My stomach twists. “Someone was attacked?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I push through the rest of the crowd, Ryder at my side, and stop dead when my gaze falls on the unconscious man with a bloody wound on the back of his head.
“Kai?”
No.
No, no, no.
“Kai?” Ryder’s eyes are huge when he turns and meets mine. “As in Reed’s bodyguard, Kai?”
There’s one terrible moment when time seems to stop. When the world halts its spinning, and I’m suspended in a static-filled state of denial.
It’s not him. It’s someone who looks like him. It can’t be Kai. Because that means that Reed and Blair…
“Blair,” I choke out, turning to grip Ryder’s coat. “Reed.”
Nothing else needs to be said. I turn to Maddox and Griffin as they walk up and hope they can interpret what I’m about to say. “She’s here.”
“What?” Maddox frowns as he takes in my expression.
“The stalker. She’s here.”
“Fuck,” Griffin curses.
“Fire!” someone screams on the sidewalk.
The world starts spinning again, but this time, it’s moving too fast. So fast, it feels like I’m moving in slow motion as I turn to the voice screamingfire.
A panicked woman races out of Blair’s building, a toddler clutched to her chest. “There’s a fire on the second floor.”
And that’s when the fire alarms start blaring in the building and white emergency lights begin flashing.
“No.” Helplessly, I look to my friends. “No.”
And then I’m running.
“Dude, wait!” Griffin’s voice trails after me. It’s full of the same panic coursing like acid through my veins. It fizzes and sizzles, urging me to move faster.
I need to get to them. Now.
A fire.
They must be so scared.
People stream past me, and I’m shoving and pushing against a panicked tide. The acrid scent of smoke is faint, but unmistakable, as I struggle to climb the stairs to the second floor. My friends are at my back, barking orders at the shrieking residents. Telling them to get out of the building. To get out of our way.
I ignore it all. I don’t feel the elbows that dig into my side as I’m jostled by fleeing residents. I don’t feel the brush of bodies shoving me against the wall. I don’t feel anything at all, outside of the pulsing fear infecting every inch of my being.
“Wait!” a high-pitched voice screams. Then there are hands grabbing at me. “Don’t go up there. It’s not safe.”
I turn to the woman clinging to me, hoping to find my girlfriend’s familiar face. But even as I entertain the momentary thought, I know it’s not her. The voice is too high-pitched. Grating.
“Please, Logan.”
That shocks my brain online. Everything narrows down to her face. Her vaguely familiar face.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, full lips, and a slightly upturned nose. There’s something disingenuous about the worry in her eyes.
