He Hung Up While I Was Burning Alive

When they shoved me into the flames, I fought through the blinding pain to call my brother, Ethan Bennett. Fire licked at my skin, twisting my vision, but the call finally went through.

"What is it now?" He sounded distracted, like he was checking off a guest list.

"Ethan, please, help—" My voice was shattered, choked by the searing heat.

"Can't you just give it a rest for one single day?" he snapped, cutting me off. "Selina and I are getting married this weekend. If you pull another stunt, I swear I'll—"

The call died right as the flames swallowed me whole.

Agony consumed every nerve before my eyes closed for good, his unfinished threat still echoing in my ears.

But the good news is, Ethan... you don't have to swear anymore. Because I was dead.

I used to think death meant absolute nothingness. I was wrong.

I stood there, anchored as a phantom, watching the firefighters haul my body out of that hollowed-out, charred building. The thick smoke hadn't even cleared. My skin was melted and fused to my clothes, rendering me completely unrecognizable.

The precinct treated it as a priority case. They brought in their best forensic pathologist.

My brother, Ethan Bennett.

When Ethan stepped into the makeshift examination tent, I instinctively flinched away. Not because I was afraid of him—what's there to fear when you're already dead?—but out of that deeply ingrained habit of guilt. I was a burden to him alive, and now I was leaving a mess for him to clean up in death.

He leaned over the metal table, brow furrowed. The young assistant beside him clutched a clipboard, his voice trembling slightly.

"More than eighty percent of the body is covered in fourth-degree burns. Facial features are completely obliterated. Time of death is estimated within the last forty-eight hours, though we'll need to wait for—"

"What's that on the right leg?" Ethan interrupted.

The assistant blinked and glanced down. "Old healed fracture on the tibia. There's a steel plate implanted. Judging by the bone callus, it's a trauma from several years ago."

Ethan went quiet, his gaze dropping to the ruined limb for a few long seconds.

A couple of officers nearby exchanged uneasy glances. A younger cop turned his face away, his lips pressed into a tight, grim line. No one could listen to the grisly details of a death like this and stay unbothered.

"Sick bastard," one of them muttered.

"Poor girl must have suffered pure hell."

Ethan's fingers gripped the edge of the examination table, his knuckles turning white. "Whoever did this, I'm going to nail him to the wall."

Alistair Reid stepped up behind him and gave his shoulder a heavy pat. Alistair was a veteran in Major Crimes and used to be our late father's best partner. Even after my parents passed away, he stayed in touch with Ethan and me—though Ethan never appreciated it.

"Don't push yourself too hard," Alistair said softly. "Leah's graduation is coming up, you should—"

"Don't bring her up," Ethan's voice immediately turned to ice.

Alistair looked like he wanted to press the issue, but Ethan had already turned away, flipping through his assistant's logbook. He was making it crystal clear that the topic was closed.

Ethan always blamed me for our parents' deaths. He said if I hadn't insisted on going to that spot that day, Dad wouldn't have died, and Mom wouldn't have followed him to the grave. Whenever he said those things, his eyes were bloodshot, full of venom.

After that, he dumped me at Aunt Margaret's and moved out. Later, he met Selina, and he changed completely. He started smiling again. He learned how to be gentle, how to whisper sweet, comforting things to someone.

None of that mattered to me anymore.

If he knew the charred lump of meat lying on his table was me, he'd probably just sigh in relief. He was finally free of his lifelong burden. He could finally enjoy his wedding and his perfect life in peace.

Alistair didn't leave. He stood his ground next to Ethan. "Leah's health has been garbage ever since that accident. She's been living at your aunt's all by herself. You really don't worry about her at all?"

Ethan didn't even look up. "She chose her own pathetic path. Not my problem."

"Enough," Ethan finally raised his head, impatience burning in his eyes. "She called me just to announce her graduation was on the exact same day as my wedding. You think that's a coincidence? She just wants to humiliate me."

Alistair stared at him for a few seconds like he was looking at a total stranger.

"Did it ever cross your mind," Alistair's voice clipped with rising anger, "that maybe she just wanted you to be there?"

Ethan scoffed. "Go to that jinx's ceremony? Alistair, I'd rather spend the entire day right here, staring at this disgusting charred corpse, than show up to humor her. She doesn't deserve it."

Finally snapping, Alistair shoved Ethan hard in the chest. "How the hell can you say something so foul?"

"She was terrified you'd see her as a burden! Dragging that bad leg with the steel plate, she’s been dropping off home-cooked dinners in your precinct locker every other day, sneaking away without even showing her face just so she wouldn't upset you!" Alistair barked. "You are an ungrateful prick!"

"I don't give a damn about her self-righteous little guilt trips. Drop it, Alistair. We have actual work to do," Ethan brushed him off coldly. He turned his attention back to his assistant. "Have you run it through the system? Any missing persons reports matching the victim's profile?"

The assistant frantically scrolled through his tablet and shook his head.

"Unbelievable. This woman has been dead for at least two days. Two days off the grid, and her family hasn't even bothered to call the cops? What kind of irresponsible, trash family does she have?"

Just then, someone yelled from outside the tent, claiming they found a trace the suspect might have left behind. Ethan immediately stripped off his latex gloves and headed out.

Alistair stayed rooted to the spot. He cast a long, sorrowful look at the blackened remains on the table, then glanced at Ethan's retreating back, shaking his head in disgust.

Just as Alistair moved to follow him out, Ethan's phone rang.

Ethan stopped in his tracks and pulled his phone from his pocket. And then—in a split second—his entire demeanor shifted.

The hard lines on his forehead smoothed out. The corners of his mouth tilted up. Even his shoulders dropped their tension. When he answered the call, his voice was so soft and tender it belonged to a completely different man.

"Selina, baby? What's wrong?"