"Lieveke, will you do me the honor and privilege and become my wife, my princess, and I will love you and stay with you all the days of our lives?"
Rox drew in a breath to say yes. Her body was still trembling from him taking her against the wall. Her hands were shaking in his.
Everything that he said calmed her fears and let her heart beat again.
Movement.
She looked over his shoulder at the French doors and the ocean outside.
Outside the windows, something flashed in the sunlight.
Past the glass of the windows, something dropped like a bird crash-landing on the deck.
She pointed over his shoulder. "Casimir, what's-"
He twisted to look back where she was pointing and saw the little bundle lying on the deck.
He leapt across the couch at her.
She gasped, "What-"
His shoulders shoved her chest, flattening her on the couch. His arms closed around her head, and he crouched over her.
Fire blasted through the doors and into the room.
CHOICE
Scalding pain rushed over Casimir's back.
The fire flash was gone in an instant, but smoke was already rising in the house, and it stung his nose.
Screams burst all around him, driving into his ears. Shrieks blasted through the air as the fire alarm raged.
"Run." He pulled Rox to her feet. "Run!"
She stumbled, stunned by the blast. One of her shoes was gone, but she was moving toward the door to the garage.
Water showered down on him as the sprinklers sprayed, but the fire on the wall grew, crawling across the ceiling.
Casimir took a step. Something was under his foot. When he looked down, matted fur lay beside his shoe.
He grabbed the cat-Speedbump from the look of his sorry gray fur-and slung him over one arm. The cat struggled weakly but didn't claw. Another step, and he found Midnight, the black cat, crouching behind the arm of the couch, pressing his face against the upholstery and trying to hide from the blaring alarm and shooting water. He grabbed Midnight by the scruff of his neck and tucked him next to Speedbump in his arm.
"Go!" he roared at Rox. "Run! Get the garage door open."
Rox ran for the door, hesitating to scoop up her purse and his briefcase from the floor on the way out.
Casimir still held the two cats, Speedbump and Midnight, under one arm.
Just two.
Pirate. The last cat, the hideous cat with one eye and chewed-down ears, had to be around here somewhere.
The curtains around the windows had caught fire, blazing and boiling smoke across the ceiling. The smoke was burning his eyes, and he scrubbed them with the back of his free hand.
A cat streaked across the floor, running for broken windows and the fire.
Casimir sprinted after him, reaching for his neck but missing. The other two cats clung to his arm, claws deep in his flesh, but they didn't struggle to get away.
Pirate, however, scrambled in a panicked run toward the fiery wall.
He sprinted after the cat.
The heat from the burning wall washed over him, singeing his eyebrows and eyelashes and scraping the skin on his face.
Casimir ran, chasing the fleeing animal. He crouched, grabbing at air. Finally, his hand found the fur behind the cat's neck, and he held on despite the cat's thrashing and clawing to get away.
Sparks popped from the wall near him, landing on his cheek above the scar from the car accident. He held the two other cats with that arm. He couldn't brush the sparks off.
The sparks burned his cheek over the cheekbone, grinding into his flesh, and he couldn't do a damn thing about it without dropping at least one of them and abandoning them to the fire.
He couldn't drop them. Beyond the fact that they were living, feeling beings and he could not leave them in the burning house, Rox loved these hideous beasts, even though no one should love anything so monstrous.
Something dropped on his back, burning.
Casimir clutched all three cats and ran for the door to the garage, their tails and hind legs swinging against his stomach.
DRIVING
Rox held the door to the passenger side of the car open, praying harder than she ever had in her life. Please, God. Please let him make it out. What the hell was he doing?
Heat from the fire was filling the garage, washing over her bare legs and feet. Even the cement floor was getting hotter. She didn't know how long she could wait before she ran out of the burning house and into the afternoon sunshine beyond the open garage door.
The door from the house flapped open. A spume of black smoke geysered out of the doorway like a dragon had spewed it. Casimir pushed his way out of the smoke, all three of her cats hanging from his arms. The smoke rolled across the ceiling and out of the open garage door.
"Get in! Get in the car!" she yelled.
Casimir stumbled down the steps from the house, bouncing off the wooden railing on the side with his hip. His body contracted and spasmed, and he coughed the smoke out of his lungs. Tendrils of smoke clung to him as he staggered across the garage. One of the cats was wheezing, too.
"Cash!" she yelled, waving toward the open car door.
He made it to the car without dropping any of the cats and toppled inside. Rox slammed the door closed behind him and ran around to the driver's side of the car. She jumped in, slammed her door, and floored the accelerator.
The tiny sports car raced out of the garage and down the long driveway toward the hills.
"Why did you stop?" she asked, shaking and failing to keep the hysteria out of her voice. "Why weren't you right behind me?"
"The cats ran the wrong way," he said, leaning back in the seat and brushing at his face. "I had to find Pirate."
"You shouldn't have followed them," she said. "You should have run."
He closed his eyes. "But they most certainly would have died."
"You should have saved yourself."
"I couldn't just leave those hideous beasts," he said.
She gripped the steering wheel more tightly and pointed the car down the winding road. "You shouldn't have gone back. You should have run."
"Just keep driving," Casimir said, carefully lifting the cats into the back of the car. The cats trickled off the seat and huddled together in the footwell behind his seat, a miserable clump of soggy fur. "Hopefully, no one stuck around to make sure that we died in there. We obviously weren't meant to survive that."
"But we did," she said. "We survived."
In the back seat, the cats wheezed, coughing pathetically as if someone were wringing out their little lungs.
"But we weren't supposed to," Casimir said, "and they didn't think that we would. They probably didn't take the sprinklers into account."
"How can you know what they were thinking? Do you know who it was?"
Casimir cranked himself around in the seat and looked out the back window as Rox sped through the hills. "If they had thought we might get out, there would have been a sniper on the hill, too."
"That's terrible! That's awful! How could anyone even think of such a thing?"
She glanced in the rearview mirror. A column of black smoke seethed into the sky.
Casimir dug through his briefcase that was lying on the seat in back. "We need to get out of here. We can't wait for Ana to send the reinforcements tomorrow afternoon. I'm calling Arthur and Maxence."
"But what good will that-" Oh. Arthur had a plane. Maxence had a personal military.
"I'm not sure how fast they can turn the plane around, but I'm hoping they can be here sooner than Ana's forces. Arthur!" he said into the phone, his voice suddenly jovial. "We've had a spot of trouble here, and we need a lift. Could you send that plane around for us?"
A speeding fire engine whizzed past them on the other side of the road, sirens blaring.
"Smashing," Casimir said. "And when would it be here?"
Rox drove silently, maneuvering the car down the winding road.
Casimir said, "First thing in the morning. Excellent. We'll just survive the snipers and firebombings on our own until then. Of course, I'm joking! But I'll tell you all about it on the plane tomorrow." He paused. "Slightly singed." Paused again. "If Maxence can do without them for a few hours, I would indeed appreciate his security." He hung up the phone. "We just have to survive the night."
"We'll just get a hotel," Rox said. "We'll find a hotel that will take animals or smuggle the motley crew in."
One of the cats howled, as if on cue.
Maybe the hotel would have a dryer. Her soggy clothes clung to her and smelled like meth-lab smoke.
"They will be looking for us," Casimir said. "Registering at a hotel might not be our safest option. Evidently, by giving Val an ultimatum, I seem to have tipped our hand. They want to prevent us from exposing Val and Josie to the ethics committee."