her.
She would have been offended if she wasn’t aware that he’d had no sleep the past two nights. And maybe even more nights before that. She hadn’t had much more sleep, so she began to drift off, too.
Until her eyes began to burn and her lungs...
At first she blamed guilt. But Mrs. Doremire was right. Andy would have wanted her to be happy, so she couldn’t use him as an excuse. But as it became harder for her to breathe, she realized what the real problem was.
Smoke. Someone had set the house on fire.
“Blaine!”
The sound of his name—uttered with such fear and urgency—jerked him awake as effectively as if she’d screamed. He coughed and sputtered as smoke burned his throat and lungs.
Soft hands gripped his shoulders, shaking him. “The house is on fire! We have to get out!”
They pulled on clothes in the dark and Blaine grabbed up his holster and his gun. He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t awakened earlier. The fire must have been burning for a while because there was a lot of smoke—so much that it was hard to breathe. Hard to see. But there wasn’t much heat.
Maybe the smoke was just a ruse to get them out of the house—where Maggie could be grabbed. Or shot. But the smoke, growing denser and denser, could kill her, too.
She coughed and sputtered. But she didn’t speak. She must have been too scared.
So was Blaine. He was scared that he had failed her and the baby—that he had broken his promise to her that he would keep them safe. He shouldn’t have let his desire for her distract him. He shouldn’t have crossed the line with a material witness.
“We have to stay low,” he said as he helped her down to the floor. He reached forward and touched the door, his palm against the wood. It wasn’t warm—at least, not as warm as the floor beneath his knees.
Maggie must have felt it, too, because she gasped and started to rise. But Blaine caught her arm and pulled her back down as she began to cough.
Getting out wouldn’t be easy, especially if the whole first floor was engulfed as he suspected. But he didn’t have time to devise a plan. He had to act now—before the floor gave way beneath them.
So he opened the door to the hall. The smoke was even thicker than in the bedroom. He crossed it quickly to the bathroom, grabbed towels from a shelf and soaked them under the tub faucet. Maggie was still in the hall as if she hadn’t been able to see where to go. He wrapped Maggie’s face and body in the wet towels, and then he picked her up in his arms.
“Blaine...”
He coughed, and his eyes teared up from the smoke. But there was no time. And maybe there was no escape. He couldn’t jump out a second-story window—not without hurting Maggie and her baby. So he ran toward the stairs. The bottom floor was aglow from the flames, but none licked up the steps. So he ran down them—wood weakening and splintering beneath them from the heat and the fire.
The house creaked and groaned as the flames consumed it. And the smoke overwhelmed him, blinding him to any exits. But he remembered where the front door was.
But had it been barricaded? Or were those gunmen waiting outside it to make sure they didn’t escape?
As he headed toward it, the door burst open, and men in masks hurried into the house. These weren’t those horrible zombie masks. These masks had oxygen pumping into them and were attached to hats. Firemen had arrived. Of course one of Ash’s neighbors would have called the police. They would have noticed the flames—unlike Blaine.
He shouldn’t have sent the other agents away. But he had wanted one last night alone with Maggie. That night might have cost her life or her baby’s life. Her body was going limp in his arms.
One of the firemen took Maggie from him and carried her out. Blaine should have fought the man. He should have made certain that he really was a fireman. What if it was one of the robbers in another disguise?
Blaine hurried after him, but the smoke was so thick in his lungs now that he couldn’t draw a breath deep enough. He couldn’t breathe. And before he could hurry after Maggie, the house shuddered as the second story began to fall into the first...
* * *
MAGGIE’S THROAT BURNED. From the smoke and from screaming. Over the fireman’s shoulder, she had seen the roof collapse and the house fold in on itself...and on Blaine. She’d pounded on the fireman’s shoulders, but he hadn’t released her.
And for a moment, she had stared up in fear that the mask wasn’t any more real than the zombie masks had been. She’d worried that it had just been a disguise.
And she’d reached for it. But she’d been too weak to pull it off. Too weak to fight off the man as he carried her away. He put her into the back of a vehicle, and it sped away with her locked inside. Sirens wailed and lights flashed, but she still did not trust where it would take her. She didn’t trust the oxygen either that a young woman gave her in the back of that van.
What if it was a drug or a gas? What if it knocked her out? She tried to fight it, but she didn’t have the strength to pull off the mask. And then it began to make her feel better, stronger.
So when the doors opened again, she was strong enough to fight. To run. But the doors opened to a hospital Emergency entrance. She pulled off the oxygen mask and asked, “Where’s Blaine?”
The paramedic stared down at her as she pushed the stretcher through the sliding doors of the ER entrance. “Who?”
“Agent Campbell,” she said. “He was in the house...” She coughed and sputtered, but she wasn’t choking on the smoke. She was choking on emotion. “He was in the house...when the roof caved in...”
The paramedic shrugged. “I don’t know...”
“Do you know if anybody else got out?”
Blaine hadn’t been the only one inside; there had been other firemen, too. Real firemen, she realized they were. They would have saved him. Right? They would have made certain Blaine got out alive.
“I don’t know, miss,” the female paramedic replied. “We were told to get you to the hospital right away because of the baby.”
Maggie had one hand splayed across her belly, feeling for movement. Was he okay? She hoped the smoke hadn’t hurt him. She was scared to think of what it might have done to his heart. His brain...
“That’s good,” she agreed. “We need to check out the baby.”
“And you, too,” the paramedic said. She leaned back as doctors ran up.
But Maggie grabbed the young woman’s arm. “Was there another ambulance there?” Was there someone who could help Blaine?
Because after seeing the roof collapse, she had no doubt that all of the people still inside would need medical help. Maggie was glad that she and her baby had been brought to the hospital so quickly. But she also
