Pyro

Chapter 24

I sighed and flicked absentmindedly through television channels. Each one blared sound loudly until I flicked to another channel a second later.

"Stop it!" Kaz hissed under his mane of shaggy chocolate hair. Irritation blazed hotly in his gaze.

"Make me," I muttered, too preoccupied with my thoughts to care. Seemed like Kaz felt the same way because, albeit grumbling and cursing up a storm, he slunk back into the couch, his eyes focused on nothing.

All of us were the same way.

Zoe's caliginous eyes held a faraway gleam: Wais' shoulders were stiff and scrunched in thought: Miranda, seated beside her brother, kept her uninterested eyes peeled on the television. Parker had left for some time alone.

He always got recalcitrant whenever Proditio requested a meeting.

"Has anyone else realized this may be the last time we have to do something for Proditio?" Zoe asked, piercing the dreary atmosphere.

Wais gently lifted his head to narrow his eyes at her. She stood by the hotel room's window, the dim moonlight framing her face, and had only pried her gaze away to address us.

Zoe dropped her arms that were previously hugging her body. "I mean, it's been a year."

"Eleven months and twenty days," Miranda corrected.

Kaz couldn't help a jibe. "What, you don't know the hours, minutes, and seconds? Just the months and days?"

Miranda, uncomprehending of his sarcasm, added, "Twenty hours, forty-six minutes, and six seconds."

He blinked. "Of course you know," muttered Kaz.

Zoe huffed, annoyed, and steered the conversation back on track. "I think that's why she wanted to meet us. To give us the last thing we need to do, the last blow we need to give, to finally finish off the Traders." I noticed she tried to keep her voice steady, but traces of hope leaked through.

Because when we finished, Proditio would have Hui bring our loved ones back: Zoe's little brother, Wais and Miranda's parents, Kaz's maid that quintessentially raised him, Parker's family.... And Rebecca.

I'd been breathing, eating, surviving for the moment I saw Rebecca, alive and well. The moment she'd be brought back...

I didn't know what I'd do. I just wanted her back. That was all. Nothing else.

"When's the meeting again?" I asked Wais.

He replied in a dull, distracted voice. "About three-ish hours."

Three hours...

My skin itched and crawled in anticipation and my heart compressed in agony. Air entered my lungs, but I couldn't seem to breathe.

So close. I'm so close to getting her back.

I flung myself off the bed and shot to my feet. "I'm going early," I said, halfway for the door.

Wais perked up. "Hold on."

I paused, hand hovering above the door handle. I glanced back at him and scowled. "What?"

My reply, terse and brimming with sarcasm, conveyed enough of my irritation that he was succinct in his response. "You're Pyro, remember?"

I flinched.

Yeah, Henry Jacobs was Pyro.

But whatever. If someone recognized me, I didn't care. If the cameras captured me, so be it. This was just an overnight pit stop to meet with Proditio; the police could swarm the hotel once we dumped this joint.