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When Jack’s eyes fully opened, Queenie backed up and started to whine and bark. And that’s when Jack smelled it. He looked around. “Oh my Lord.”
Flames were shooting across the front part of his office. Smoke was everywhere, and pouring up the stairs.
“Desiree!” he screamed.
Gagging and holding his arm over his face, he took the stairs two at a time; a barking Queenie bounded right behind him.
He pounded on the door. “Desiree!” He opened the door and saw her on the floor of the smoke-filled room gasping for air.
He raced over and picked her up as her eyes closed and she fell limp.
Jack carried her down the stairs. Flames had blocked the front door, so he slid open a rear window and clambered out with her. Queenie leapt neatly through the opening and followed.
Jack carried her well away from the building and set her down on a strip of grass. He breathed into her mouth, slapped her face, rolled her on her side, and pushed against her back to free up her lungs.
“Come on, Desiree. Please, come on now, breathe. Please!”
He kept driving air into her mouth and compressing her back. She suddenly gave a heaving breath, sat up, took another forceful swallow of air, then turned to the side and retched.
“You’re okay, you’re okay,” he said softly as he helped her lie back. He turned to Queenie. “Watch her, girl!”
He passed back through the window and quickly filled boxes with their files, all the while coughing and gagging. Both their briefcases slung over his shoulders, he climbed back out through the window and put the items down. He made one more trip back inside to get whatever else he could before the place was fully engulfed in flames.
Jack could hear sirens now as, coughing and spitting up, he ran back to DuBose and Queenie. Only this time he found they were no longer alone.
“Son of a bitch,” said Gene Taliaferro. “How’d you get outta there, man?” He was not in his deputy’s uniform, but he had his service revolver pointed at Jack.
The man next to him was the same one whose ear Jack had shot half off. “Miss me?” he snarled. “Because I sure as hell missed you.”
Gene looked at DuBose. “Get up, woman. Now! I ain’t tellin’ you a second time.”
DuBose rose unsteadily to her feet.
Queenie was snarling and baring her teeth. Gene pointed his gun at the animal.
Jack stepped in front of the dog. “You’re not going to do that, Gene. What you’re going to do is get the hell out of here, right now. Before people show up and you get arrested.”
Gene smirked. “What? You think the boys on the fire truck are gonna care? You simple, or what?”
“Simple like his sister,” said his companion.
Jack slowly turned his gaze to him. “My sister?”
“Yeah, she screamed like a little baby when I hit her. Heard she died. You should thank me. Now you don’t have to change her damn diaper no more.”
With a roar of rage, Jack lunged at the man, striking him on the jaw so hard he knocked him down. But Gene struck Jack on the head with the butt of his revolver and Jack fell to the pavement, moaning.
Gene pointed his gun at Jack, but DuBose flung herself in the way.
“Help us,” she screamed. “Help us, somebody.”
“Ain’t nobody gonna help you,” said Gene, grabbing her by the hair and yanking her away. He aimed his gun at her and grinned. “Say goodbye to yourself.”
A terrified DuBose closed her eyes and prepared herself to die.
She heard a cry of pain and a thud. When she opened her eyes, Gene lay stretched out on the pavement unconscious, his gun next to him.
The person who had put him there looked remarkably familiar to DuBose.
