Chapter 25: Looking

Vincent Saraceno took the last man in the front hall with the butt of a rifle that wasn't his.

The man folded onto the tiles beside the others.

He zip-tied the last man's wrists to the stair post and keyed the radio. "Hall's clear. I'm going up after the old man."

"I'm at the stairs," Maura said. "I'm getting them now."

"Maura..."

"I know. Go."

The radio went to static.

He stood still for one breath, and he heard the fire.

It was in the dining room already, a steady low roar behind a wall of smoke.

The old captain's younger son grabbed his arm.

"Boss, the whole east side is going. We have to leave."

"My wife is at the stairs."

"Boss."

"Take the prisoners out the front. Count them."

He ran.

The hall behind the staircase was full of orange light.

The carpet runner had caught.

Flames climbed the banister one post at a time, and the heat took the skin off his face before he reached the turn.

"Maura!"

"Here!"

She stood past the stairs at the mouth of the back passage, with Nico clamped to her hip and a small body in her arms.

Between them, the staircase had come down.

A beam from the landing lay across the hall, burning along its whole length, and the gap under it was the height of a child.

The smoke was already low enough that she was coughing.

"I can't get through with him," she shouted. "Take him!"

She was holding Finn out over the fire.

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