Chapter 11 - The Dying Fire
Behind them, Victoria dragged herself out of the fireplace, coughing blood, her charred wedding dress smoking in the humid air. “Julian! Don’t leave me here! Julian!”
Julian did not look back. He carried Elena through the smoke-choked doorway, kicking open the splintered front entrance just as a main ceiling truss collapsed into the foyer, walling off the interior with a mountain of blazing timber.
Outside, Marcus was waiting with an emergency medical kit in the rear of the SUV. He helped Julian lay Elena across the leather seats, wrapping her in thermal blankets and administering high-flow oxygen.
Elena gripped Julian’s wrist with surprising strength, her sunken eyes searching his face in the flickering emergency lights. “Lily… Clara… you really have them?”
“They’re at our safehouse with Sarah,” Julian choked out, tears finally breaking through his stony exterior. He kissed her cold, scarred knuckles. “Clara walked three miles in the rain with the baby in her arms to find me, Elena. She saved you. She saved all of us.”
Elena closed her eyes as tears traced tracks through the soot on her cheeks. “Victoria… she said you were married years ago. She brought me newspapers with your wedding pictures… she said you forgot about us.”
“It was all staged, Elena. Every bit of it was a lie manufactured to break you,” Julian said, his voice tightening with suppressed fury. He turned to Marcus. “Did Victoria make it out?”
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Marcus looked toward the raging inferno that consumed the lodge. “Local fire and rescue are arriving at the base of the ridge, but that structure is fully involved. If she didn’t reach the rear cellar, she’s gone.”
Suddenly, the radio in Marcus’s vest crackled to life with Dr. Lin’s voice, strained and panicked: “Julian! You need to get back to the Foundry right now! Senator Sterling… he didn’t run! He’s here!”
