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Fuck.

I worked my way around the side of the house just as a window exploded on the second story. A second later, Dario leaned out holding a little girl.

“Get something to catch her,” he shouted to me.

I turned around and ran back to the front, shouting for someone to get me a blanket or a tarp. Elijah appeared with a blue tarp from out of nowhere and followed me around the side of the house with Finn, along with Luigi and Stefan, whom Carla had sequestered in the guardhouse after luring them out to the building under the guise of checking on the house’s security.

Together, we gripped the sides of the tarp and held it open.

“Ready,” I called up to the open window.

Dario appeared again, the girl clinging to his neck like a koala.

Fia was beside me then, her brother’s arm around her, both of them still bleeding.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Ricco called to his daughter in Italian. “Come down to Daddy.”

We could hear her cries from the ground, the way she begged Ricco to come get her.

Her father’s voice wavered with tears as he encouraged her to let go.

She was wasting time.

I could see the fire consuming the entire first floor and knew it was only a matter of time before the structural integrity of the second floor caved in. I’d set enough fires to cover my tracks to last a lifetime.

Finally, Dario did what I was seconds away from ordering him to do. He peeled the kid off his torso and held her out the window, tossing her down to us before she could throw herself back at him.

“Steady,” I ordered as we braced for impact.

A moment later, we absorbed the four- or five-year-old girl’s weight on the tarp, and Ricco was reaching over to pull her into his arms even though he’d been shot.

The boy was next.

He was bigger, and I doubted for a moment that the tarp would hold his weight, but I didn’t say anything.

I could feel the way the other men were holding the material that they were nervous about his impact too.

Still, we braced as Dario sent him sailing down from the second story with much less fuss. We caught the boy, and he rolled to his feet before sprinting to his dad’s side.

“His wife,” Dario yelled through the smoke billowing from the open window, his voice ravaged.

Everyone tensed, even Fia who hovered close to me.

There was a good chance Ricco’s wife’s weight and velocity would rip the tarp.

Still, what choice did we have?

Dario helped her out the window, so she was sitting with her back facing us, arms crossed over her torso. With a push from Dario and a bloodcurdling scream, she fell through the air and crashed into the tarp.

As much as we tried to absorb the blow, the tarp ripped clean down the middle, dropping the woman to the ground with a heavy bone-breaking thwack.

She screamed in pain, clutching her shoulder.

But she was alive.

“Dario,” Fia said, moving toward the open window, her voice filled with panicked pain. “Dario!” she shouted. “How are you going to get your ass down here?”

Somewhere in the neighborhood, sirens rang out.