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So, maybe it was metal. Safe-room grade. York, you dog.

“Selah!” He pounded on the door. “Let me in!”

Nothing.

“The house is on fire!”

Please, please don’t be trapped in there.

He ran out into the master and slammed the door shut. Then he threw a couple pillows from the bed onto the floor and covered up the crack in the door.

That would buy them time.

He was opening the window, trying to let in fresh air, his brain scrambling for how to get into the safe room, when he spotted them.

Her.

Selah, her blonde hair in a wave, running hard along the shoreline, holding a child on her hip.

Running away from him again.

While he was trapped in a burning house.

Yes, that felt about right.

He shouted, but of course she couldn’t hear him, not above the flames now crawling up the back side of the house.

So much for that happy ending, the one where he scooped her up, told her that he couldn’t live without her, that she was light and mercy and grace and the reason he could return from the dark places he had to inhabit to do his job.

To keep her safe.

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

Of course now that verse would find him. He stood at the window, watching her run, breathing in fresh air, the fire growling around him.

Okay, so maybe he was a little afraid.

Lord, I could use…help.

And that’s when he spotted a trellis on the far side of the house, just beyond the window ledge.

He just needed to get out and pray the trellis held his weight.

Here went nothing…

* * *

Sixteen or so years ago…

Almost home.

The Mediterranean stretched endless and blue, waves trembling against the hull of their chartered boat. Salt air kissed Timea’s skin, teased her dark hair from its loose braid. She gripped the polished teak rail of the trawler Alexander had rented out of Santorini, her sundress curling around her shape, the tiniest of baby bumps.

“I still can’t believe we did it.” She lifted her face to the sun, and Alexander’s heart squeezed at the sight. Three weeks of trains and back roads, careful misdirection, had finally brought them here. Three weeks out from Budapest. Free.

He stood at the helm, parting the waves as they motored to Crete. A two-day trip aboard a liveaboard trawler. It felt like a real honeymoon, and he could nearly taste it—their future. “Having second thoughts, Mrs. Cooper?”

“James.” She rolled his true first name on her tongue like honey. “James Cooper.” She turned and walked over to him, leaned up against his back, her arms around his shoulders. “It fits you. Better than Alexander ever did.”