Torch (Take It Off) Read online

  TORCH

  (a Take It Off novel)

  If you can’t take the heat… stay away from the flame.

  Katie Parks has been on her own since the age of fifteen. All she’s ever wanted is a place to call her own—a life that is wholly hers that no one can take away. She thought she finally had it, but with the strike of a single match, everything she worked so hard for is reduced to a pile of smoking ash. And she almost is too.

  Now she’s being stalked by someone who’s decided it’s her time to die. The only thing standing in the path of her blazing death is sexy firefighter Holt Arkain.

  Katie’s body might be safe with Holt… but her heart is another story.

  As the danger heats up, sparks fly, and the only thing Katie knows for sure is that her whole life is about to go up in flames.

  TORCH

  Take It Off Series

  CAMBRIA HEBERT

  TORCH Copyright © 2013 CAMBRIA HEBERT

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions

  thereof, in any form without written permission except for the use of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Published by: Cambria Hebert

  http://www.cambriahebert.com

  Interior design and typesetting by Sharon Kay

  Cover design by MAE I DESIGN

  Edited by Cassie McCown

  Copyright 2013 by Cambria Hebert

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used

  fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-938857-25-6

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-938857-23-2

  Other books by Cambria Hebert

  Heven and Hell Series

  Before

  Masquerade

  Between

  Charade

  Bewitched

  Tirade

  Beneath

  Renegade

  Heven & Hell Anthology

  Death Escorts

  Recalled

  Charmed

  Table of Contents

  Contents:

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  DEDICATION

  This novel is dedicated to all the firefighters, police officers, US military service members, and all crisis first responders. You are true real-life superheroes that walk amongst civilians. If it weren’t for you, the world would be a much darker place.

  And, of course, thank you for providing authors like me such delicious inspiration.

  TORCH

  1

  The pungent smell of gasoline stung my nostrils and my head snapped back in repulsion. I opened my eyes and lifted my hands to place them over my mouth and nose to hopefully barricade some of the overwhelming scent.

  Except my hands didn’t obey.

  I tried again.

  Panic ripped through my middle when I realized my arms weren’t going to obey any kind of command because they were secured behind me.

  What the hell?

  I looked down over my shoulder, trying to see the thick ropes binding my wrists. The lighting in here was dim.

  Wait. Where was I?

  My heart started to pound, my breathing coming in shallow, short spurts as I squinted through tearing eyes at the familiar shapes around me. A little bit of calmness washed over me when I realized I was in my home. Home was a place I always felt safe.

  But I wasn’t safe. Not right now.

  I sat in the center of my living room, tied to my dining room chair. I was supposed to be in bed sleeping. The boxers and T-shirt I wore said so.

  I started to struggle, to strain against the binds that held me. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew enough to realize whatever was happening was not good.

  Movement caught my attention and I went still, my eyes darting toward where someone stood.

  “Hello?” I said. “Please help me!”

  It was so dark I couldn’t make out who it was. They seemed to loom in the distance, standing just inside the entryway, nothing but a dark shadow.

  My eyes blinked rapidly, trying to clear the tears flowing down my cheeks. The gasoline smell was so intense. It was like I was sitting in a puddle of the stuff.

  “Help me!” I screamed again, wondering why the hell the person just stood there instead of coming to my aid.

  The scrape of a match echoed through the darkness, and the catch of a small flame drew my eye. It started out small, reminding me of the fireflies I used to chase when I was a child. But then it grew in intensity, the flame burning brighter, becoming bolder, and it burned down the stick of the match.

  The dark shadow held out the matchstick, away from their body, suspending it over the ground for several long seconds.

  And then they dropped it.

  It fell to the floor like it weighed a thousand pounds and left a small glowing trail in its wake. I watched the flame as it hit the floor, thinking it would fizzle out and the room would be returned to complete blackness.

  But the flame didn’t fizzle out.

  It ignited.

  With a great whoosh, fire burst upward, everything around that little match roaring to life with angry orange flames. I screamed. I didn’t bother asking for help again because it was clear whoever was in this house wasn’t here to help me.

