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“Climb over him, pull from the outside,” Misty said.
Zig did, and she wasn’t too gentle either, scrambling over the guy who lay half in and half out. She landed on the ground outside, grabbed his arms and pulled. Misty wrapped her arms around his thighs and tried to lift and push, but her lungs and eyes were burning, and she started coughing and lost her grip. When she glanced behind her in panic, the door had warped so much it had swung open, and she could see the flames in the room beyond it. They’d nearly reached the desk, and the laptop that sat there. She fell to her knees, put her head and shoulders between the guy’s legs from behind, and lifted for all she was worth. He shot out the window so fast he took Zig to the ground with him, but she sprang up and reached back for Misty.
Misty looked back into the room. The laptop was sitting right there.
Then she threw a big towel into the tub, cranked the taps, and picked it up again to drape it, dripping, over her head. She ran to the desk, grabbed the laptop, and it was so hot it burned her hands and she dropped it to the floor. Smoke blanketed her and drove her to her knees. Zig was screaming for her from outside. She grabbed the edges of her wet towel and used them to pick up the laptop, shoving it along the floor ahead of her as she scramble-crawled to the bathroom. The door was open, and the entire doorframe was blazing. She shoved the computer ahead, then pulled the towel around her face and rose enough to run through. She tried to close the door, but it was sizzling hot, its paint bubbling, and too warped to move.
She was overcome with a fit of coughing and fell to her knees again. She heard her name in a high-pitched shriek from outside. Zig.
And then another one came from inside her own head.
Get the fuck up, Misty! It was Christy’s voice. Loud and clear. Get the fuck up and get out right now.
She pushed herself up off the floor. The room was full of smoke, but she felt around and found the computer. It was still hot as hell. She tugged the towel from her head and wrapped it around the laptop, pushing up to her hands and knees. And then she crawled and hoped she was moving in the right direction. Her head hit a wall. She started coughing again, and every cough made her inhale more smoke. Her eyes were watering so hard and burning so much that she couldn’t open them at all. She clasped the towel-wrapped computer to her chest, pressed her free hand to the wall and used it to help her pull herself up, feeling for the window ledge. There! There it was. Curling her fingers over the ledge, she pulled herself to her feet and pushed the computer through first.
Then someone was gripping her forearms and pulling her bodily up the wall and out the window. Not Zig. Way stronger than Zig. Somebody male. Big hands, and strong arms that pulled her into them and helped her stumble away from the heat and smoke. Jeremy’s arms! It was Jeremy’s arms around her, his chest beneath her head. She’d know them anywhere.
“Get—” Cough, hack, gasp. “—the laptop.”
“Get away from there! You’re too close!” That was Zig, shouting back at them from the driveway. Misty managed to open her eyes but could only make out a hazy shape standing near a lump on the ground that she hoped was Paul Quaid.
Jeremy scooped the computer-towel bundle up off the ground, keeping one arm around her as he led her away. When they reached the road where Jere’s classic Firebird was parked, he opened the door so she could sit down on the passenger seat. He put the laptop on the floor, then reached past her for a water bottle and handed it to her. He searched her face in the dashboard lights. “Are you hurt?”
“I inhaled a little smoke, but no.” She coughed a little more, then focused on inhaling the cool, pine-scented air. “How are you here?”
He shrugged. “You were missing. Everybody’s here.”
“I’m not missing.”
“Because I found you,” he said just as Zig crowded in beside him to lean into the car and see for herself that Misty was okay.
Jeremy squeezed her shoulder, then turned and ran back to where Zig had left poor Paul Quaid lying on the ground.
“Guy still had his cell phone in his pocket,” Zig said. “I couldn’t believe there was enough signal to call 911.”
Misty heard distant sirens already. “How the hell is Jeremy here?” she asked, as if maybe Zig would have the answer.
“You mean that hero hottie who pulled your ass out of the fire? That’s Jeremy?”
“Yes, that’s Jeremy. And I thought you were gay.”
“I am bi. Very bi at the moment.”
“Yeah, well, he’s taken.”
“By who?”
“By me,” she said.
“I thought you said you were on a break.”
Misty watched Jeremy tending to Paul Quaid. He had a first aid kit he’d taken from his car trunk, had already cut away the burned pant leg and was pouring cool, sterile water over the burns. He was speaking in that low, easy tone that could calm anybody through any sort of trouble. She loved when he used that voice. She’d called it his good-cop voice, but he’d had it before. Probably picked it up from Mason.
“Misty?” Zig prompted.
Misty blinked. “Yeah. Break’s over.”
She got out of the car, pushing past her friend, but then she looked back and said, “Quaid’s laptop is on the floor. It got pretty hot, but maybe it’s not entirely destroyed.”
