"So how does it feel to be the focus of a story for a change?" Selma Rickert asked as she leaned against the partition that separated her work space from L.K's. Gold bracelets jangled around her wrists, and her eyes were tinted vibrant green, courtesy of new contact lenses. She appeared nervous , as she usually did since the paper had declared a smoke-free workplace and she and a few others were forced to go outside for a cigarette every now and again rather than leaving one forever burning in the ashtray that still sat buried somewhere on her desk.

"To tell you the truth, I'd rather be the one asking the questions."

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Scratching a bare forearm with the painted nails of her opposite hand, Selma added, "You'd better watch out for Matt. He's on the warpath - arguing with the powers-that-be again over the 'direction and attitude' of the Alternative Press or some such crap." The powers-that-be were the owners of AP Magazine after inheriting it from a husband just this past year. "Besides, he's hell-bent to get the inside scoop on the fire from you-know-who."

"Me? Like I have it?" L.K rubbed her temples and prayed for an aspirin.

Selma nodded and glanced at the door to the editor-in-chief's glassed-in office. "You're the wife of an famous injured band member."

"I don't know anything."

"More than we do, honey. That's all that matters."

A weight settled in L.K's stomach. "What's he want?"

"What do you mean, what's he want? A story, natch. From someone close to the fire." Selma shrugged. "You know Matt. He's always looking for a different angle - after all that's what this paper is all about: the alternative viewpoint."

"But he wouldn't mind a little sensationalism."

Selma grinned, showing off her slight overbite. "Not if it sold a few magazines." She winked and settled back at her desk while L.K stared at the chaos that was hers. She'd only missed a few days of work, and yet it seemed that the whole world had collapsed since then.

She sorted through her mail and messages. finished a story she'd started a few days before about a new theater troupe, then put a call into the hospital to check on Ashley. Ignoring the other assignment that wasn't due until next week, she scanned all the news stories on the fire as well as a copy of the police report that someone had managed to pry out of the Sheriff's Department's hands.

An hour passed before Matt Gileke stopped at her desk and glanced at her copy of the report. "Sorry to hear about Ashley," he said, his eyes, behind thick glasses, looked concerned. A big man with the start of a sagging stomach, he smelled of cigar smoke and coffee.

"It looks like he'll be okay. It'll just take time."

"Helluva thing, though."

She'd never felt nervous around Matt before, but that's because they were always playing on the same team. This time, because of the fire, they were on opposite sides - or at least that's the way it felt.

"If you need more time off . . ." He let the sentence trail, giving her the opportunity to reply before he'd even finished his thought.

"I might want to work more at home, once Ashley is released from the hospital. I'll fax things to the office."

He lifted a shoulder and rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Just let me know. We've got other people willing to fill in for you."

"I appreciate it," she said, though she felt her stomach clench and knew she was bracing herself for something. Here it comes, her mind warned, don't let him blindside you.

"Bill has been working on the story about the fire."

Bill Nets was one of the best reporters on the paper. She didn't respond, just waited until Matt got to the point.

"He might want to ask you a few questions, you know, since your father owns the mill and your husband and brother run it . . ."

"And my husband was nearly killed."

His face was suddenly world-weary. "It's news, L.K. Big news around here. That's what we report if it involves a well-liked band member. You wouldn't expect us to ignore it, would you?"

"'Course not. I just don't like being a primary source, okay? This has been rough on my family as it is; I'm not going to be the one spilling her guts to the media."

"The shoe pinches a little when it's on the other foot, doesn't it?"

"Just tell Bill that I don't know anything more than he does. The police aren't confiding in me."

He hesitated a little and pulled on his lower lip. "The way I hear it, they might suspect you."

She stared at him as if he'd sprouted horns and a tail. "They told you that?"

"No, but you were called in for questioning."

"Because my husband was hurt. That's all!" she nearly shouted, instantly indignant. What was Matt pulling? "They talked to lots of people."

"All the talk in Malibu is that the mill was losing money and insured to the hilt."

She wouldn't rise to that one. "So that's the talk, isn't it? Sounds like pure speculation to me. I thought this paper only printed facts."

"We were hoping to get them from you."

"I don't have any."

"What about John Doe?"

Her heart nearly stopped, and she tried to keep from snapping. "All I know is that he's in CCU and it doesn't look good."

"You think he's the arsonist?"

She shook her head vehemently. I think he might be my husband's brother - the boy with whom I lost my heart and my virginity. "I don't know anything about him."

"But if you find out, I'll be the first to know, right?" His eyebrows rose behind his glasses.

"Sure. Right after I call the tabloid shows."

"Funny, L.K," he said sarcastically as he rapped his knuckles on her desk and turned away. "Very funny."

---

"Ashley . . . can you hear me?" L.K sat in a straight-backed chair in the hospital room next to her husband, as she had off and on for two days, knowing that there was supposedly nothing wrong with his hearing, believing that he was purposely tuning her out. Though the nurses said he hadn't uttered a word and the police hadn't been able to wrest so much as one syllable from his lips, he did finally respond, managed to eat a little food, drink from a bent straw in a cup, and glare at the world through one ugly eye. He was still swathed in bandages and didn't so much as turn that blood-shot eye in her direction. The drugs he was given for pain might prevent him from connecting with her, but L.K suspected he was just being stubborn, playing out the same scene he always did whenever they argued.

She wondered if she'd ever loved him. Certainly, right after the fire that had taken Abi's life, when she'd visited Eva Biersack, she'd had no intention of ever getting involved with Andy's brother.

Eva's prediction that night, that she would marry Ashley, had pursued her all the way home, but she'd shoved that silly thought aside. After all, she loved Andy. Not his older brother. She and Ashley had barely seen each other the next couple of years. He'd gone to law school in Salem, she'd finished high school in Malibu, wondering about Andy, telling herself to get over him, barely having a social life at all. She'd worried her mother, but her father had barely noticed any change in his second daughter.

