Page 30 of A One Woman Job

“I gave her a week to convince you to return to work, but once I saw the way she looked at you tonight, I knew she’d never send you back to this dangerous world. Women who look at men like that only want to keep them close. Keep them safe. She is no use to me. And you know how I do things, Koen. I don’t waste time once I make a decision.” She taps her chin with her index finger. “I wonder if she’ll love you back when all of her siblings and father die in a house fire while you were standing here chitchatting with me.”

The knife slicing through the air can’t be heard over my bellow of denial.

Meg

The house is alreadyon fire by the time I arrive.

It’s not fully engulfed yet, but fire is flickering quickly up one side, as if following a trail of fuel, like kerosene. I’m out of breath after hitchhiking to town, which was dangerous in itself, then sprinting the remaining mile. But I’m not too late. I’m refuse to be too late.

I run for the front door, my knees nearly buckling with relief when I find it open and I run inside, already formulating a game plan. Upstairs first—

Footsteps coming up the porch turn me around and I catch the barest glimpse of a man’s nondescript face…right before he slams the house door shut, closing me inside. Panic clogs my throat and I lunge, trying the handle, but…it doesn’t turn. It won’t turn! He’s put something beneath it to prevent anyone from exiting the house. In my haste to find a different means of egress, I look around and realize…

Boards have been hammered over all the windows.

Dizziness hits me hard, and I stagger back, but I don’t lose hope completely. No. There has to be a way out. But first, I must alert everyone to the fire. They’ll help me execute my plan, whenever one occurs to me.Better think fast.

As quickly as my legs will carry me, I run up the stairs, “Fire! Fire! Wake up!”

The sleepy faces of my sister and one of my brothers appears in the doorway of one room. “Meg?”

“Yes. Wake up Dad. Tell him there’s a fire and then get downstairs. Move. Now!”

Their eyes widen with fright, but they do as they’re told and I clamber back downstairs, beginning to hear a crackling noise. Fire. The fire is inside the kitchen now. How can it move so quickly? How? I don’t have that much time. I have no idea how much kerosene has been used to accelerate the fire. And we’re locked inside.

No help for it now, I’m so scared, I can hear my heartbeat rattling in my ears.

Koen’s face materializes in my mind and I cry out for him, uselessly, knowing he won’t survive my death. My soul mate. My twin flame. How unfair would it be to find him only to have everything ripped away from us?

“Fire!” I screech, my voice starting to sound sooty. It’s the smoke.

It’s rising around me, my siblings and my father, who stumbles into the entryway, clearly drunk, but beginning to comprehend the danger we’re in. “The windows are boarded,” he slurs, blinking in confusion.

“Why are we locked in?” shouts my sister over the sound of the flames eating through wood, her hand furiously trying to turn the door handle.

Full of fear, I look around and deduce the flames are farthest from the back of the house, so I hustle everyone in that direction, picking up a chair on my way and wailing on one of the rear windows as soon as we hit that section of the house, hoping to weaken the board. When that doesn’t work, I stand up on the chair and attempt to kick the board free. Once, twice. It’s loosening a little, but oh Jesus, the flames are in the room with us now—

Koen enters the room, a dark figure appearing like a phantom.

He walks straight through the center of the fire. “Meg!” he roars, his distress palpable. Bigger than the fire. “Meg. Meg.”

“Help us,” I sob. “I can’t get—”

His fist goes through the board, tearing it from the window, so it’s no longer blocking our exit. “Wait,” he barks, taking a gun from inside his jacket and looking out the window, his expression deadly. “They won’t leave your deaths to chance. Someone is out there, waiting to pick you off.”

“What?”

“Protocol. But you know I won’t let that happen, don’t you?”

I’m already nodding. He came. He’s here. He walked through fire for us.

“Who is this, Meg?” inquires my father, as if we’re having a tea party.

“I’ll explain later.”

“You.” Koen turns his cold stare on my father. “This is your doing. You climb out the window. When I see where the gunfire is coming from, I’ll eliminate it.”

“What if the gunfire hits me?” my father sputters.

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