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The rest of her words were drowned out as the ceiling gave way in slow motion, blackened beams cracking and falling like a flaming mass of pick-up sticks. He shoved her violently behind him, then swore and threw up his arm to ward off a burning brand from above. He batted at his hair to quell any burning embers.

Inferno-esque heat poured over him. This place was going to be a no-shit oven in a few seconds.

“Up the stairs!” he shouted over the roar of the bonfire as the entire pile of flaming mattresses and bed frames collapsed through the hole.

Searing heat made the air too hot to breathe. Sleeve thrown over his mouth, he turned and ran for his life. Piper scrambled ahead of him as a rush of unbelievably hot air followed them up the makeshift chimney the stairwell had just become.

Smoke, black and blindingly thick, billowed around them. He found the handrail and clung to it for all he was worth as he raced upward in blackness blacker than night.

He burst into the kitchen and fell to his hands and knees, beneath the pall of smoke filling the room fast. Piper became visible a foot ahead of him. She was looking back over her shoulder in panic toward him.

“Where to?” she screamed over the unbelievable noise, hands outstretched and obviously disoriented. He saw her eyes were screwed shut. Must have gotten smoke in them and temporarily blinded herself.

He crawled past her fast, heading for the back door he’d seen the Palestinian use earlier. On the way by, he grabbed her hand and wrapped it around his belt. She hung on for dear life as he scooted for the door as fast as his hands and knees would carry him. The ceiling was on fire and burning crap rained down all around him, burning his scalp and back.

The top of his head banged into something hard. He felt a door panel and groped frantically for a doorknob. His fingers screamed in pain as he touched scorching hot metal. Quickly, he yanked his cuff down over his hand and opened the door.

He started to stand up to make better time—and was slammed flat by Piper throwing herself on top of him—just as a violent wave of fire rushed through the doorway barely above them.

“Backdraft!” she shouted as she rolled off him.

Jesus H. Christ. She’d just saved his life.

He scrambled on his belly across the porch and down the steps. Shit was falling off the sides of the burning building and he pushed to his feet and sprinted a hundred feet or so away from the house until the worst of the blistering heat on his back subsided.

He fell to one knee, coughing like a chain smoker.

Piper hacked and coughed beside him. Her face was soot-smudged and blistered, and tears streamed down her cheeks, striping the mess. Yet she still managed to be just about the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

He’d found her in time. And he’d pried her away from her damned investigation in the nick of time. They’d made it. They were alive.

“Well, that was fun,” she gasped.

He sucked in a lungful of cool, fresh air just as a half-dozen popping noises exploded behind them. “Get down!” he ordered her urgently.

“What’s happening?” Piper asked from above him. “Is the house exploding or something?”

He grabbed her arm and yanked her off her feet violently.

“Hey!” she protested as she hit the dirt beside him.

“Gunfire,” he bit out, pulling out his sidearm. “Someone’s shooting at us.”

“Who the hell’s firing at us?” she exclaimed.

He took a general position fix on the direction of the gunfire and realized it would ultimately drive them back into the burning building. Sonofabitch.

“Someone wants us to go back into that fire.”

“We can’t go back in there. We’ll die!”

No shit, Sherlock.

“Cover,” she bit out. “We need cover.”

He looked around desperately. Off to their left. A cluster of bushes with a small boulder nestled in the middle of them. “On my mark,” he bit out in her ear, “Run for that rock.”

As soon as she nodded, he ordered, “Now.”