It had been almost an hour since Danny had left, and I could see the strain growing on Jace’s face. I had to admit that even I was worried. Granted, I hadn’t known Danny as long as Jace had—my mere minutes couldn’t begin to compare to his years—but I’d seen a great sweetness in the man and an immense connection between him and Jace. Knowing what I did about Jace, I wondered if Danny hadn’t stepped in after his father’s death and filled the role in some way. As the minutes turned to hours, I could tell that Jace was beginning to get restless; standing up from the desk and beginning to pace.

Candy, picking up on the rising tension, finally said, “You know what would really hit the spot: fucking milkshakes?”

Jace looked up, humming questioningly at that. “Huh?”

“Milkshakes,” she repeated. “World’s best medicine.”

Jace shook his head and sighed. “N-no… I’ve got to stay here; got to—” he looked back at the desk and the maps, seeming to realize that he’d abandoned his task nearly ten minutes earlier. I heard him mutter “fuck” and then sit back down. “And besides,” he went on, “it’s not safe for you two to go wandering around out there. The Crew have eyes everywhere.”

“Sounds like you guys got eyes everywhere, too,” Candy argued. “And, to be blunt, ain’t a Crew member dense or desperate enough to go gunning down a whore buyin’ milkshakes in broad daylight. They might try to tail me, sure, but would that really be so bad? Put a word out on the horn to your guys that a fine piece of ass is steppin’ out for some ice cream goodness. They’ll be so eager to get a look at the goods,” she made a note of slapping her ass for good measure, “that if any Crew-fucks show up they’re bound to see! Who knows, maybe one of ‘em will be Mister Fuck-Face, T-Built, himself!”

Jace opened his mouth like he wanted to argue against that logic, but no words came. More and more, he seemed unable to find a single thing wrong with her idea. Finally, groaning, he asked, “And you give your word that you’ll be careful?”

I chewed on my lip, nervous, and said, “Is now really the time for milkshakes, Candy?”

She gave me a look of utter shock and horror. “Girl, if you think there’s ever not a time for milkshakes then I don’t know what I’ve taught you!” she snapped.

I found myself caught somewhere between laughing and crying, but offered her a nod. “Okay,” I admitted in a whimper. “Then make mine a double-chocolate malt.”

“There’s a good bitch!” she said, giving me a tight hug. “And you, handsome?” she called after Jace.

“Huh?” he looked up and then shook his head. “Oh… no. Nothing for me, thanks.”

Candy shot him a glare. “Mia, tell your fuck-boy to tell me what kinda shake to get for him or I’m gonna get straight-up whore-rific up in here!”

“Jace,” I prompted.

He sighed, but his growing smile betrayed him. “Okay, okay… uh, get me, like, a chocolate-cherry thing if they got it. Anything along those lines.”

“Aw, shit!” Candy groaned, considering his order. “That sounds good, too. Now I’m conflicted. Ah, well. Got some time to mull it over. Later, gators!”

A moment later the two of us were alone. Jace stopped looking over his maps long enough to make a call about Candy heading out and warning others on the street to keep an eye on her as she made the trip. Then, finishing the call, he stared back at his maps for all-but thirty seconds before once more standing and beginning to pace.

“Jace? Should you just call him maybe?” I offered.

He shook his head, running his hand through his hair. “No, if I do that… well, either it’s on silent and he won’t answer or it’s not and shit could just get worse.”

“So, what do we—” I began.

Jace’s phone suddenly began to ring.

He was on it in an instant, saying “Merc?” and then just listening, growing more and more tense by the second.

“Fuck… FUCK! I knew I recognized that… Huh? Yeah, yeah. I shouldn’t be long. Just hold on, okay?” A moment later he killed the call and looked up at me. “I have to go,” he said, starting towards the closet that Danny had gone to when arming himself

“Wh-what? But… Jace? What’s going on?” I demanded.

“It was meth,” I heard him say, but he seemed to be talking to himself. “Fucking meth! I knew I recognized that smell! They’re running a fucking meth lab in that apartment!”

My eyes widened at that, remembering all the times I’d come home to that weird smell. “B-but…” I thought, “It doesn’t always smell like that. It’s only ever there, like, maybe once a week or so.”

Jace looked back, thought on my words, and then punched the wall. “That’s why we could never figure out where he was operating! Fucking T-Built’s been leap-frogging from site-to-site. Never staying in one place long enough to…” He paused and looked back at me. “You never knew he was there?” he asked.

I shook my head. “He only stopped by a few times to make demands,” I said. “The Carrion Crew owns the building, so the other rooms belong to a few of their other prostitutes.”

Jace nodded slowly. “I bet there’s other buildings like that; places they own where they shack up other prostitutes and whoever else they might be using. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a room in each one of those places that T-Built’s secured as another one of his labs. That fuck!” he growled, returning to the gun closet and retrieving a weapon.

I frowned. “I’m coming with you!” I announced.

