A second victim is brought out. Then a third. All women. All roughly the same age. All with that same look.
Something cold settles throughout my body.
“Liv,” Scott murmurs under his breath. “You seeing this?”
“Yeah,” I reply quietly. And I hate what I’m seeing.
I stabilize my patient enough for transport, and back-up arrived in time to take her to the nearest hospital, but the scene is still active, so we hold.
Which means I hear it.
“Hey, hey, you’re safe now,” Mason’s voice floats over from the other side of a nearby firetruck. He’s crouched in front of another woman, wrapped in a blanket, and shaking so hard that her teeth are chattering.
The first thing I note is that her breathing is okay and that she doesn’t have any visible injuries. Then I notice what she’s looking at: the building, but not the fire.
Like the walls are going to reach out and drag her back in.
“They’re gone,” Mason says quietly. “Whoever was here, they ran.”
Her head shakes fast. “No, they’ll come back. They always come back.”
“They won’t tonight,” he attests firmly. Something in his tone is different than I’ve heard from him before, less charming, more… solid. Grounding.
I find myself listening, even while I keep working.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asks.
She swallows hard. “They kept us here.”
My hands still for half a second.
Scott glances at me. We both heard it.
“In the building?” Mason asks carefully.
She nods. “Second floor mostly… sometimes third…” Her voice breaks. “They’d move us around, different rooms, different nights.”
My stomach drops.
“How many?” he asks.
“I- I don’t know,” she says. “There were more. Always more. They’d bring new girls in… take others out…hurtus.” Her fingers clutch the blanket tighter. “Upstairs…” her eyes darting toward the third-floor windows. “Something else was happening up there. I don’t know what. They never let us stay there long. Just… screams sometimes. Other times… just silence.”
A chill crawls up my spine.
“How did the fire start?” Mason asks.
She hesitates. Then confesses, “I did it.”
Everything seems to pause.
“I knocked over a lamp,” she continues, voice shaking but stronger now. “The cord was ripped; it tugged then sparked… caught the curtain… I just- I needed a way out.”
Her eyes squeeze shut. “They ran when it started spreading. Just left us.”
Of course they did.
“Did you see who was in charge?” Mason asks, voice tightening just slightly.
