There, across his shoulder and upper back, stretched old burn scars. Thick, uneven, healed over decades. Among them stood a tattoo. An eagle with wings spread, clutching a blooming rose.
Savannah felt the room tilt around her.
That image lived in her memory. It had lived there since childhood.
Suddenly, the past rushed forward.
She was seven years old again, trapped inside a burning apartment in Phoenix. Smoke everywhere. Sirens screaming outside. Her small hands pounding on a door that would not open.
Then a stranger burst through the flames. A man wrapped her in a wet blanket, lifted her in his arms, and carried her through fire that scorched his own skin. She remembered clinging to his neck, smelling smoke, hearing his voice telling her to hold tight.
As she lost consciousness, she saw his shoulder. The same eagle. The same rose.
She woke in a hospital later. Firefighters told her that a man had saved her and disappeared before anyone could get his name. She never knew who he was. She only knew she was alive because of him.
Now she stood beside Richard Keller, shaking.
She touched the scar gently. “Was it you,” she whispered. “Were you the man who pulled me out of that fire.”