My breath hitched.
“If the poison doesn’t finish the job, the smoke will,” Daniel whispered. “A tragic house fire. Destroys all the evidence. It’s perfect.”
He walked out of the bathroom, leaving the door wide open. From my position on the floor, unable to move a single muscle, I watched through the hallway as he grabbed a bottle of high-proof bourbon from the living room bar. He splashed it aggressively across the hallway carpet, the curtains, the wooden stairs.
“Daniel, hurry!” Vanessa’s voice wailed from the front door.
He flicked the lighter. The small flame danced in the darkness of our home, casting long, monstrous shadows against the wall.
“Goodbye, Rachel,” he said loudly.
He dropped the lighter.
Whoomp.
The alcohol-soaked carpet ignited instantly. A wall of bright, aggressive orange fire erupted in the hallway, cutting off the bathroom from the rest of the house. The heat hit my face like a physical blow, instantly drying the sweat on my skin. Thick, black, acrid smoke began to billow toward the ceiling, rolling along the molding and pouring into the bathroom like a dark tidal wave.
Outside, the faint, distant wail of sirens finally broke through the night air. They were close. Maybe thirty seconds away.
But thirty seconds was too long.
The smoke dropped lower, filling the room. I began to cough, a violent, hacking sound that tore at my lungs, but my limbs still refused to obey me. The poison had completely disconnected my brain from my body. I could only watch as the smoke crawled across the floor, creeping toward Noah’s motionless form.
Get up, I screamed at myself. GET UP!
I managed to twitch my fingers. That was it. Just a twitch.
Through the roaring crackle of the flames in the hallway, I heard the front door slam shut. Daniel and Vanessa were gone. They were escaping into the night, leaving us to burn alive in the dark.
Then, a sound broke through the roaring fire.
It wasn’t the sirens. It wasn’t the crackle of burning wood.
It was a heavy, metallic crash from the back of the house. The sound of the kitchen window shattering.
My heart hammered against my ribs. Had the police broken in through the back? But the sirens were still down the street. It couldn’t be them.
Through the thick barrier of fire and smoke in the hallway, I saw a silhouette appear at the end of the corridor.
The flames illuminated the figure clearly. It wasn’t a police officer in tactical gear. It wasn’t a firefighter.
It was a tall man, dressed entirely in black, wearing a heavy leather jacket. He didn’t seem bothered by the fire. He walked through the smoke with a slow, deliberate stride, a wet cloth held over his mouth. In his right hand, he held something heavy and metallic. A crowbar.
He stopped at the edge of the fire, looking directly through the flames into the bathroom, straight at me.
I couldn’t see his face through the smoke, but as he stepped closer to the edge of the blaze, the firelight caught his eyes. They were cold, calculating, and completely familiar.
It was Arthur Carter. Daniel’s estranged older brother, a man who had been presumed dead in a boating accident three years ago. The man whose massive inheritance Daniel had stolen to fund his lifestyle.
Arthur looked at me, then looked down at the fire separating us. He raised the crowbar, but he didn’t move to help. Instead, he reached into his jacket, pulled out a small glass vial filled with a clear liquid, and tossed it through the flames.
