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“Here kit-ty kit—” A violent cough erupted from his chest. He squatted to run a hand under the bed.
Nothing.
“Mitzy, come on.” He hissed every curse word he could come up with. “Lucy needs you.”
He fell against the overheated wall. Once more he swiped his arm under the bed. Soft fur and sharp claws met his hand.
There. He had her.
He grasped a leg and pulled her from under the bed. She hissed and spit, sinking her teeth into the soft pad of his hand.
And then, because he was clearly in the Twilight zone of burning hell, she glared at him with pissed-off yellow cat eyes until something close to understanding passed over her mangled, furry face. Despite the fact that flames seared the walls around them, or maybe because of it, she nuzzled into him.
Yes, she was definitely the Devil’s spawn.
“You owe me for this.” He held her tight against his bloodied shirt.
The foundation rocked and groaned. Flames licked around the corner into the room, smoke billowing around the doorframe. Stifling heat seized his lungs when he stood, and he was pretty sure he inhaled a few sparks. He wasn’t getting back out through the door. His lungs screamed for oxygen.
Damn. He could not pass out.
He glanced at the window—his only option.
Holding the cat, he kicked the window as hard as he could. The thin pane of glass shattered.
“Here!” someone outside shouted.
The cat secured in one hand, he grabbed the comforter and wrapped it around his other before he punched against the remaining glass fragments. Mitzy did not like this apparently cruel treatment. She dug her claws into the muscles of his chest and attempted to launch herself away.
Despite her persistent abuse, he passed her through the opening to waiting hands outside.
Mitzy was pissed. He didn’t care. She was alive.
“Lucy,” he rasped as the flames licked the walls around him.
* * *
Where was Will? Goose bumps popped up along Lucy’s arm as she shivered and searched the unfolding scene for him.
“They’re running over hell’s half-acre over there.” Dixie tucked another blanket around Lucy’s shoulders.
“Will hasn’t come out yet,” Lucy whispered.
“He will. Mitzy’s readin’ him the riot act, I figure.”
The paramedics and a fireman loaded Neilson into an ambulance. The lights flashed, and with a brief lonely wail of the siren, it drove away. No Will.
He’d gone for the cat. Her cat.
She fought against the stinging pain in her arm—it hurt like a sonofabitch. A medic had transferred her to a gurney outside the second ambulance and now examined the slash.
Dixie squeezed her hand and murmured low. Lucy couldn’t make out what she said because nothing mattered but Will in that burning building.
Flames had spread to Will’s apartment. Huge hoses attached to the fire hydrant near the road sprayed torrents of water over everything. The fire was winning, burning it all into a heap of metal and wood.
“Get Chief Lawson over here,” a fireman called out the door to another near the truck. “We’ve got a body.”
Lucy’s breath seized, and she tried to get off of the stretcher.
