Adapting Desires (Endangered Heart Series Book 3) (15 page)

With shaking hands he checked his cellular device. Other than several missed calls from the security company, there were no calls or messages from Emilia. Still, he attempted to call her, his panic only becoming worse when there was no response and he could see nothing but dark smoke through the windows. Calling out for her seemed redundant as the smoke alarms, routed into the security system, were screeching throughout the house. With any luck there would be reinforcements shortly.

Though he tripped over himself and his legs felt impossibly thick, Kasper made his way back to the left side of the house, the smoke being the only thing from stopping him from grabbing the hot doorknob of the front door. Still, with a few good kicks to the service door, he managed to bar it loose enough to stick his head through, calling to Emilia through the smoke and erratic beeping of the smoke detectors. Coughing like a lifetime smoker, he held his breath and squatted down, trying to push himself further but unable to do so.

“Emilia!”

Once more, there was no response, and the only visible entity through the smoke was the raging flames quickly making their way from the hall. Despite his tall frame, Kasper weaseled himself through the basement door, grabbing a tea towel from the kitchen countertop and army crawling on the tile floor. Even this normally cool surface seemed hot to the touch, and the towel he was using to cover his nose and mouth was less than agreeable.

Trying to see through the smoke proved as fruitless as calling out for Emilia. Every attempt to scream her name resulted in the sharp inhale of additional smoke, making his head swim and his lungs crinkle like paper in his chest. Despite all of this, the obvious was not lost on him. If Emilia was still in the house, then she could have been unconscious—she could have been dead already.

Chapter 13

He squirmed around the kitchen island, unable to reach the fire extinguisher under the sink because of the impending flames from all sides of him. While the glow of red and orange swelled around him, Kasper’s lungs burned, flaring with each inhale and exhale his measly body attempted. He knew he should have made himself as small as possible, but since leaving the kitchen was out of the question, Kasper stood up and on the tips of his toes, relief flooding him when he realized the fire had not yet climbed the staircase. If Emilia was still in the house, it was entirely possible that she had found another way to get out of the smoldering house.

Kasper doubled back around, stumbling as the dizziness overwhelmed him. Stars clouded his eyes as he crawled through the busted door to the outside. Once outside though, the oxygen available wasn’t sufficient enough. If he breathed all the air in the world it would never be enough. Damn those lungs of his! If he had only held his breath for a bit longer!

Cold seeped through the fabric of his trousers when he collapsed to the ground. Coughing and swearing still, the snow he rubbed in his eyes did little if anything to relieve the burning in his eyes and the pain of his singed face.

Before he could stop them, a set of soot clad arms pulled him away, speaking in a code of numbers through a gas mask. Though he still struggled to remain conscious, Kasper was aware of the ghastly red and yellow trucks parked in his yard, their loud blue and red sirens ringing in the air. He tried to curse, to protest, but his vocal cords stung as if they had been pricked by thorns and his lungs were no longer capable of retaining air by themselves.

Hands wearing yellow rubber gloves put an oxygen mask on him. A dozen voices talked all at once, shouting and relaying numbers and directions at each other. They seemed to be working hurriedly, but just what were these people doing? Kasper’s vision was cloudy at best, but he could still see no signs of Emilia. Didn’t they know she was more important on a bad day than he could be on a good day? Why did he not want her going to that party again? Something about wanting to keep her
safe
? Fear for her well-being? Watching men in heavy Kevlar suits roll out black and yellow hoses, it occurred to Kasper how asinine his protectiveness had been when she was not even safe in her own home.

“My wife,” he managed to croak. Clearly the words were too distorted to be heard. What if her only way out of the house had been to jump from a top floor? What if she was lying broken and bleeding in the backyard and these idiots were too stupid to look for her?

People he guessed to be paramedics held clipboards and changed the latex gloves on their hands, easily ignoring how Kasper pulled at them—a child’s attempt for attention. He assumed they were asking him questions because he could see their mouths moving, but he could not hear the words, hardly felt the stethoscope on his chest or the blanket draped over his shoulders. Still, they were focusing on him? Working to put out the fire? What kind of imbeciles were these people? His mind screamed at him, yelled and roared. If his heart had legs it would have kicked at him.

