Page 49 of Truth Revealed

Lights flashed through the windows as a car pulled up, and she winced against the glare, which blocked the text from her gaze.

“Daria, we need to—” Hope’s voice had taken on a low, worried tone, but he was interrupted as the glass doors of the bar shattered.

She backed away, intending to crowd against the corner, but Hope was way ahead of her. He flipped the square table up on its left side and pulled her down behind it. Another crash and sprinkle of glass sounded before a whoosh took over the room and heat erupted. Screams and shouts rang through the bar and Daria risked peeking over the top of the table, her stomach dropping in horror.

Someone had served them a Molotov cocktail, on the house.

Flames were licking across the floor, already spreading toward the tables, while the patrons ran toward the back.

The fire alarm went off, and Daria didn’t know if it was automatic from the smoke already filling the room or if someone had pulled the lever. The building they were in didn’t require sprinklers, so the only thing it did was alert the authorities and set off a siren.

Allegra shouted at Dave, who called back, but Daria couldn’t make out the words. “This way!” he shouted, and then it was like a stampede as the few customers who had filled the bar followed his direction. They headed toward the rear exit, the lights blinking in alert.

Daria and Hope weren’t so lucky. They were cornered. The fire spread and covered most of the floor ahead of them, so getting to the exit with the others was out of the question.

She sucked in a sharp breath and immediately coughed, smoke consuming the air in the room. Frantically, she tried to come up with a way they could get to safety, but with both exits unreachable—

A bang echoed behind her and she screamed before she jerked around at the sound of Hope’s grunt. One of the metal bar chairs was wielded in his hands as he crashed it into the slim window again.

“Get ready,” he yelled to her. “The fire is going to leap toward the fresh oxygen, so as soon as this breaks, I need you to get through.”

“Okay!”

He beat the metal chair against the glass again, and Daria whipped her apron off. To get through that small opening, she needed something to cover her hands, so she didn’t rip them to shreds on the glass shards. She shoved each of her hands into the pockets and waited, taking as few breaths as possible.

Clang! The glass reverberated against the chair.

Bang! Hope bashed the chair into the glass again, his back muscles flexing with every swing.

It cracked, and Daria braced herself for the next swing.

The chair crashed into the glass again, and it shattered completely, tiny shards tinkling toward the ground, but Daria was quick, just like Hope told her. She planted her covered palms on the windowsill, then Hope grabbed her ass and helped her jump through the slim opening.

As soon as she jumped the few feet from the ledge to the asphalt of the alley, she turned back around and threw out her hands. For what purpose, she didn’t know. Daria sure as hell couldn’t catch the mass of muscle that was Hope.

But she didn’t need to. He hissed out a curse as he squeezed sideways through the narrow window, the glass surely scraping against his back and chest. He stumbled when he jumped from the sill to the ground, and through the opening she spied the same metal chair sitting alone on the other side.

In the next second, the flames leapt closer, sucking up all that fresh oxygen, and Hope pulled her away. Sirens rang through the air and came closer, and Daria jerked her head toward the street. She spotted Allegra and Dave across the road with the other patrons, but Hope was pulling her in the opposite direction.

“Wait, shouldn’t we—”

“Shoot Allegra a text, tell her I needed an inhaler or something. We gotta get back to the house.”

“What? Why?” But Daria didn’t wait for an answer, already obeying his request. “Oh God, your back—” Daria started, when Hope walked ahead of her. His shirt was sliced to pieces, rivulets of red peeking through the fabric with every movement.

“I’m fine,” he barked, and Daria frowned, but sent her text.

The car was parked on the other side of the street, across from the alley of the bar. Hope cranked it to life, and in seconds they were speeding down the road. The flames were nothing but a reflection in the side mirror, but Daria knew she was most certainly out of the job now.

“Why are we going home so quickly?” she asked.

Hope sucked in a deep breath. “They didn’t try very hard—I mean, it’s awful about the bar, yes—but if they really wanted to do some damage, they could have blocked the exits. It was almost…”

“Too easy,” she finished for him. “A distraction for—oh fuck. Sofia,” Daria hissed.

“Yeah, this has Pandora written all over it.”

“Go faster,” she urged, and dialed Persy.