Relentless Flame- Patricia Wilson

RELENTLESS FLAME
PATRICIA WILSON

1

RELENTLESS FLAME
PATRICIA WILSON
CHAPTER ONE
Nicola forced her eyes open, making herself sit up in bed. She had not really been
asleep at all. She had merely been lying drowsily, waiting for the hospital to come to life
around her, but even in her semi-awake state the nightmare had started, the flames had
curled around her and she could still feelthe scorching heat, still see the swirling, black
smoke. Her heart was hammering and perspiration stood on her brow as if it was still real,
still the horror she had faced.
The night sister came in and glanced at her keenly.
'Another nightmare?'
'It tried.' Nicola managed a smile, but the sister looked concerned and came to
stand by the bed.
'With some people, this sort of thing goes on fora long time. It's trauma. You may
need counseling when you leave here. There wasn't just the fire, after all. It was
everything else.' She looked a little embarrassed, as if she had said too much, and she left
rather quickly, murmuring that she had to get ready for the day staff.
Nicola leaned back on the pillows and wondered how she would face another day.
It wasn't just the fire andeveryone seemed to know it. It was the loss of her father, the
questions she had had to answer when the police came, the fury of her father's partner
who had come without permission and had to be ordered out by the doctor. Yes, it was
everything else.
She looked out of the window, watching the start of another beautiful summer
day. It was barely six and the hours of the rest of the day seemed tostretch in front of her
bleakly. The sun was edging its way round to her window and the bright rays brought
back the heat, the fierce licking flames. She had lost everything, but she was alive
although, at the moment, it didn't really feel like that. Everything seemed to be drained
from her, her energy sapped away and she felt empty inside.
The bitter hurt was the thing she couldn't really face.They said her father had
started the fire himself, a deliberate act to solve his financial problems. The police had
been sure of it and so had his partner, Clive Benson. Grief had given way to something
much deeper, a sense of betrayal that had left her feeling hopeless.
The electronics firm of Rogers & Benson had been doing well until the past two
years, but they had suffered just like anyother firm in the hard times and nobody had
really known the true state of affairs except her father. Kevin Rogers was the brains of
the whole firm—he knew computers, he managed the contracts— and Clive Benson had
been pointing that out to her pretty ferociously when the doctor had come in and taken
one furious look before ordering him out.
Her father had lost his own life getting her out ofthe blazing house, but she could
not face the fact that he had started the whole thing knowing she was sleeping upstairs .
He had put her at risk, destroyed everything around her, and not in any panic-stricken
way. It had been planned. Only the week before, he had been checking the insurance on
the house. Payment from that would have given the firm a much-needed boost, enough,
in allprobability, to put it back on its feet.
The police had told her all this, and although they had been kind and gentle,

RELENTLESS FLAME
PATRICIA WILSON

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reminding her that people under stress acted without thought, reminding her too that her
father had saved her without any consideration for his own life, the stark fact remained
and would always remain: he had known she was there, asleepand defenseless. Nicola
couldn't face that.
There had just been the two of them because she could barely remember her
mother and they had been closer than anyone else she knew. She had worked with him,
planned her university course to fit in with the firm so that she could be an even greater
part of his life. Now, the truth had left her with nothing but shattered dreams. Her past
and her...