“Emilia…where—”

Again he went unheard. Whether his words were lost in the chaos or damaged vocal cords made him inaudible, he wasn’t sure. All he could be sure about was the pain in his head and chest and the fact that Emilia still wasn’t accounted for. It seemed to him as if the fire department were more concerned with securing the property than clearing the manor itself. While to their credit they seemed to have cleared the stables, shed, and garage, Kasper could not understand why there were so many of them on their walkie-talkies and such—concerned about putting out the fire when Emilia was still not at his side.

Though the paramedics were only distracted for a moment, it was enough for Kasper to use his remaining strength to push himself from the ambulance. His wobbling legs and weak knees cooperated with him just long enough to take a few steps around the ambulance—giving him an ample view of his blazing house. How had the inferno erupted so quickly? Raging gusts of fire and smoke were impossible to differentiate from the kitchen, dining room, and foyer. Where did one begin room begin and another end? Had it climbed upstairs yet? Was Emilia unconscious in one of the bedrooms? Unable to pry open a window? The closer he came to the inferno, the more the smoke burned his eyes and the panic blurred his mind. He glanced upward, hopeful and frightened at the prospect of seeing her trapped on the balcony or roof, but the billows of smoke and his stinging eyes prevented even this.

Kasper could see that the windows of both the downstairs study living room were gone. Whether it was from the efforts of the firefighters or the blaze itself, Kasper remained unsure. Through the flames had partially gone down, Kasper was unable to clasp onto a window’s ledge due to two firefighters pulling him back and shouting various obscenities at him. Strangely he did not struggle as his mind wanted him too, but instead allowed them to pull him back, a new idea springing to his mind when he saw the unsupervised cellar door.

***

The first thing was the smoke. Through the untamed forest and down the long dirt road, Emilia could smell it easily through the clear night. Originally thinking it was some celebratory fireworks, she ignored it for the first minute or two, half expecting flames of purple and blue to be falling down from the direction of the closest residential area. Clearly holiday festivities were going on somewhere close-by. Judging by the wailing of sirens, Emilia guessed there had probably been alcohol or faulty new electronics involved, her natural empathy rising at the thought.

But when the smell of the smoke continued, grew stronger even, she dismounted Nefertiti and pointed her flashlight towards the main road. Knowing its beaming could never even begin to touch a broken down car or the nearest neighbor, she considered a more sinister prospect. Shivering from head to toe, she looked back in the direction of the house and clutched the flashlight closer to her chest.

Emilia had hoped to run into Kasper while riding Nefertiti yet had not done so. And if he had left by car, the odds were that she would have heard him drive away. Even as she remounted the horse, she told herself that maybe she had missed him and he was on the other side of the property. Or maybe he was bunking down in the wine cellar, getting a buzz because of their fight…

The flames were the second thing. Nefertiti saw them before Emilia did of course—or sensed them rather. Once the horse did, they spooked her so efficiently that the animal nearly threw Emilia off. Shaking and just as frightened as the horse, Emilia told herself to remain calm and climbed off, stepping back a few yards before tying Nefertiti to a steady looking tree as best she could before heading out on foot. For an instant, she saw small sparks rise above the tops of trees, instantly realizing the only building close enough to emit them was the manor.

Emilia stopped running only when her eyes caught sight of the police cars, parked in long lines along of the edge of the gravel path. A memory went through her mind, and she distinctly recalled the first time she drove up to Iram Manor—a nervous housekeeper, terrified of getting the wrong address and worried about finding time to sleep.

Now the possibilities seemed innately worse.

“Miss? Excuse me, Miss? You can’t be here!”

Emilia turned to see two police officers hardly older than herself jogging at her from a distance, her mind still unwilling to accept the sight of crime scene tape and reflective cones being welded out to prevent possible onlookers.

“I-I live here,” she stuttered.

One of the officers said something into his walkie-talkie while the other one asked her for identification. Normally, she would have been willing to oblige them, yet given the circumstances, and still unaware of Kasper’s whereabouts, she ran past them, losing them in the mud and running the remaining distance to her home.

She was aware of them chasing her, but her attention, like that of everyone else, was lost to the blaze taking place inside the manor. Like a child daft enough to stare at the sun, she stared at the flames whipping and dancing their way around the firemen’s attempts to tame them. Even over the cold of night, heat radiated from the building, trying to pull her and everyone around her into its burning abyss. Though she was cold, sweat prickled at her palms and forehead, while the intolerable scent of smoke coated her nostrils and throat enough to make her dizzy.

