Page 57 of Grant’s Blaze

But…that still didn’t explain…

Rio. My God, Rio!

“Rio!” I felt my way back to the bed and found the side where I had slept. I put my knee up on the mattress to crawl over to her. Only…it wasn’t a mattress I knelt on. It was so damn dark in the room, I couldn’t see anything. I felt around beneath me, and nothing made sense.

Until it did.

“No!”

I could hear my voice now. A roar full of sorrow and horror and devastation.

“No! This is not happening!”

I was frantic to move whatever it was—an arm, a leg—I couldn’t tell, but I knew it wasn’t her because it was big. Much bigger than Rio’s body at least. And I knew the feel of her body, and she had been right beside me all night. I’d felt her there. I swore I’d kill those motherfuckers if they hurt her. If they took the one amazing thing I finally had in my life and hurt her…

I’d kill those goddamned barbarians. I’d haul them off their pathetic boat and kill them with my bare hands. First, I would get her back, then I would end them. Each and every one of them.

But there were more bodies now. They were getting harder to move because they were stacking up faster than I could maneuver on my own. But I had to help her. If Rio was still on the bed beneath all those bodies, she’d be buried alive. She’d die of suffocation beneath an avalanche of dead bodies, and I’d never be able to save her.

“Someone help me! Help me!”

I shouted it into the darkness while pulling on the leg closest to me, fighting to move it out of the way. Then I went for the next one, and the next one. I must have worked for hours that way, but for each corpse I moved to get to Rio, another two layers were added on top.

I was desperate. Devastated. For the first time since my mother’s death, I openly sobbed. Rio was going to die right in front of me, just like my mother, and there was nothing I’d be able to do to save her.

Just like my mother.

In the distance, I could hear her. Her screams were muffled, but she was calling my name. I launched myself on top of the closest body, tugging and yanking the thing by the neck.

“Grant! Grant!”

“I know, baby.” And once more, my mouth was moving but making no sound. Not carrying a decibel of volume. “I’m coming for you. I promise, Blaze…”

“Stop!” she called out. But that made no sense at all.

“Rio?” I yelled back. “Where are you, baby? Just hold on—”

“Grant! Damn it, stop! You’re hurting me. You’re going to break my neck!”

“No. No. I’m going to get you out of there, baby. I promise.”

“Let…go…of me!”

There was something different to her protest now. In the pauses…

The moments she gave herself time to gasp for air…

“Asshole. Get off me. Wake the fuck up and get off me!”

A bolt of lightning struck me right between the legs. I flew across the cargo hold of the ship and landed on my back, staring up at the ceiling. My breathing was so erratic, it sounded like a woman’s crying. Blinding sunlight came through the portholes. The crew must’ve felt generous and allowed fresh air and light in for the day.

“What the fuck was that?” Rio’s voice was scratchy at half the volume it normally carried.

Cold water soaked my clothes, jolting me fully awake. I sat up and looked around, dazed and confused on the bedroom floor of my Naples condo.

Rio loomed above me, looking madder than I’d ever seen her. She held an empty water bottle in her hand, water still dripping off the rim. “Well? What do you have to say, damn it? Answer me.”

“Huh?” I sputtered, scrubbing a trembling hand down my soaked face. “Answer? About…what?”