Chasing the Browns

Chapter Twenty Six - Part One

But then I remembered the fire, the flames, the pool, the jump, the screaming, the ticking time…

I sat bolt upright, and a searing pain shot through my back. I bit back a cry, eyes widening as I took in my surroundings.

I was inside an ambulance.

It took me a few seconds to gather my bearings. One of the paramedics turned around, looked at me, and smiled.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asked. Her voice was so sweet and so kind that, in comparison the horrifying night I’d just been through, it was almost alien.

What had happened to my parents? They hadn’t been home when I’d gotten back…had they been inside during the fire?

I jumped off the gurney before she could stop me, trying to bite back the rude word that flew through my mind when I stumbled and a horrible pain flared in my ankle. I’d thought it was better by now, but, clearly, it wasn’t.

The sight that met me after climbing out of the ambulance had me gasping again.

The house.

The place I’d called home.

The most horrible, twisting, wrenching, sinking feeling overwhelmed me as the flashbacks from months ago came back, the flashbacks of me standing in front of my burning house, watching as the firemen and paramedics wheeled two bodies past on gurneys…

The neighbours had come out from their house, and they were madly beckoning for me to come to them.

A couple of firemen were wheeling out a hose from the fire engine from my left, and on my right, the neighbours were on their phones.

I was rooted to the spot, watching, aghast, as the firemen turned on the hose and aimed it at a window – which had been my window – extinguishing the raging flames.

‘Lea!’ one of the neighbours called.

Shaking myself from my daze, I stumbled over, wincing every time I put weight on my ankle.

‘Are you OK?’ It took me until I was standing right in front of him to realise that the people who’d been beckoning for me weren’t even neighbours, and that the question had come from George. Next to him stood a woman I didn’t know. I assumed that she was his wife, whom I’d never seen before.

I didn’t say anything.

What a stupid question.

His wife was close to tears and her lip trembled so badly I thought it was going to fall off. When she realised I wasn’t going to answer her husband’s question, she grabbed my arm, locking me in her watery gaze. ‘W-was Jack inside the house with you?’

I’d completely forgotten about him. I’d escaped…but had he? He’d been in the same house as I had…

And the second storey had completely been demolished when the bomb had gone off…

Oh, God.

I didn’t care about what had gone on between us; I was going to find him.

I had to.

But I also knew that involving people was a like giving them a death wish, so I had to keep them in the dark.

‘I-I…he said something about spending the night at a friend’s house,’ I mumbled, wincing. It hurt to talk. My throat felt like sandpaper, and every time I made a sound, it was like my vocal cords were rubbing together, causing my voice to come out within a range of several octaves. The end of my sentence came out as a little squeak.