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This was it? Seriously? This was the end of her life? Wow, that just sucked.

Ammo knew something was wrong as soon as he smelled smoke. It could have been anything, anyone’s house, maybe even just a backyard fire or something. But he just knew it was her, and he raced as fast as he could toward the house.

He spotted people out on the sidewalk, staring at the house in horror and whispering among themselves, but none of those fucking assholes were doing anything.

Was she here? Where was she? Spotting Yvonne, grabbed her arm. “Where is she? Where’s Aimee? Is she out of the house?”

Yvonne stared at him in shock, her eyes wide. He could feel the heat coming from the house. It was scorching hot.

“I haven’t seen her. I don’t know where she is.”

He let go of her and raced up the sidewalk to the front of the house, ignoring the people shouting at him to get back. He headed toward her bedroom.

Hopefully that’s where she was. It was the one part of the house that didn’t seem to be on fire yet. But it was only going to be mere seconds until the whole place was engulfed in flames.

She had to be in there. She had to be okay. Deep down, he knew the smoke inhalation could have gotten to her already. But he wasn’t giving up.

The window wouldn’t lift. It was firmly stuck. Probably the heat was making it stick more.

Glancing around, he searched for something to smash the window and saw one of the shovels he’d been using in the garden. He grabbed it and rammed the end into the glass until it smashed.

He moved the shovel handle around the inside of the windowsill, getting rid of bits of glass before he hopped into the bedroom.

The flames were so hot, it felt like they were burning off his eyebrows, and he couldn’t see her anywhere. Until he turned back toward the window and spotted her next to it, crouching on the floor, unmoving.

No!

A roar of pain escaped him, and he quickly grabbed her, picking her up in his arms, and throwing her out the window.

He followed quickly. The heat of the fire was too much to bear, and his lungs were screaming at him to get out, to breathe some fresh air.

Coughing, his eyes streaming with tears, he picked her up and raced around to the front sidewalk, just as the fire engine and ambulance pulled up.

And then paramedics were there, taking her from him, even as he tried to fight them, to grab her, to hold onto her.

He just had this feeling that if he let her go, something bad was going to happen.

Only he could keep her safe.

Several people had to hold him back as they loaded her into the ambulance and took her away.

Someone checked him over. He wasn’t sure who. He wasn’t really taking in anything that anyone said.

All he wanted to know was where she’d been taken and how he could get there.

Now.

Aimee woke up confused and disoriented. She glanced around, unsure of where she was.

She blinked heavily as she stared up at the white ceiling. Wow, her ceiling didn’t look this white, did it? No, it had blotches of dark spots where she thought there’d been previous leaks or something from the roof. She really had to get that roof replaced.

This didn’t feel like her bed either. There wasn’t a spring digging into her hip that she could never seem to avoid. In her sleep, she always seemed to roll onto it, waking up each morning with it digging in.

“I call it Springy, and it shall be my friend,” she said in a very croaky voice. Whoa, her throat hurt.

And there was something in her nose. She tried to reach up and pull it out.

But a hand grasped hold of hers, drawing it back.