THE BOMB HIT with a blast of fire that threw Emma backward in a violent wall of heat and pain. Her head cracked against the pavement and spots of white danced in her vision like drunken stars. She lay still for a moment, bewildered at the smoke rolling toward the sky, her mind mud-thick and her ears ringing.
Olivia.
The thought was instantaneous. Emma jerked up to a sitting position and the world spun around her.
She growled in frustration at her impairment, gritting her teeth in an effort to sharpen her fuzzy mind. The tenement building Olivia had gone into swam in Emma’s view. Fire licked up from broken windows and part of the third floor was missing, but it was otherwise intact.
The two buildings to the right, however, were almost completely gone, with the third being little more than a patch of bald, scorched earth.
The bomb had not fallen directly where Olivia was after all.
Emma staggered to her feet, wincing as her weight landed on her bad ankle, and hobbled across the street to the building.
The first floor was on fire, evidenced by the charred curtains glowing with embers as they trailed out of the broken windows, revealing a torrent of flames within.
Olivia was in that burning building. Just as Emma had once been with Papa.
A howl of pain rose up from the emotional wound deep inside her.
She had lost her father. She would not lose her daughter too.
Her heart thundered in her ears and everything in her screamed at her to run.
Without another thought, Emma shoved down every instinct within her, and broke through the veil of smoke into an inferno of flames.
The interior of the building looked to be someone’s home, with a burning sofa, scorched wallpaper, and a grandfather clock tipped on its side like something dead. The roar of the bestial blaze sent a chill down her spine despite the overwhelming heat.
The sound was one she recalled all too vividly from a decade ago. When she had been at its mercy. When that fateful fire had taken everything from her.
There was a familiar metallic taste at the back of her tongue and everything in her mind went numb with dread.
“Olivia!” Emma screamed her daughter’s name, breaking through the horror of her memories and the paralysis of her terror.
The air stung her throat, burning a path down into her lungs. She pulled off her scarf to wrap around her mouth the way Papa had done with the blanket that day of the fire.
She scanned the home, searching for the jumper amid the red-and-orange flames that flicked and snapped and made invisible waves dance in her vision.
Smoke stung her eyes, and the intensity of the heat left her skin feeling as though it was blistering. But still she pressed deeper into the building, determined to find her daughter.
Olivia was here. Emma had seen with her own eyes. And she would not leave without her.
Emma called for her daughter again, choking on the acidic air. The sputtering gasp led to a racking cough as she sucked in lungfuls of smoke in an attempt to catch her breath.
Her head spun, aching with the fierce shuddering of her body. She inhaled, desperate to gulp in clean air, and was met only with more strangling smoke. Her limbs were suddenly too heavy and she staggered, her bad ankle collapsing beneath her. Then she was falling, crashing to the ground where the air was cooler, easier to breathe.
She drew in a deep breath. “Olivia.” Her daughter’s name was said on an exhale, too soft to be heard, but all she could manage. The roar of the fiery beast filled her ears, promising to finally claim her as its prize.
Her eyes fluttered closed, refusing to watch it come for her.
Olivia...
Emma pulled in a hard breath, the air cool enough to shock her eyes open. Sunlight winked at her through a cloud of smoke.
“She’s awake,” someone said.
“Emma.” Another voice. This one familiar.
She shifted her gaze from the sun and blinked up at Charles with a frown of confusion. Her mouth was so dry, her throat seemed to stick together. “Olivia?”
He was crouched at Emma’s side, next to a nurse whose medical bag lay open. “Everyone’s looking for her still,” Charles replied gently. “Remember, she left your in-laws.”
“No, she was in the building.”
The building!
“She’s in there, Charles.” Emma leaped to her feet so fast, she almost fell.
Charles caught her by the arm, his hold gentle but firm. “You can’t go in there, Emma, it’s not safe.”
The tenement building was immersed in flames now, a raging conflagration. But Olivia was in there. Right now, she could be lying amid the flames, choking on the burning air as Emma had done.
Wondering where her mother was.
That final thought had Emma pulling herself free from Charles and rushing toward the building. She went two steps before he reached for her again. When she evaded his grasp, he put his arms around her, not in an embrace, but in restraint.
“I’m sorry, Emma.” His voice was laden with regret. “You can’t go in there.”
Something primal exploded inside her. She lashed at him like an animal, squirming and thrashing, but his grip was like steel. She didn’t stop, screaming and writhing in a bid to escape his hold. A mother fighting to protect her child.
“Please don’t do this,” she sobbed, pleading with Charles. “Please let me go to my baby.”
“Emma, you can’t...” His words broke off, cracked with emotion.
There was a great, heaving howl, a sound that resonated in the depths of Emma’s soul, one she’d heard only once before when Tower Bookshop crumbled in on itself.
Charles pulled her back, just as the building began to collapse.
Emma screamed and screamed and screamed, her throat raw, the sound drowned out completely by the deafening thunder as the top floor sank in on itself, burying everything within beneath a pile of blazing rubble.
“I’m sorry.” Charles’s grip around Emma relaxed and the fight drained out of her.
She was too late.
Emma choked on her pain. The intensity of it was so solid, so real, as if her heart had been wrenched from her breast by that savage fire beast.
And surely it had.
Olivia.
With her wild chestnut hair, and those wide blue eyes that had latched onto Emma’s soul from the moment she was born. A perfect, beautiful daughter who looked up to Emma with respect. With love.
And Emma had failed her.
Olivia. With her infectious giggle, with a lovely kindness and empathy for one so young, with her enthusiasm for books, and a whole beautiful life ahead of her.
It was supposed to be the two of them against the world.
But the world had won.
Emma slid to the ground, a keening wail emanating from somewhere deep within her, a place that was irreparably broken.
Olivia was gone.