Annie watched them run, heart hammering as guilt crashed over her. This was her fault. The locket. The secrets. Every escalation traced back to her.
Her hand closed over the weight in her pocket. The locket was safe. She prayed Jack was as well.
***
Jack woke already choking.
The burn in his lungs dragged him out of sleep before his eyes fully opened, and instinct drove him upright against the storage room wall as smoke rolled thickly across the ceiling, blurring the bare bulb overhead and carrying with it the unmistakable stench of accelerant and burning wood. Heat pressed down from above in suffocating waves, far too intense and far too sudden to be accidental.
Fire.
The realization hit at the same moment he saw the orange glow bleeding beneath the front door, and his body surged into motion before fear could fully register. He crossed the room in long strides, stopping just short of the metal door when he felt the heat radiating through it.
Blocked.
The fire had been placed to sever his access to the stairwell. To Annie.
He spun and drove his shoulder into the back door, throwing his full weight against it. The impact shuddered through his bones, but the door did not give. He struck it again, then again, anger lending power to each blow, but nothing shifted.
Not warped.
Barricaded.
Someone had sealed it from the outside.
They had planned this.
The thought sent a cold surge of fury through the heat in his veins. This wasn’t vandalism or intimidation. This was tactical. Whoever had done this understood space, timing, airflow, and human behavior. They had mapped exits. Anticipated response. Cut off escape.
And Annie was upstairs.
The image rose in his mind with brutal clarity: smoke filling her apartment, flames climbing the walls, her trapped while the fire ate upward through the building. Panic surged through him, sharp enough to blur the edges of his vision, and he forced himself to breathe through it even as the ceiling creaked ominously above him.
He would not lose her. Not again. Not because he underestimated someone willing to kill.
The small ventilation window near the ceiling was his only remaining option, never meant for escape, barely large enough to pass a box through, but it was the only opening left. He dragged a chair beneath it, climbed, and used the metal leg to smash the glass outward. It shattered across the alley, shards cutting into his forearms and shoulders as smoke surged more heavily into the room, but he barely noticed.
The opening was narrow. Too narrow. He measured it anyway.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, his hands shaking now despite his effort to control them.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“This is Detective Jack Calloway, badge four-seven-three-one,” he said, forcing steadiness into his voice as smoke clawed into his lungs. “Active structure fire at 438 Main Street. There is a civilian trapped on the second floor. Send everything.”
He ended the call as the ceiling above him groaned again, a deeper, more dangerous sound this time, and turned back to the window. The building’s structure was failing far too quickly.Whoever had ignited this blaze had used accelerants and multiple points of origin, turning the shop into a chimney and the upper floors into a furnace.
He braced his hands on the jagged metal frame and began forcing himself through.
The opening fought him immediately, biting into muscle and bone as his shoulders wedged and his ribs compressed under the pressure. Glass sliced into his skin. Metal scraped across his chest. Smoke poured past his face in choking gusts. For a terrifying moment, he was stuck, suspended halfway through, unable to go forward or back.
Annie’s face filled his mind.
He shoved harder.
Pain flared, bright and blinding, but his body shifted, then slid, and finally tore free as he tumbled into the alley below.
Cold night air hit him like mercy.
