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“Walter?” My voice breaks around his name.

Someone grabs the back of my jacket. I pull away before I recognize a stable worker’s face. He points toward the paddocks, where two other people are leading horses through an open gate.

“He’s out,” the man says. “Keep moving.”

I try to stand. My right ankle gives beneath me, and I land on one knee. The man goes to help someone calling from the far side of the yard after I wave him on. I crawl away from the doorway, keeping my head below the smoke blowing across the gravel. Sirens rise beyond the vineyard road, but the stable fills my view each time I look back.

I think of the mare standing in the aisle. If she had stayed there, Walter would have turned back into his stall. I can’t tell whether I’m shaking from that thought or from the cold rain beginning to fall.

Then Andrei’s voice cuts through the yard.

“Cassie!”

I lift my head. Andrei and Drew come around the workshop at a run. Drew sees the stable worker helping another horse through the side exit and veers toward them, calling for someone to clear the gate. Andrei sees me on the gravel and runs straight toward me.

“Cassie!” He drops to his knees beside me. His eyes are wider than I’ve ever seen them.

“Can you breathe?” he asks.

I nod and cough hard enough to make my chest hurt. “Walter.”

“He’s out.” Andrei slips one arm behind my back and the other beneath my knees. “I saw him.”

He lifts me and carries me past the workshop toward the vineyard road. I grip the front of his shirt. Smoke and rain have dampened his hair, and his heart pounds against my hand. Behind us, Drew calls for everyone to clear the yard. A second crash comes from the stable, followed by the hiss of water as the first firefighters move in.

“I can walk,” I tell Andrei when I can breathe again.

“No, you can’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I watched you try.” He keeps going until we reach the gravel turnout where the emergency vehicles have stopped. “Argue with me after someone has looked at you.”

A paramedic brings a chair from the ambulance. Andrei lowers me into it but stays beside me as she examines the cut near my temple and the red patches on my forearm. She asks whether I lost consciousness. I tell her I remember falling and that the roof hit the doorway after Walter got through.

“Your breathing sounds rough,” she says. “I want you on oxygen while we check your lungs.”

She fits a mask over my face. The air feels cool against my mouth. Another paramedic cleans the cut while I watch people guide horses into the far paddock. Mila runs beside the dark mare, then reaches Walter and puts both hands against his neck. She looks back toward the turnout. When she sees me, she stops long enough to raise a hand.

“He’s safe,” I tell Andrei through the mask.

“Yes.” He stands close enough that his knee touches mine. “He is.”

Drew arrives, soot on his jacket, and speaks to the paramedic before turning to us. “Everyone is accounted for. The horses are clear.”

Andrei gives a single nod. He waits until Drew leaves to answer a call, then crouches in front of me.

“You went back inside,” he says.

“The mare was blocking Walter.”

“You went back into a building that was burning.”

“I was already at the door when the alarm started.” I pull the mask away long enough to speak clearly. “I opened the side exit, and one of the workers helped with the mare.”

His hand closes around the chair’s edge. “The roof came down where you were standing.”

“After we got out.”