Second, that smell I’d registered earlier came back on a fresh gust of wind. And this time, the smell was stronger. And clearer.
Gasoline.
Time seemed to freeze.
A million scenarios crashed through my mind. A billion different decisions I could make in this moment, each one leading to a different outcome. But only one outcome was acceptable.
Harper. Alive.
Right now, she was inside that bungalow. Locked in the bathroom like I’d told her. No window. No way to see what was coming. And by the time she smelled the smoke, by the time she realized what was happening …
It could be too late.
This was my fault. I’d told her to hide. I’d told her to wait for my voice.
And now my voice might be the last thing she ever heard.
Somewhere in the chaos of my heart’s panic, my brain dragged up intel that might matter right now.
For six months, I’d shared a cell with an arsonist named Danny. The guy never shut up about fire. His family had died in a house fire when he was a kid, and it had flipped some switch in his brain. He’d never hurt people, but property? Buildings? Cars? You name it, Danny loved to burn it. He’d even become a volunteer firefighter at one point, just to get closer to the flames.
The one thing I took away from all his ramblings were some very sobering facts.
Without accelerant, smoke would begin filling a house immediately after ignition. Within sixty to ninety seconds, it would spread everywhere. Visibility would drop. The air would turn toxic. Breathing would become painful.
That’s when victims usually lost consciousness.
Three minutes in, flashover became possible. The entire room could ignite simultaneously. Temperatures would spike to fifteen hundred degrees. Escape routes would vanish.
Within minutes, survival would be zero. Minutes.
That was without gasoline.
With gasoline, that timeline didn’t just accelerate. It collapsed.
Gasoline fumes were heavier than air. The vapors would spread under doors, through vents, into every corner of the house before the first flame even touched down. The fire would move faster than a human could run. Hallways would become tunnels of flame. Flashover could happen within thirty to sixty seconds of the first spark.
Bottom line: with gasoline, I’d have sixty seconds to get to her. Probably less.
In this instant, surrounded by howling wind, staring at a figure who hadn’t yet noticed me, I took off running.
My bare feet hit cold ground. One step. Two.
Then the world turned orange.
The flames didn’t crawl up the side of the house. They erupted. A wall of fire that roared to life with a sound like fabric tearing, if the fabric were made of thunder. Heat slammed into me from thirty feet away, so intense that my eyes watered instantly.
Three steps. Four. The bungalow was already screaming.
“Harper!”
The fire wrapped around the structure like a living thing. Not hungry. Starving. I realized with horror that Silas hadn’t just doused the back of the house.
He’d lined the entire perimeter.
The signs had been there. The faint chemical undertone beneath the woodsmoke. The way the ground around the foundation had that slick, almost-oily sheen I should have recognized sooner.
But I’d been so locked on to the threat, so focused on getting to the armed men who could help me keep Harper safe, I’d missed what was right under my nose.