“Mia,” Jace stiffened, looked back at me, and shook his head. “No. I can’t risk you. T-Built’s out of his mind right now, and he’s hiding out in a functioning meth lab. Take it from a guy who’s been living on the edge of sanity for a while now: it’s an explosive enough problem without adding thermos-reactive chemicals to the mix. Okay? That place is nothing short of a time-bomb right now, and my friend’s there—trapped—because I sent him there. If T-Built gets it into his head that anybody is in yours and Nancy’s place then he’s likely to go in there shooting.” He took me by the shoulders and shook his head, “That’s no place for anybody to be right now, but I can’t let Danny get killed for this. I have to go, but you’re staying here!”

“Jace, if you even think of going on your own, I will find a way to find you and make your life a living hell for it!” I glared, desperate to not have him go on his own.

Something screamed inside of me that if I let him leave, I’d never seen him again. I couldn’t risk him leaving on his own! I couldn’t lose him this soon. I was in love with him. The realization struck me and I looked up, feeling even more desperate to not let him leave me.

“Mia,” he said softly, stepping over to me. “I love you.”

I glanced up, looking into his eyes and froze. His words felt more like “goodbye.” I wouldn’t let it. He leaned down, capturing my lips in his and I tried desperately to not just submit to his kiss. Something was wrong. I kissed him back, not even realizing that I had begun to cry. After a moment, Jace pulled back and turned, heading out the door. I watched, moving to follow, but was too slow. He slipped through, gripping the knob and yanking the door closed before I had a chance to make it through. Then, hearing a click resonate through the thick, heavy wood, I realized what happened and my blood turned to ice.

He’d locked me inside.

“JACE!” I screamed, banging on the door. “Dammit, Jace! Let me out! Mack! Don’t…” I paused, blinking, reminded myself that I was in a Crow office and not in the Creely’s cellar. There was no death in here with me, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that, if I didn’t get out, there’d be death out there. But the door did not open. Whimpering, I gave the door one last futile slap before falling to the floor, sobbing. “Please!”

It’d been ten long minutes of me running out of options. I’d tried in so many different ways to get the door open, even going so far as to try to find a screwdriver to take the hinges off. Unfortunately, the only tools present in the office were in the gun locker and—lucky me—there was nothing left in there but bullets. Between Danny and Jace, all the guns were gone. Leaving me with nothing but the maps and various oddities to glare over.

This was, of course, the part in the movies where somebody would blow out the door with powder from the bullets or fashion and instantly functional key out of a paperclip, but I had no idea of how to even begin to do those things or, worse yet, if any of that was even really possible.

God damn Hollywood! Poisoning us with bullshit hope and phony heroics! I thought.

“Okay, Mia,” I said out loud to myself, taking a deep breath. “We’re gonna think. That’s what we’re gonna do. Candy went out—what?—ten… no, more like twenty-or-so minutes ago, right? She’s bound to be back soon.” Then I stopped to consider past times Candy had gone out on some sort of “quick errand” and I groaned. She was never quick; “quick” to Candy was anything that took less than two hours! And she’d gone out for milkshakes! She’d likely be convincing herself that Jace and I were making love on his desk and that she’d be doing us a favor by staying at the ice cream shop and treating herself to a few extra shakes.

And by the time she got back Jace could be…

I wailed and nearly threw myself back at the door. I didn’t, though. Catching myself, I let the cry work itself out of my system, took a few more deep breaths, and told myself to think. Think!

Eyes closed, breath held, I willed a brilliant, MacGyver-like idea to come to me. Then a motor whirred somewhere, kicking up a gust in the vent system and blasting a wave of chilled air from the AC into the room. The cold hit me square in the face, freezing any possible ideas I might have been close to having, and another fit of rage overtook me, this time all my anger aimed squarely at…

The vent!

Keep it together, Mia. You have to for Jace. I reminded myself, steering my stolen-but-not-really-stolen car through foreign streets, trying to see any road or landmark that would help me get my bearings.

After getting out of the office, it had been a simple enough process of finding a car. The back lot of the shop was filled with them. The only hard part was finding the keys, which, it turned out, were actually back in the office I’d just escaped from. It was another fifteen wasted minutes, but as I unlocked the door that had been the bane of my existence only a short time before from the other side I was rewarded with the sight of a drawer in a filing cabinet beside the desk simply marked “KEYS.”

Grabbing the first set that I could, I ran back through the lot, stabbing furiously at the alarm button on the fob until I heard a honk answering the silent “call.”

Telling myself again that the Crow Gang wouldn’t press charges for grand theft if I was using the car to save their leader, I swerved around a U-Haul and, spotting a familiar shoe store from our bus route, took the next left to backtrack back to our (old) apartment.

That’s when I saw the smoke.

I cried out, flooring the accelerator and hoping that I wouldn’t kill the car before it got me where I needed to go. Running two lights in the process—miraculously passing between rushing cars as I did—I brought the car to a screaming stop nearly two buildings down, no longer patient enough to trust my luck behind the wheel. Throwing myself from the car, I started at a full sprint down the street, leaping onto the sidewalk and barreling towards the burning building.

No firetrucks, I noted, looking around. No firetrucks, no cops, not yet.

