All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 38

38

She sat on the back ramp of an ambulance as the fire raged.

She could not hear much when the woman spoke, shone light into her eyes and asked her questions.

A blanket was draped around her shoulders, up high at the collar, and she peered out through her broken lenses.

The cops fell back as fire kicked out and twisted and ran along dead leaves to the barns beside the house.

Saint told Nix what she knew, and before long they had a team and tracked blood far into the forest.

Saint gulped down mouthfuls of frigid air and wondered why the woods did not look different, why the sky still carried blue and the sunlight still sliced shadows through white elm. She moved behind a cruiser and puked.

She would smell smoke for weeks.

Saint stood in the margin of nightfall and ignored the stares as she watched and waited, as it took an hour to bring the fire under control.

And when Nix finally emerged and shook his head, only then did she run at him, and ball her fists and swing them at his broad chest.

She cried till her body caved to the past months, and she willed the land to cloud over and the colors to drain away.

He steadied her with an arm around her waist as she tried to head inside once more. To burn with him. To burn with them all.

“He’s in there,” she said, desperate, certain. “He is.”

“There’s no one inside.”

“I saw—”

“You did good, Saint.” He smoothed her hair and hugged her tightly to himself.

Cops fanned across unforgiving land, the soot marking their faces as the skeleton of the house sent embers into the air like dandelion seeds.

Moonlight hung deep in the east behind trails of white smoke sent up like a signal that it was over now, that they would surrender and admit a crushing defeat.

The rain came late and turned heavy, washing scrubland to mud so thick they could barely move. They found two bodies of water close to marshland swamp, their banks flowing over a ridge. One of the Ames County cops fell and twisted his knee, and they ate a couple of hours getting him out. By then Saint knew what was coming but still fought back a scream when Nix called it a day.

They put out all-points bulletins, followed the usual protocol, and knew Eli Aaron could not have gotten far, also knew he had the land mapped better than they did. Also knew he might have died in there, might have burned till there was nothing but bone.

“I’ll take you back. Your grandmother is waiting at the station.”

With that Saint broke and ran.

She heard calls behind her.

Curses.

Saint lost them for near an hour, her clothes heavy, her sneakers dragging the earth with her, tearing her own track.

“Enough, now,” Nix called, hair matted down by the rain.

She kept her head down as wind drove her back.

“Saint.”

“Fuck you all,” she said. “Fuck you. You all go to fucking hell.”

She heard Nix call after her, then she saw the lights of a cruiser at the foot of a track, but they did not dent the pitch of that night.

She felt her blood too hot. She breathed dour dirt, heard the call of a barred owl.

She fell again and lay awhile, then clawed herself up, her overalls torn.

It was not until midnight broke that she crossed daggers of nettles and a well of water that basined between mossed rock and inched up her numbed

feet that she saw it.

Saint broke to running.

Her knees sunk in the mud as she cradled his head. His eye closed tight like he was holding onto the nightmare.

She clutched him, her tears falling hot onto his skin.

Saint did not notice the cops surround her.

“He’s breathing,” Nix screamed.

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