Page 127 of Ink and Ashes
His eyes narrow in my direction as I send a silent prayer up that he ends up trapped in here with me.
Without wasting another moment, he grabs my arms and drags me down the hall. My fight or flight kicks in and I scream, pulling against the tape around my hands and feet, but they don’t budge. The only way I’m going to make it out of here is by being rescued. I just have to hope that Colson figures it out and finds me before it’s too late.
Welland pulls me into an unfinished bathroom and pulls out a roll of duct tape. My eyes widen and in a moment of panic and a desperate attempt to delay him, I say, “I’m sorry about what happened to your family.”
He hesitates for a moment and his throat bobs, but he brushes it off quickly, returning to his task. He grabs my hands, binding them to an open pipe on the wall. I hiss as the heated metal presses against my skin, confirming even more that this house is up in flames.
“Joseph, please,” I beg, but it falls on deaf ears. He’s been at this for nearly three decades—he’s too far gone to be stopped.
He wraps the duct tape as tightly as possible, then tears off another strip. “I gave you plenty of warnings, Rothwell. You shouldn’t have stuck your nose where it didn’t belong. I have nothing left to lose. But they all do.” He presses the tape over my mouth. “You.”
With that, he stands and kicks me out of the way of the door to pull it shut, locking me inside. I pull at the pipe, praying the tape will come loose. When it doesn’t, I scan the room, hoping to find something to cut myself free somehow. But there’s nothing. I’m trapped.
I hear a rush of flames from outside the door, and it hits me then that this is actually happening. I’ve been in a lot of scary situations throughout my career, but this one takes the cake.
I curse myself for my unrelenting inability to keep my mouth shut. For ever allowing myself to get into this situation. For every mistake I’ve made and every person I’ve hurt since coming to this town.
For not telling Colson how I really feel about him sooner. Now it might be too late.
My tears fall harder. Colson is the one good thing that’s come out of this for me. The one thing that stops me from entirely regretting coming here. I hate myself for not thinking of him earlier when Whitlock found me in the conference room. For not waiting until he got back to share what I found. Maybe if I had, I wouldn’t be here right now.
He’s been through so much, and it makes me sick to my stomach that this is happening to him again. If I don’t make it out of this, I can’t even imagine what that will do to him.
I need to keep fighting. I blink fast, trying to clear the tears and my head, but the room is starting to feel like a sauna. Smoke creeps in under the door, and the room quickly becomes hazy.
I cough through the tape as the edges of my vision go blurry, my head spinning. I put all the fight I have into keeping my eyes open, but my energy fades fast. And despite my will to stay strong, I can’t.
I drop my head to the floor, and the world around me goes black.
CHAPTER 46
Colson
We pull up to the old Welland Ranch to find what’s left of both the house and the barn on fire, along with the surrounding forest, engulfed in flames.
I’m out of the truck before Travis has even put it in park, heading straight for the house.
“Caldwell, wait up!” Campbell calls out.
“Search the forest. I’m checking inside,” I call back, not stopping for a minute.
A lot of the house burned in the original fire thirty years ago, and what was left of it has taken a beating from the elements over the years. It’s an absolute death trap, and there aren’t many places Holland could be. But there’s a reason Whitlock chose this location for one of the fires, and my gut is telling me it’s because she’s here.
I pull my oxygen mask on as I rush inside, the smoke thick in the air. Flames shoot at me from every direction, making it easy to lose track of where in the house I am. I’m not surprised by how large the fire has grown in the thirty minutes it took us to drive outhere, considering how structurally unsound the building is. But it does send my heart sinking straight to my stomach.
Holland is stuck here.
Shehasto be here.
“Holland!” I call out as I start making my way deeper into the house. “Holland! Call out if you can hear me!”
No response.
I keep walking toward the back of the house, the flames getting hotter with every step I take. I check every room I pass, but it isn’t until the last room on the top floor that I see someone inside.
“Holland!” I shout as I rush over to the body, but when I bend down to roll them over, Pierce Whitlock stares back at me.
Son of a bitch.