When Abi had left this earth, a part of Christian Bale had followed after her. His love for life had withered. His visits to the cemetery became more frequent, and he was forever locked in his den, drinking brandy and staring morosely into the fire. L.K was certain that if she'd curled up and died, Christian wouldn't have noticed.

Her horse had never been found. Nor was there ever any sign of Andy. L.K had gone to college, grateful to get away from Malibu and the charred ghosts that still haunted her. She'd given up her interest in horses and shoved her cowboy boots to the back corner of her closet. She'd studied journalism voraciously, dated a little, made a few friends and finally, after graduation, had landed a job with a small television studio in Denver. From Denver, she'd moved to San Francisco and finally to Los Angeles, where she had through years of hard work become a reporter with a decent reputation. Ashley, a corporate lawyer and famous bass guitarist on the side, had seen her on the news, called and asked her out.

She'd only agreed to see Ashley to find out about Andy. She'd met him in an Irish bar. They'd laughed and caught up, and Ashley's smile, softer than Andy's, but heart-stopping nonetheless, had gotten to her. That had been the beginning. They'd taken it slow, neither one wanting to commit, and yet, as the months had passed, she'd finally accepted the fact that her schoolgirl crush on Andy was just a lingering shadow that she had to banish from her heart and from her mind.

Ashley had helped her in the first year or so, she thought now as she stared at the hospital bed where he lay. Helped her forget the man who had left her.

For that she'd been eternally grateful. She cleared her throat and tried to communicate with the silent man lying under the stiff bed sheets. She owed him this much - to help him get back on his feet again. She was, after all, still his wife. She reached for the fingers of his good hand and took them gently in her own. "Ashley? Can you hear me? I've been thinking . . ."

He didn't move, hardly breathed, gave no indication that he'd heard her though he wasn't in a coma, or so Dr. Okano told her.

She didn't blame him for not responding. Blinking against tears, she remembered the night of the fire and the horrid fight they'd had, the worst ever, insults and pain ringing through the house by wounded, unhappy people. He'd accused her of never loving him, not as she had Andy, and she'd flung back that he'd married her because she was a Bale, and he'd always wanted to sidle up to the Bale money. In the fight she'd ended up suggesting divorce. It had seemed the only solution, even though she'd witnesses the wounded look in his eyes that night. Pain beneath anger.

Oh, God, how she regretted those words. Ashley had always been good to her. Fair. As much as she'd tried, she never had loved him with the careless, wild abandon which she'd so naively thrown at his brother.

Maybe the one dying.

How had it come to this? She buried her face in her hands and refused to cry. She wouldn't show her feelings to the hospital staff or, worse yet, to the reporters who had collected in the lobby and had tried to come up with ways of getting word with her, the doctor or even one of the victims.

Even now, in this private room, she felt as if someone were watching; that the monitors attached to Ashley by all sorts of tubes and wires somehow were attached to cameras, or that someone was looking through the clear window to the nurses' station even though the flimsy curtain was drawn.

You're imagining things.

Exhausted.

Jumpy.

Give it a rest.

But then she heard it . . . the soft creak of a footstep.

So what? Probably a nurse or an orderly or other employee. She looked up quickly, squinted through the curtain and saw no one, not even a nurse with a clipboard at the nurses' station.

L.K climbed to her feet and walked to the door that she'd left slightly ajar and expected to see someone about to enter the room and check on Ashley . . . but the hallway was empty, the light lowered for the evening. She heard soft voices coming from a room down the corridor, but that was it aside from the steady whir of the air-conditioning and soft little beeps of the monitor.

You're letting this get to you, L . . . cool it. Find a way to calm down and get through it.

Ashley let out a quiet moan and she was instantly at his side, linking fingers through his. "I'm here for you," she said, biting her lower lip and staring at his swollen face. "I promise we'll find a way to make this work."

---

I thought I might be sick.

Seeing L.K playing the role of dutiful wife.

What a joke.

As if she'd ever loved Ashley Biersack.

As if she knew the meaning of the word.

She was as big a slut as her sister. When she couldn't have one of the Biersack brothers because he'd run off like the coward he was, she'd married the other. And she hadn't even traded up. Ashley Biersack was a snake . . . but he was nearly a dead snake. I smiled at that and slipped through a back door to a service staircase.

Two floors down, I ducked into the unisex bathroom without being seen and changed quickly from my lab coat and scrubs to dark jeans, black T-shirt, jacket, and baseball cap. I tossed the used surgical gloves into my small athletic bag with my disguise, then slipped a pair of tinted glasses over the bridge of my nose. Quickly, seeing that no one was lingering around this part of the first floor, I crossed the hallway and took the stairs to the parking garage. From there I sprinted three blocks to the alley where I'd parked the truck and stashed the bag behind the seat. As I slid behind the wheel and slammed the rig into gear, I berated myself for failing.

Both men were supposed to be dead.

The blast should have killed them instantly.

Instead they were here, lingering on, holding on to life with tenacious, burned fingers. Shit!

I thought maybe I'd have a chance to help Ashley into the grave tonight but not with his wife sitting at his side, holding vigil, Chrissakes!

Damn it all to hell!

Patience . . . you've done this before. You still have time.

I glanced again at my reflection. Saw the determination in my eyes. Knew that it was only a matter of time. My hands curled over the steering wheel in a death grip, and as I came to a stoplight in the middle of town, I convinced myself that I would try again.

And next time I wouldn't fail.

Notes

What do you think? :o

Giving you a HINT: Ashley isn't all what he turns out to be . . .

-LoverSunset and Lauren :)