  They were here to kill me.

  To prove my realization, the dark figure calmly retreated out the front door. The flames on the floor grew rapidly, spreading like a contagious disease up the walls and completely swallowing the front door. The small antique side table by the door, which I’d lovingly scraped, sanded, and painted, caught like it was the driest piece of wood in the center of a forest fire.

  Smoke began to fill the rooms, curling closer, making me recoil. How long until the flames came for me?

  I began to scream, to call for help, praying one of my neighbors would hear and come to my rescue. Except I knew no one was going to rush into this house to save me. They would all stand out on the lawn at the edge of the street and murmur and point. They would click their tongues and shake their heads, mesmerized by the way the fire claimed my home. And my life.

  I wasn’t going to die like this.

  I twisted my arms, straining against the corded rope, feeling it cut into my skin, but I kept at it, just needing an inch to slip free.

  I tried to stand, to run into the back of the house. If I couldn’t get loose from the chair, I would just take it with me. But my ankles were crossed and tied together.

  I called for help again, but the sound was lost in the roaring of the flames. I never realized how loud a fire truly was. I never realized how rapidly it could spread. It was no longer dark in here, the flames lighting up my home like the fourth of July, casting an orange glow over everything. The entire front entryway and stairwell were now engulfed. I could see everything was doused in gasoline;
the putrid liquid created a thick trail around the room. Whoever had been here completely drenched this house with the flammable liquid and then set me in the center of it.

  I managed to make it to my feet, hunched over with the chair strapped around me. It was difficult to stand with my ankles crossed. But I had to try. I had to get out of here. I took one hobbled step when a cough racked my lungs. I choked and hacked, my lungs searching for clean air to breathe but only filling with more and more pollution.

  I made it one step before I fell over, my shoulder taking the brunt of my fall, the chair thumping against the thickness of the carpet. I lay there and coughed, squinting through my moist and blurry vision, staring at the flames… the flames that seemed to stalk me.

  They traveled closer, following the path of the gas, snaking through the living room, filling it up and rushing around me until I was almost completely circled with fire. The heat, God, the heat was so intense that sweat slicked my skin, and it made it that much harder to breathe.

  It was the kind of heat that smacked into you, that made you dizzy and completely erased all thought from your brain.

  I was going to die.

  Even if I were able to make it to my feet, I wouldn’t be able to make it through the circle of fire that consumed everything around me.

  I pressed my cheek against the carpet, not reveling in its softness, not thinking about the comfort it usually afforded my bare feet. Another round of coughing racked my body. My lungs hurt. God, they hurt so bad. It was like a giant vise squeezed inside my chest, squeezed until all I could think about was oxygen and how much I needed it.

  My chin tipped back as I writhed on the floor, making one last attempt at freedom before the flames claimed me completely. I heard the sharp crackling of wood, the banging of something collapsing under the destruction, and I blinked.

  This is it.

  The last moments of my life.

  I’m going to die alone.

  I started to hallucinate, the lack of oxygen playing tricks on my fading mind, as a large figure stepped through the flames. Literally walked right through them. He held up his arms, shielding his face and head as he barreled through looking like some hero from an action movie.

  My eyes slid closed as my skin began to hurt, like I sat outside in the sun for hours without the protection of sunscreen.

  I heard a muffled shout and tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy. Besides, I preferred the darkness anyway. I didn’t want to watch as my body was burned to death by fire.

  Pain screamed through me and the feeling of the carpet against my cheek disappeared. My first thought was to struggle, but my body couldn’t obey my mind. I felt movement, I felt the solidness of someone’s chest, and I could have sworn I heard the sound of a man’s voice.

  “Hang on,” he said.

  The shattering of glass and the splintering of wood didn’t wake me from the fog that settled over my brain. The scream of pain at my back, the extreme burning and melting that made a cry rip from my throat still wasn’t enough to get my eyes to open.

  And then I could hear the piercing wail of sirens, the faraway shouts of men, and the muffled yell of one who was much closer.

