“He’s my boy,” she choked out against his shirt, and snot and tears soaked into the fabric. “My Shay. Oh God, my baby’s in there, and he doesn’t…. He doesn’t know.”
“Know what?” Morgan asked.
She looked up at him, her face wet and devastated. “That I love him,” she said, voice broken. “I’m so…. I said things to him, and I didn’t mean them. I never mean them, but I still say them. Because I’ve got time to fix it, to take it back. But they said he’s in there. Sammy, tell me he’s not. Tell me I’ve got time.”
He let it go and carefully folded his arms around her. There was no softness to Donna. She was all angles and bones. Morgan hugged her anyhow, the way he’d wanted any of those conveyor-belt moms to hug him.
Like it was real, at least for the duration.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Boyd’s in there. Like you said, nothing bad will happen to him. He’ll get Shay out.”
Donna shuddered. She brought a fluttering hand to her throat and closed it on nothing. “I never mean it,” she said in a thin, weak voice. “I told God he could take them both if I had you back, but I didn’t mean that. He knew that, didn’t he? God wouldn’t do this.”
“He didn’t,” Morgan said confidently. If he were Sammy, he didn’t know if he’d have been so kind. He’d always wondered what it would be like to be loved that much. Now he knew, and it was terrifying. “They’ll be okay, D… Mom.”
She wiped her slick, wet face on her hand. “It’s okay,” she said. She flicked her gaze to the fire and away with another shudder that shook her from shoulders to knees. “You don’t have to call me that. I know you don’t believe it yet. We’ll have time. All of us, we’ll have time.”
Morgan sat down with her on the curb, his arm around her shoulders, and wished he was as confident as she was… as he’d tried to sound. In his experience, the only time life gave him anything good was so it could take it away again.
Chapter Nineteen
SHAY HADmoved into the half-renovated apartment over the garage when he divorced. He always planned to move somewhere else, but he never got around to it. There was always something else that had first dibs on his time and money.
The back corridor behind the shop was black with smoke. Visibility was nonexistent. The small kitchen and toilets had already been cleared.
“I’ll check upstairs,” he said to Harry. “You check the main showroom.”
“Boyd—”
“I know where everything is,” Boyd reminded him. “You don’t. Makes sense.”
“Stay in contact,” Harry warned him.
The metal railing of the stair was hot enough to scorch Boyd’s palm through his makeshift glove. He grimaced and hung on as he felt his way up and around the landing. A set of racer-red leather chairs, still wrapped in plastic, sagged and blistered where they’d fallen out from under the stairs.
Boyd climbed over them and scrambled on hands and knees up the last few stairs. He hammered on the door.
“Shay?” he said. “It’s Boyd. Can you hear me? Shay, answer me!”
He could have gotten it wrong. Shay could have spent the night in someone’s bed and just not found his way home yet. The only damage, once this was over, would be to the insurance company when the claim was settled.
Someone groaned on the other side of the door and then coughed.
“Boyd?” a slurred voice asked.
“We’ve got someone up here,” Boyd barked into his radio. “They could be injured. I’m going in.”
He tried the handle. It rattled but didn’t open. Boyd snorted to himself—the one time Shay listened to his advice and closed the door. He tested the heat of the door with one hand. It was good enough, so he wedged the edge of the hooligan into the door and shoved against it. The cheap wood buckled first, but the cheap lock was a close second.
Boyd shoved the door open and pushed his way in. The floor glowed in spots where the fire had reached the ceiling below, and hot embers were visible through the rippled carpet. Boyd registered and ignored it.
“Shay?” he called again. “C’mon, man, where are you.”
The groan was slightly more responsive this time, and Boyd saw something move in the smoke as Shay rolled over.
“Stay where you are,” he barked. “I’ll come to you.”
He used the hooligan to test the floor ahead of him as he picked his way around the apartment. The back of his neck, under his helmet and collar, itched with each step.
