Even if she’d run out panicked, disoriented, and with burns, it would’ve been instinct to head that way.
That last shred of hope held tight in my desperate hands, I started to turn the corner—
My knees and hands slammed onto the grass, the knuckles of my right hand grazing the hard edge of the patio stones.
Even the grass felt hot. As did my back, the house and its devouring flames too close.
I didn’t care. About the heat, or about the throbbing in my knees.
The reason I’d fallen was because I’d tripped over someone. “Diya!” I cradled her in my arms even as I blinked desperately in an effort to see more clearly through the smoke.
She rasped a breath, the honey-brown skin of her face paler than I’d ever seen it, and her floral dress and green cardigan all wet against my skin. She must’ve doused herself with water in an effort to survive. “Diya, baby, I’ve got you! Hold on!”
Her fingers clutched at my tee, her eyes pleading as her mouth moved.
Desperation was a scream in her expression.
I’d been about to rise to my feet with her in my arms but now leaned instinctively closer to reassure her that she’d be all right.
But Diya spoke first. Her voice was a ragged whisper, her breath hotter than the fire. “Annie…they said…about Annie…not…”
Her body went limp.
“Diya!” But her eyes were closed, her face slack.
“—no way inside!” A coughing male voice. “Oh my God! You found someone!” The neighbor came down on Diya’s other side. “Wait, is that…”
I stared at my hand at the same time. Even the bleary vision created by the smoke and my watering eyes couldn’t obscure the red wetness bright against the pale skin of my palm. “Blood.” It came out a rough whisper.
My wife of exactly forty-three days was bleeding.
Bleeding so much that the red on her dress wasn’t flowers, but scarlet blooms that grew as I watched. She hadn’t doused herself in water; it was blood that smeared my skin where I held her, blood that pasted her clothes to her skin.
“Has she been shot?” the neighbor yelled.
No. No, there are too many blooming spots. Too many…holes in her dress.
“Stabbed.” It came out a soundless whisper.
The woman I adored beyond all reason or rational thought had been brutally stabbed.
Something crashed inside the house, spouts of flame jetting out from the back toward the lake. Turquoise shifted to orange, the lake a mirror aflame. Then the entire house seemed to pulse, the fire suddenly oddly quiet.
Primitive instinct took over. Scooping Diya into my arms, I said, “Run!”
Flames at my back, the world silent, and then…a massive boom of sound as the house let out its breath and exploded in all directions.
Chapter 2
Private notes: Detective Callum Baxter (LAPD)
Date: Dec 2
Time: 20:37
Arrived at site of single-vehicle crash on Knox Canyon Road. One fatality: Virna Musgrave (68). Not suspicious at first glance, but the local out walking his dog who discovered the crash—James Whitby (46)—states that Ms.Musgrave drove this route monthly for years without any issues, and that she never exceeded the speed limit.
“If anything,” he stated, “she sat at least ten below. Used to annoy the shit out of her neighbors—me included—if we ever got stuck behind her, but she always said we’d thank her one day for teaching us patience.
