Into the Fire: A Novel

Chapter One January 2008 Dalton, California Hannah Whitfield woke up alone in her bed. Which wasn’t that unusual. In fact, this had been her only opportunity tonotwake up alone for the first time in years– due to the still somewhat unbelievable fact that she’d actually had sex last night. Hannah swept her hair out of her eyes as she reached to turn on the lamp that sat on her bedside table, trying–not as successfully–to push away her feelings of imminent dread. Her head was pounding and her ankle was on fire so she took a pull from the nearly empty bottle of Johnny W. she’d left next to her bed. Hair of the dog, was the age-old excuse. She knew better, but right now she needed the drumming pain in both her head and her ankle to back the hell off. Last night had been far from fairy-tale-inducing material, with no impending happily-ever-after in sight. True, she’d wanted to get with this particular man ever since their very first encounter–since he’d knocked her off that Alaskan pier, a hundred years ago. A hundred years? No. It felt more like a solid thousand since the tall, dark and handsome man with the laughing brown eyes had held out an enormous hand and helped Hannah out of the icy water. It felt like an eternity since either of them had so much as smiled. And maybe it had been. Maybe tragedy had its own rules in the time-space continuum. The year following the death of a murdered wife and best friend passed at the speed of five hundred years in normal, happy, human time, with all of the previous years of laughter and joy instantly fading to ancient-seeming, sepia-toned distant memories. So, yeah. Last night had been grimly moonbeam- and fairy-dust-free. Once upon a time, Hannah had let herself get laid–except, no, that wasn’t quite right. She’d been the layee. It was Vinh Murphy who’d gotten laid–for the first time since Angelina had died. Last night, like most nights these days, Hannah had been somewhat anesthetized, but she was nowhere near as shit-faced as Murph. They’d had an argument about the same old same old–the keys to his truck. Hannah had swiftly adiosed them when he’d shown up at the cabin at 0100, already wasted. That was his MO–she wouldn’t see him for months, and then he’d appear. Usually in the dead of night, flashing his headlights in the driveway, stinking of gin, his brain damn near fried from whatever else he’d ingested in his attempt to forget that his wife–the love of his life, as he called Angelina–was forever gone. They’d argued–no, I will not give back your keys–and Murphy had tripped over the leather ottoman and fallen. He’d hit his head on the arm of the sofa, and Hannah had thought he was down for the night, so after she’d helped him up, she’d dragged him over to her bed. Her intention had been–as always–to let him sleep it off in her room here downstairs, while she pulled herself up the ladder to the mattress in the loft. But as she’d toppled him onto her bed, her bad ankle had bent the wrong way and the sudden surge of pain had made her lose her balance. She tried to straighten up, but Murphy’d held on to her, the expression in his dark brown eyes far different from anything she’d ever seen there before. “Hannah,” he’d said. “I’m so fucked up.” And then he’d kissed her. Yeah, Murphy had kissed her, and she should have scrambled away, but she hadn’t. Instead, she’d pulled up her nightshirt and opened her legs for