"Ma'am, Captain Bennett's crew rolled out three minutes ago. They're en route now."
Three minutes. Already on their way. Already driving toward a building designed to kill them.
"You have to warn them. Radio them, call them, do something." I was gripping the phone so hard my knuckles ached. "The building is rigged to come down. Tell Cal! Please tell him Lucy Moreno is not inside. I'm not at the café. Neither is Joanna Pritchard. We're both safe. No one is in that building."
"Ma'am, I need you to slow down—" The operator’s calmness was driving me crazy; I couldn’t let her finish.
"There's no time to slow down!" I was screaming. Joanna took a corner too fast and I slammed against the door, but I didn't stop. "He's going to go inside thinking I'm trapped. But I'm not there. I was supposed to be there but I'm not. Please, you have to tell him I'm safe."
Static on the line. Muffled voices in the background. "Ma'am, I've relayed your message, but I need you to?—"
I hung up. I had to move fast. I dialed 911.
"911, what's your emergency?"
"There's an arson in progress at the Mountain Café on Main Street downtown. The building has been deliberately rigged to collapse. Someone is trying to kill the firefighters who respond."
"Can you repeat that, ma'am?"
I tried. The words came out jumbled, frantic—Evan's name, accelerants, structural weak points, how I was supposed to be inside but I wasn't, how Cal was going to die trying to save someone who wasn't there. The dispatcher asked questions I couldn't answer. I heard the doubt in her voice, the careful neutrality of someone handling a caller who sounded unhinged.
I hung up. I pushed the fear aside; I had to go straight to him. I dialed Cal.
One ring. Two. Three. My heart was completely unregulated
"This is Cal. Leave a message."
His voicemail. His voice was calm and steady like it was any other day.
"Cal, it's Lucy." My voice cracked on his name. "I'm not at the café. I'm not inside. Do you hear me? I'm safe. Joanna's safe. The café closed early today. There was a burst pipe, my shift got cancelled, we're not there. No one is in that building."
I sucked in a breath, tears streaming down my face.
"It's a trap. Evan set this up. He rigged the building to collapse. He wanted to kill me and Joanna and he wanted you to come running in to save us. But we're not there, Cal. I'm not there. You don't have to save me."
Another breath. Ragged, broken.
"I love you. Please don't go inside. Please. I'm safe. Just... please don't go in for me."
I hung up. Stared at the phone in my hand, at my own reflection in the dark screen.
He wasn't going to get that message in time. He was probably already there. Already inside.
"He won't have checked his phone," Joanna said quietly. She was driving too fast, blowing through yellow lights, taking corners at speeds that made the tires squeal. "Not on a call."
"I know."
"We're four minutes out."
I looked up through the windshield. The sky ahead of us glowed orange, a sick pulsing light that painted the clouds in shades of fire. Even from here,miles away, I could see the smoke column rising black against the darkness, blotting out the stars, swallowing the mountains.
Her café. Forty years of her life. Everything she and her late husband had built together, everything she'd held onto after he died. Burning.
"Joanna—"
"Don't." Her voice was tight. Controlled. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, tendons standing out like cables. "We can talk about the café later. Right now, we get to Cal."
The orange glow grew brighter. Emergency lights appeared through the haze—red and blue strobing against the smoke, painting the buildings around us in alternating color. Sirens wailed in the distance, layering over each other until they became one long continuous scream.
