Page 13 of Compulsion
Atlas put her on her feet.
She took a step toward the cabin.“Benedict, no one else was in the basement!Get out?—”
The explosion had her flying through the air and crashing into the ground.
Flames erupted.Flames devoured the little cabin.
And she kept screaming for Benedict.
ChapterThree
“Benedict!”Lily leapt back to her feet.She lunged toward the flames.“Benedict!”
“The fuck no!”Atlas locked one arm around her and yanked her back against him.Was the woman crazy?No way did she get to run toward the flames.And they weren’t staring at some small inferno.The flames were giant.Already eating at the top of the cabin.Burning at the old shingles.Pouring and raging from the windows along the front of the house.The fire raged because it was a full-on inferno.
Anyone inside had to be dead.
I would have been dead without her.
His men would have been dead.
As for the cop…
“Benedict!”Lily yelled again as she clawed at Atlas’s grip.She also elbowed him and kicked back against his shins.
Atlas ignored the blows and just held her tighter.
His men fanned toward the engulfed house.Smoke thickened the air.Cop cars came to a screeching halt and, yeah, there was a fire truck with them.Horn blaring.Firefighters leaping off the truck.
But that fire was too strong.
Anyone inside…
Gone.
She kept struggling.Fighting him.He just held her tighter.The firefighters hauled hoses from the truck.Blasted and blasted, but the fire raged ever more powerfully.
Burning and burning.
“He’s not coming out,” Atlas told her.
Her head turned toward him.
A tear leaked down her cheek.
“I guessI did need you to save me.”Atlas spoke deliberately because he’d wanted to break the silence in the small hospital room.They’d been transported by ambulance, him and Lily.He’d been the one to get poked and prodded the most by the EMTs, but he’d wanted her checked out, too.She’d hit the ground pretty hard after the blast had hurtled them through the air.He’d tried to protect her, an instinct driving him to wrap his body around hers, but she’d slipped from his grip and?—
“Benedict is dead.”
Unfortunately, she was not wrong on that point.Not like a body had been recovered, not yet, but Atlas didn’t see any way the man could have survived that inferno.
“He came to save me.”A ragged breath escaped Lily.“To save us.And he died in that blaze.”
Atlas was pretty sure the guy had died in some kind of bomb detonation.He wasn’t an expert at demolitions, but that explosion had been hard to miss.Not a fire.A detonation.One that had sent fire racing through the cabin and shooting up into the starry night.“You told him that we all had to get out.”Real damn glad you told me about that, sweets.Otherwise, I’d be burned to ashes right now.
She sat in the chair a few feet away.Not on the exam table.He wasn’t on the damn exam table, either.He was up, pacing the room, with a stupid white paper gown covering his body.
Their cuffs had been removed.They were no longer tied together and for some reason…