“Miss?”

A heavy hand on her shoulder reminded her she wasn’t alone. Almost an instant later the hand was shooed away by one wearing soft mittens, and a wave of guilt washed over Emilia. For all the things she was worried over, Mrs. Levkin hadn’t even crossed her mind.

“Mrs. Levkin!” Emilia gestured wildly to the house, her eyes searching for Kasper and seeing nothing. “What—?”

The older woman shook her head and embraced Emilia in an unwanted hug. “Thank heavens,” she said breathlessly. “Where in the world have you been?”

Emilia ignored the question and called out for Kasper, the sound of eager sirens and shouting firefighters drowning out the sound of her voice. In spite of her increasing panic, she could easily see the officers investigating the stables and the inside of one of the sheds, making it obvious Kasper wasn’t in either of those places.

“Emilia.” Mrs. Levkin stepped in front of Emilia and grabbed her by the shoulders, shaking her much harder than she would have thought her capable of. “Why didn’t you pick up your phone?”

“I—in the house—”

The older woman sighed and released her grip on Emilia. “Of course it is.”

Before Emilia could figure out which direction to begin her search, a loud clamoring of something adjacent from her alerted her attention to the fact that the quickly moving fire had spread to the second floor, the likely noise being the collapsing of part of the staircase.

“Oh my God.”

With it, the remainder of the police officers disappeared, and the hard sound of metal whipping through the sky only had a few necks craned upward. It may have taken Emilia three or four seconds to realize it was a helicopter flying entirely too low. She sprinted back to the awestruck Mrs. Levkin and demanded answers.

“Where’s Kasper?”

Startled, Mrs. Levkin looked over Emilia’s shoulder with wide eyes. “Isn’t he with you?”

“No!” she screamed. “Why would he—”

“I just got here,” Mrs. Levkin explained quickly. “The security company has me on the contact list. I assumed you two made up.”

Emilia didn’t understand this. Her eyes roamed the chaotic scene, easily illuminated by the flames and the lights of the fire trucks. There were police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and officials from both the state and security company.

There was no Kasper.

She called for him more than once, shrugging off Mrs. Levkin’s hand and inhaling deep despite the smoke and wind that tried to ravish her.

“Kasper!”

Too busy to contain her, Emilia went unnoticed by firefighters and several officers who attempted to control the water pressure and the horses. She ran to the side of the stables, her lungs involuntarily inhaling smoke from the exercise and panic. In the back of her mind she heard one officer shout something to the other about calling animal control. Desperate and overpowered by anxiety, she pulled at the sleeves of one and tried to get his attention

“Have you seen my husband? He’s tall, wears a mask…”

Without a word, the firefighter shook her off and gestured for a paramedic to come over.

Seeing what was about to happen, Emilia ran from the side of the stables, back to the center of the action where firefighters still struggled to control the blaze. The small bare shrubs just outside of the kitchen were long gone now—the heavy pressure hoses managing to control the heat before it caught the dead grass.

“Kasper!”

The third and final thing was the gurney.

Like a well chorographic ballet, the paramedics heard something from the speakers attached to equipment and ran in one direction simultaneously. Emilia knew even then that they had found what she had been looking for, that without even saying it the situation was dire.

She pushed and shoved with the best of them, swearing and calling out when she tripped and fell over herself. This brief pain, however, was nothing compared to what she felt when the group of firemen hustled out the gurney and an injured body covered in a blue tarp.

Instinctively she tried to go to him, but a familiar pair of arms held her shoulders.

“Let them do their job, dear,” Mrs. Levkin insisted. “Give them room to work!”

The hysteria threatened to take over, and she only caught a glimpse of oxygen masks and needles, of IV bags and disinfectant swabs. Sounds rang in and out of her ears, but she hardly heard any of it, staring continuously at Kasper’s soot covered clothing and reddened face. Voices asked her questions about allergies, age and health conditions, but they meant nothing to her—and she suspected she was just as useless as if she was not there at all.

Mrs. Levkin’s voice fielded the questions, and maybe if Emilia wasn’t so terrified, she would have known enough to be grateful. But as it was, the center of her focus was on the stillness of her husband, excluding the erratic movement of his chest. Emilia shook herself from Mrs. Levkin and knelt on the ground beside him. Even though he had just emerged from the flames, his skin felt oddly cold to her. Was this the icy grip of death?