It was coming from his bedroom window.
And he knew…he fucking knew that Daisy was in his room. She hadn’t gone home. She was waiting for him there.
He didn’t even think it through.
His body moved on compulsion.
He shifted course, his feet pounding across the lawn and around the side of the house. He scaled the tree in three seconds flat. When he made it to the top, he found the window was closed against the howl of cold wind that whipped through the night air.
Frantic, he smacked his palms against it, and he pressed his face to the glass.
Smoke filled the room.
“Daisy! Oh God, Daisy!” he screamed. “Daisy!”
There was no movement, just the crackle and howl of the fire as it spread across the house’s roof.
He shifted, gritting his teeth as he turned and drove his elbow through the glass.
It shattered into a million pieces, and he shoved the fragments away, not caring about the pain as a piece of glass sliced through his skin as he pushed through the window.
“Daisy?! Daisy?!”
A cry erupted from his left. He covered his nose and mouth with his shirt and began to crawl in that direction.
His hands flung and smacked out ahead of him.
Searching and searching.
He finally felt it.
A leg.
He wrapped his hand around it, and he used it to guide him up until he had her in his arms. He basically dragged her back to the window, and he somehow managed to get her onto his back as he climbed from it and out onto the tree.
They both choked as they found the clear air. “Are you okay?” he begged, shifting around to brush the hair back from her face.
“I…I fell asleep and when I woke up…”
“It’s okay. It’s okay. We have to get out of here.”
He helped her all the way down, and they ducked their heads as they ran to the opposite side of the lawn, far outside the reach of the fire that quickly consumed the house.
When he got Daisy to safety, his mind began to clear. In a flash, a whole new dread gripped him. “Where are my parents?” Cash gasped, trying to breathe and see and make sense of what had happened.
Of what he had done.
Trepidation toiled in Daisy’s eyes, her own panic seeping through. “I…they said they were exhausted and going to bed.”
Horror gripped his soul.
Their room was on the bottom floor on the right side of the house.
“No. No.”
In the distance, he could hear sirens, and the crackle of the fire intensified. Glass suddenly shattered from the big pane glass window in the kitchen nook.
And he was on his feet again, racing for the house.
