House on Fire

House on FireAK Weller Copyright © 2023 AK WellerCover art by Kate Russell. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission. Dedicated to the smart little man who inspired Fernando Serna. You’re the nicest evil dictator I’ve ever met. Saturday, December 26, 2020LondonI struggled to my knees on the ribbed metal floor of the cargo van. My arms, zip tied at the wrist behind me, were no help. The van turned sharply to the right, throwing me against exposed metal wall behind the driver while I stared stupidly at the man in the passenger seat.Luke.I turned away from him far too late to hide my recognition, and I locked eyes with the man riding it out in the empty cargo area with me.“A familiar face, eh?” he taunted, English with a thick French accent.Lacking any coherent or helpful response to that, I settled for kicking him in the jaw as hard as I could. While he recovered, I struggled on my knees toward the rear of the van in a wild bid for freedom, but he tackled me from behind. Gripping me by the hair, he swung my head toward the bulging wheel well.The impact knocked me senseless, but only for a moment. I could tell very little time had passed because the Frenchman was still breathing heavily, swearing at me under his breath, as I came to. I remained motionless, wondering if he’d kill me if I kept fighting.“What’re you trying to do, kill her?” Luke complained, echoing my thoughts. His voice sounded too far away, as though my hearing had been impaired. He was speaking French, and to my ears it was indistinguishable from any native French-speaker. He spoke better French than I did.“She kicked me! She nearly broke my fucking jaw!” the man whined.“Well, maybe next time you won’t forget about her feet,” Luke shot back.I rolled onto my back as the Frenchman began patting himself down, searching his pockets for more zip ties. The driver remained silent, only his right ear visible to me. Luke was again absorbed in the windshield, his jaw set.Rage surged through me and I screamed, “You lying son of a bitch! Where is Alice? Where is she?”I caught a flash of the driver’s profile as he turned sharply, silently, to Luke. A hand closed over my right ankle, distracting me. I met the Frenchman’s eyes and saw a satisfying gleam of apprehension. He tightened his grip, and I jerked my knee toward my chest, dragging him forward by the hand. He toppled forward onto my stomach.As I tightened my thighs around his neck, thinking I might be angry enough to actually kill the guy, the driver finally spoke.“For God’s sake, Giles,” he sighed. “Luke, do something about her.”With a grunt, Luke climbed into the back and knelt beside me. He and I watched Giles’ face turning purple for a moment before Luke pried my knees apart and allowed him to slither backward, gasping for air.Luke leaned over me to mutter in English, “Anna, stop it. Please.”Giles hacked, coughed, and snapped, “You do it, then.”A thick, black zip tie flew at Luke’s face. He caught it, then met my eyes again. My brain had caught up enough to keep my most pressing questions to myself: Why are you helping them? Why aren’t you rescuing Alice like you said you would? Why did you let me go to the museum if you knew this was going to happen?As Luke formed the tie into a loop to secure my ankles together, I considered what would happen if I attacked him. I knew enough Jiu Jitsu to grapple most people into submission, but I’d learned it from Luke. And it was two against one. And my arms were still tied together. Luke and Giles would put a quick end to my struggles, and I’d end up taking a nap. I didn’t want to lose consciousness. I’d heard on TV that it’s bad for you.Luke rolled me over onto my stomach, bent my knees toward him, and slipped the zip tie over my shoes. I let him do it, telling myself I was waiting my turn rather than letting my last chance slip away because I was too afraid to fight a superior opponent.Where had I gone wrong? What was it my Krav Maga teacher always said? “Don’t go stupid places to do stupid things with stupid people.” Something like that. Well, I didn’t know any particularly stupid people, and I’d never understood what he meant by ‘stupid places’; it wasn’t like I made a habit of visiting bad neighborhoods at midnight. So that left doing stupid things. What one stupid thing had I done to start the chain reaction of events that ended in London in this van with these three men?After a too-quick mental review (sometimes known as one’s life flashing before one’s eyes), I had to conclude I’d made a serious mistake when I fell in love with fireworks as a child. That was the beginning of the end. Had I not become obsessed with fireworks, I’d have skipped out on the Independence Day show when I was 17 and no one else in my family wanted to go with me. Then I never would have met my high school boyfriend; gotten pregnant; been effectively spayed by said boyfriend; become a barren social cast off in my tiny, backward hometown of Manchester, Texas; and ended up desperate enough to marry Aaron Oakley when I was only 19.Then I never would have fled to an internship with the FBI in Washington, DC to get away from Manchester