Hoping this meant that the building’s blaze was a somewhat young one, I held out that Jace hadn’t been caught in the initial blast. Still running, I nearly stumbled at the sight of a familiar, flaming paintjob and started screaming at the sight of Jace’s motorcycle. Though I’d had no reason to assume he hadn’t made it there, the sight of his bike only worked to cement the reality that he was here.

And if he wasn’t out here, then that left…

Without breaking my stride, I ran up the steps and through the still-open door.

The heat just beyond the threshold was stifling. It pulsed around me, yanking the breath from my lungs and stealing my screams away at the source. Breathless, I pushed myself up the stairs, uncertain if my blurred vision was a product of tears or smoke; the stinging certainly didn’t do anything to answer my questions. I missed a step, fell, slammed my knee on a one of the stair’s corners. I hissed in pain, sucked in a cloud of reeking smoke, and started coughing.

No, I thought, thinking that I could remember reading somewhere that smoke inhalation was the first step to a certain death and just as quickly trying to convince myself that was fiction.

Worry about fact-checking later, Mia, I pushed myself. You and Jace can look it up together, you can—

I overshot the next step, guessed there was one more when there was none, and staggered out into the hallway, falling onto my hands and knees.

The floor was like the inside of an oven!

I shrieked, yanking my hands away and struggling to put my feet beneath me. I stumbled again, caught myself with my left hand, danced back and forth between scorched palms, and finally threw myself to my feet in an all-or-nothing effort. I began to suck in a relieved breath, stopped before I could, and hurried to pull the hem of my skirt up to cover my mouth, hoping it would be enough to filter the smoke. It did, but only by cupping my hot, heavy breaths back against my face and making things that much hotter and more unbearable.

“Jace?” I cried out, coughing as the heat from my cries cycled back with all the added heat and slapped me in the face. Groaning, I pulled the shielding skirt down long enough to call out again, “JACE?”

The door to Candy’s and my old apartment hung open on a single, tortured hinge. Deciding that was as good a sign as any as to where to start looking, I kicked the door open—not daring to touch it—and squealed in surprise as it snapped off the hinge and crashed to the floor. The billowing air current kicked up from this stirred the flames inside the room, and the heat flared up, sucking up the fresh oxygen and belching a stinking, hot wall of air back at me in thanks. Fighting my animal instinct to turn and run from the inferno, I pressed on, careful not to touch the walls and keeping an eye out for any fallen beams in my way. A few steps in and I saw him.

Jace was on his side, his arm reaching out towards Danny, who was lying on his belly in a pool of bubbling blood between the living room and the kitchen. Behind him, slumped in the kitchen and staring back at me with cold, vacant eyes, was T-Built A number of gory blossoms shone across his chest, but it was the one in the center of his throat that seemed the most telling.

The son of a bitch was dead!

I shivered at the sight, trying to cope with how anything could seem so wonderful and terrible all at once, and I started for Jace, working to pull him back towards the door.

“Jace! Jace, dammit! Wake up!” I called, still working to move him.

No response. No sign of life. Just a head slab of weight that I was struggling to carry through Hell, itself.

And, worse yet, I didn’t have strength left to move. The air was gone from me, my body screaming for a breath I couldn’t give it, and suddenly it was an impossible task just to carry myself a step farther.

I distantly wondered if this was what Jace’s motorcycle might feel like when it ran out of gas, and then immediately wondered why I’d think such a thing.

It’s better this way… a thought came to me. Just like in one of those old stories. More… more poetic.

“Jace…?” I heard my voice, distant and desperate, croak out. “Jace,” I sobbed, choked, coughing sounds that were swallowed by the flames as soon as they left my lips. cried. “Please… come… back…”

---

Nothing. Nothing, leading into nothingness.

It didn’t even hurt anymore; couldn’t even feel the…

---

… heat.

---

“Goodbye, Anne…”

Words. The words… his words!

I heaved, coughed, cried out in absolute agony as my lungs screamed their curses and hatred out at me. I groaned, bitterly thankful for the pain, and turned my face to see Jace blinking up at the ceiling.

“Anne?” he said.

“Ja-ce…” I croaked.

His head turned—more falling to one side—and he spotted me, his eyes widening with recognition.

“Mia?” he cried, and he was moving with a speed that seemed impossible.

Lying… below… smoke, some still-grinding set of gears reminded me.

Oh yea… I giggled inwardly. Where was that thought when I needed it?

Scalding your hands and knees, girl, I heard myself taunt in Candy’s voice.

And then arms, weak from fatigue but still inhumanly strong as far as I was concerned, were working their way around me, dragging me in awkward bursts to something that almost resembled standing.

“C-can’t… walk… my own,” Jace panted towards me, leaning against me and prompting me to lean back just the same. “To-together,” he said, taking a step forward and nodding for me to do the same.

I blinked at this, seeing the two of us—too broken to get out of there on our own—becoming some twisted-yet-wonderful singularity that stood a chance against the fire. I nodded and matched his step. “Together,” I repeated, more coughing out the word than actually saying it.

And, as a broken-yet-whole mess, we loped out of the hell that Candy’s and my old life was burning away into and slipped out into the new day.

It was certain to be a shitty day, all things considered.

But there was something to be said about it just knowing that Jace and I would be together…