstuffed chair in the corner of Dom’s room.

  “What time is it?” Noah glanced at the digital clock on the bed stand. “Three hours ago.” He leaned back in the chair and rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Have you seen her, Dom? Spoken with her?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t find her.” Noah sighed, pressing his fingers against his eyes. “I have to find her.”

  Exhaustion pulled at him, combined with the fear already coursing through him. He’d been searching for her since he’d gotten off the plane and discovered the voice mail message left by Dominic. The message that assured him that Isabeau had survived the fire. After eight hours of desperately trying to get back, of believing the worst, all he could think of was holding her. The only problem was no one seemed to know where to find her.

  “I even went by the bar…” A shiver worked through him. A horrific sight that added fuel to his futile search for Isabeau, there wasn’t much left of her home and business. The fire had spared nothing, not even her SUV. Parked in its usual place along the back of the building, it had been too close to escape the intense heat and flames. “I can’t believe it’s the same place.”

  “Have you checked with Thomas?”

  “I went there first. The tattoo parlor was locked up tight, as was the entrance to the apartment above. No one answered.”

  Dominic leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I assume you checked the local hospitals as well?”

  Noah groaned. “You don’t even want to know how many there are. The most I could get out of them was that she wasn’t on any of the floors, and even that bit of information wasn’t easily gleaned.”

  It wasn’t until the last place he’d gone that he discovered she’d been treated and released. Information that sent him back into Manhattan, to Thomas’s again, where his knocks had gone unanswered a second time.

  He tossed his arm over his eyes. Where the hell was she?

  “Noah?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you spoken with Tony since you left California?”

  “He left me a message while I was in flight. I haven’t rung him back.”

  “He says the offer is fair.”

  Noah shifted his arm off his eyes and placed it across his lap. He stared up at the ceiling, trying to work up enough energy to go back to his room and make the necessary telephone calls. “I’ll ring him later.”

  Dominic shifted positions, leaning back against the headboard. He pulled one foot onto the bed, resting his arm on his bent knee, while the other foot remained on the floor. “You know that Nick left?”

  He hadn’t known, but the news didn’t surprise him. Were he in Nick’s shoes, with a wife and kids waiting for him back home in California, Noah would have skipped town already, too. “I don’t blame him.”

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  They fell into a comfortable silence, a silence Dominic finally broke. “Noah?”

  Dom’s change in intonation brought Noah’s head up. He focused on his friend, half sprawled atop the bed, his head tipped back and slightly angled. “Yeah?”

  “How many places do you think you looked for her?”

  “Too many. Why?”

  “Did you check your room?” He gestured with his thumb toward the wall at his back.

  “What are you—” Water. Running through pipes. Out of all the hotels in all the cities in the world Noah had stayed in, there wasn’t a single room where the sound of water running in the ne
xt room wasn’t audible through the wall.

  He stood, heart in his throat. “It’s most likely the maid.”

  “She came through this morning.”

  Scooping up the duffel bag that lay near his feet, Noah was out the door and standing before his room in the space of a heartbeat. He fumbled for his wallet and the keycard he kept inside. On the third try, he finally got the green light and pushed the door open.

  Isabeau.

  In one piece. In his room. Sporting blue surgical scrubs a few sizes too big for her frame, and a gauze wrapping that circled her right forearm from wrist to elbow.

  Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her feet bare. Her face was pressed into one of his shirts—a poor substitute for the comfort she’d come to his room seeking. “I can offer you something better than an old shirt.”

  Her head came up, her eyes locked on him. She was pale, her face drawn. Dark rings of fatigue circled pale gray eyes.

  He’d spent eight long, agonizing hours not knowing if she was alive or dead. She had never looked more beautiful.

  He pushed the door closed, turned the lock and placed the duffel near the closet. Then, he crossed the room and removed the shirt from her hands. Dropping it atop the dresser, he wrapped her in his arms. “I’ve been searching all over the city for you.”

  She sagged against him, fisting her hands in his shirt to keep him close. “You’re supposed to be in California.”

  “I’m supposed to be right here. What’s the matter with your voice?”

  “Smoke inhalation.”

  He could hardly bear to think about what she’d been through. And how much worse it could have been.

  “Noah, are you shaking?”

  “Like a leaf,” he admitted. “I need a minute. Just…give me a minute.” He closed his eyes and pressed his cheek to the top of her head—relishing the feel of her in his arms, breathing her in. He caught the hint of smoke beneath her shampoo and another tremor moved through him. “Are you all right? Were you hurt?”