  I really thought heaven would be more peaceful.

  And then I was sailing through the air, the solid wall of whatever held me ripped away. I plunged downward, and with a great slap, I hit water, the icy cold droplets a major shock to my overheated system.

  My eyes sprang wide; water invaded them as I tried to make sense of what was happening. I thought I was burning. But now I was… drowning.

  The water was dark and it pulled me lower and lower into its depths. I looked up. The surface rippled and glowed orange. I almost died up there. But I would die down here now.

  I wanted to swim. My arms, they hurt so badly, but they wanted to push upward, to help me break the surface toward the oxygen my body so desperately needed.

  But I was still tied to a chair.

  The chair hit the ground—a solid, cold surface—as my hair floated out around me and bubbles discharged from my nose and mouth.

  It wasn’t hot here.

  It wasn’t loud, but eerily quiet.

  It was a different kind of death, but death all the same.

  The ripples in the water grew and the chair began to rock. I heard the plunge of something else coming into the water and I looked up. Through the strands of my wayward hair, I saw him again. My hero. His powerful arms pushed through the water in three great stokes. He reached out and grabbed me beneath the shoulder, towing me upward toward the bright surface.

  When my head cleared the water, my lungs automatically sucked in blissful air. It hurt so bad, but it was the kind of pain I had to endure. Another cough racked my body, and as I wheezed, the man towing me and my chair through the water said, “Keep breathing. Just keep breathing.”

  And then I was being lifted from the water, the chair placed on the cement as I coughed and wheezed and greedily sucked in air.

  “Ma’am,” someone was saying. “Ma’am, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  I looked up, blinking the water out of my eyes, but my vision was still blurry. I tried to speak, but all I could manage was another cough.

  The ropes around my wrists were tugged, and I cried out. The pain was so intense that I thought I would pass out right there.

  “Stay with me,” a calm voice said from behind. It was the same voice that instructed me to keep breathing.

  When my arms were free, I sagged forward. The pain splintering through me was too much to bear. And then there were hands at my ankles; I heard the knife against the rope. When I was completely untied, my body fell forward, sliding off the chair and toward the ground.

  But he was there.

  I slid right into his arms, my body completely boneless.

  A low curse slipped from his lips as he yelled for a medic. Yeah, a medic. That seemed like a good idea. I hurt. I hurt all over.

  I cried out when he shifted me in his arms, bringing me closer to his chest. I pressed my face against him. He was wet, but his clothes were scratchy against my cheek. I tried to look at him; I opened my eyes and tilted back my head. I caught a flash of dark hair and light eyes, but then my vision faded out, pain took over, and I passed out.

  2

  The problem with passing out is that upon awakening, you had to face the pain of whatever caused you to pass out in the first place all over again. Okay, so the pain wasn’t as bad as it was before, and I figured that was in large part due to the IV sticking out of the back of my hand. I wish they had a pain pill for that because IVs hurt.

  I blinked, trying to focus and look around the room. I was in a private room, which was nice. The walls were sterile white; there was a curtain pushed open around the bed and a TV mounted to the wall. The blankets that covered me to my waist were no nonsense and kind of scratchy. Not at all like my pillows and bedding at home.

  Home.

  The thought brought up a surge of panic. I looked down at my wrists, which were wrapped in layers of white gauze that wound down around the base of my thumbs and then back up again.

  Burned.

  I was burned.

  Images from what happened assaulted me. The match, the fire, the fear. I shifted, wanting to get away from the memories, and a lock of hair slid onto my cheek. It smelled like smoke.

  The memory of almost choking to death on smoke made a sound tear from the back of my throat. The monitor off to my right began to beep, and I looked up, the sound helping a little to bring me back to reality.

  I was safe.

  There was no fire here.

  There was no man standing in the shadows with a match.

  The door to my room opened and a nurse bustled in. She smiled when she saw me looking at her. “Ah, you’re awake. I’ll get the doctor.” She pressed a couple buttons on the monitor, and the rapid beeping stopped; then she hurried from the room.