Page 82 of The Moment He Couldn’t Walk Away

The rear door was open.

“Wait!” Lynx roared, but Finch ignored him and ran inside.

A wave of smoke hit him the moment he entered. Finch yanked his shirt up over his mouth and nose and moved into the hallway, staying close to the wall. His eyes were watering, and the smoke tasted of something chemical, but he’d think about that when he knew Nina was safe. Where was the fire?

“Nina!” Finch roared her name as he entered her room. “Wake up!”

He reached her bed in three strides and threw the covers back. She was curled on her side, hair across her face, her nightdress twisted. Not moving. For one terrible second, his heart nearly stopped, and then she stirred.

He slid his hands under her, and straightened with Nina in his arms. He leaned forward and managed to snatch a blanket off the bed and dragged it over her as he turned for the door.

“Wh-what—” Her voice was thick with sleep and confusion as she fought the blanket and him.

“Fire. Don’t take it off.” He pulled the blanket tighter around her head and kept moving.

Finch held his breath and went fast. The smoke in the hallway had thickened in the minute he’d been in the room, so he kept low. His eyes started to burn, and his lungs needed air as panic made his breathing increase. Reaching the back door, he rushed through and sucked a deep lungful of cold air.

“Is she okay?” Lynx ran to his side.

“I think so.”

“Finch?” Nina wrestled the blanket off her head.

“You’re okay. We’re outside.”

He set her feet down on the ground but kept his hands on her until he was sure her legs were steady. She looked up at him, and then at the house that smoke was now billowing out of.

“Mabel,” she said. “I need to find my cat.”

“You’re not going back in there,” Finch said.

He wrapped the blanket more firmly around her shoulders and then held her so she didn’t run back into the house to find the cat.

“I will if she’s in there,” Nina said, struggling to get free of his grip.

A streak of white came flying out the door then, launched itself off the step, and landed directly in Lynx’s arms. He caught the cat on instinct, staggering back a step with an armful of indignant feline.

“She’s safe,” he said, looking surprised to be holding her.

Nina’s whole body sagged with relief.

“Hose,” she said then, pulling herself upright again. “We have to stop the fire.”

“Did you see where it’s coming from?” Lynx asked, now cuddling the cat and nuzzling her head with his chin. Mabel was purring.

“Excuse me if I didn’t stop to check,” Finch snarled, running for the hose.

Now that Nina was safe and they were both out of the burning house, his mind was throwing out all kinds of possibilities, like—had this fire been lit deliberately?

Chapter 22

Nina stared at her house. She could still have been inside there with the walls burning around her. Her house. She’d saved hard for the deposit, and then the day she’d gotten the keys, she had walked through each room smiling.

Now it was burning.

“It only takes ten minutes for the heat in a room to become so intense that everything combustible ignites at once,” Finch said, unraveling her hose. His voice was low and measured, and Nina thought he sounded like someone who had been trained not to get agitated in a crisis.

She was agitated—scared and angry.