Then heat.
I smell the fuel before I see the flames. Petrol. Leaking from the ruptured tank. And then the orange glow, creeping along the undercarriage toward the engine block.
“Aoife.” My voice comes out wrecked. “Aoife, look at me.”
She doesn’t move. Her body is limp against mine in the footwell, her head turned to the side. Blood in her hair. On her face. Coming from somewhere I can’t see.
I place my fingers on her neck. Find her pulse. It’s there. Fast. Thready. But there.
“Jason!” I shout.
A groan from the front. Jason is crumpled against the dash, his door above him, the window gone. He moves. Slow. One hand comes up and grabs the edge of his seat, and he pulls himself upright.
Blood is running from his hairline, and his left arm is hanging at the wrong angle, but he’s conscious. He looks back at me through the gap between the seats.
“Get her out,” I tell him. “Through the front. Go.”
The flames haven’t reached the cabin yet, but I can see the glow underneath the car. The fuel line or the exhaust. Something back near the tank where the missile hit. It’s a matter of time.
Jason turns toward the windshield. The whole thing is gone. Just a ragged frame of metal and the road beyond it, lit orange by the fire climbing underneath us. He crawls through, broken glass grinding under his knees, and reaches back with his good arm.
I lift Aoife toward him. My ribs scream. My shoulder is on fire. But I get her through the gap between the seats, and Jason grabs her under the arms and drags her out across the crumpled hood and onto the grass.
I follow. Hauling myself over the center console and through the windshield frame. My shirt catches on something metal and tears, and I feel the sharp bite of steel across my side, but I don’tstop. Can’t stop. The smoke is thickening, and if I stay in this car, I will burn.
I hit the ground. Jason already has Aoife ten meters up the verge, half carrying, half dragging her with his one good arm. I get to my feet, and the world tilts, but I make it to them and get her other side, and we move. Away from the road. Away from the wreck. Through wet grass that soaks my shoes and into the open field beyond the hedgerow.
We’re maybe thirty meters out when the car goes.
Not a slow burn. A detonation. The fuel tank catches, and the whole thing goes up in a column of orange and black that punches into the sky. The heat wave rolls over us even at this distance, and I pull Aoife down into the grass and cover her. Debris rains down around us. A side mirror. A chunk of the door panel. Something I don’t identify that thuds into the earth two feet from my head.
I stay over her until the debris stops.
Then I roll off onto my back. The sky above me is orange and black. My left knee doesn’t want to bend. My ribs are a solid wall of pain on the left side. The cut on my side is bleeding freely, soaking my shirt, warm and steady.
Jason is sitting in the grass a few metres away. His left arm hangs uselessly. Dislocated or broken, I can’t tell. He’s upright but barely, his breathing hard and shallow.
I turn my head. Aoife is right there beside me, on her back in the grass. Eyes closed. The blood on her face is fresh, mixing with the older blood from her temple wound. Her chest rises. Falls. Rises again.
I get onto my side. Put my hand on her face. “Aoife. Wake up.”
Nothing.
“Aoife.” Harder now. My thumb on her cheekbone. “Open your eyes. Right now.”
Her eyelids flutter. Her pupils are wrong. One bigger than the other. Concussion. Bad one.
“Hey.” I put my forehead against hers. “Stay with me. You hear me? Stay with me.”
Her lips move. No sound comes out. Then her hand finds my wrist and grips, and she’s looking at me, trying to focus, and the relief that floods through me is so violent it almost has me sagging.
Headlights on the road.
Not from behind. Not the convoy. From ahead. Coming toward us. One set. Then two. Then five. Then more, pulling off the road onto the grass, forming a semicircle around the burning car.
Men climb out. Armed. Moving in formation. Spreading out to cover the field in a line that blocks every direction.
And then the last vehicle stops—a black SUV. The door opens, and a man steps out.
