Joan’s heart hammered in her chest as she took a step closer, the heat so hot now that her cheeks felt blistered.
“I can’t find Nate!” Ann shouted behind her. “He’s not in his room.”
Joan stretched the hose as far as it would reach and then squeezed the nozzle harder. “Have you checked the entire house?”
“Yes!”
She peered into the blaze, praying the boy had not slipped outside to build one of his bonfires and ended up trapped in the burning shed. “Would he have come outside?”
“No! Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know! What about the closets and under the beds?”
When a fire broke out, children, in an effort to save themselves, often hid from the flames, not realizing that the insidious smoke would coil around them and take their lives long before the fire did.
“I didn’t search them all. I’ll go back inside.”
Joan realized the flames were now succumbing to the water.
As Ann turned, Joan caught a flutter of movement to her right. She looked out toward the expansive yard and saw a figure of a child standing and staring at the shed.
“Ann. Look over there! Is that Nate?” Joan asked.
Ann shouted her son’s name as she ran barefoot across the lawn. The boy did not respond to his mother but stared at the fire with an intensity she had never seen before.
The cold water from the nozzle dripped over her fingers and onto her clothes. The growing cold was sapping her strength, but she kept shooting the water at the fire. The fire howled as if it sensed it was losing this battle.
She glanced back to see Ann rush up to her son. He was dressed in light-blue pajamas that made him appear much younger than ten. Ann wrapped her arms around the boy, hugging him close to her body and then hurriedly drawing him back as she ran her hands over his arms, torso, and legs. The trance was broken, and he shifted his attention back to his mother.
When Ann hugged her son to her again, Joan decided the boy was physically fine. She looked back to the fire, which had curled in on itself and retreated. She remained vigilant, however, determined to eradicate every trace of the devil’s breath.
She lost track of time until a strong hand gripped her shoulder. Startled, she turned to see Gideon standing there. The fire was all but gone, taking with it its heat and allowing a chill to burrow into her bones. Her teeth chattered when she asked, “Where’s Ann?”
“She’s in my car getting warm with Nate.” He took the nozzle from her and stopped the stream of water. “The fire is gone, Joan. It’s okay.”
Her fingers were red from the cold as she shivered. He shrugged off his jacket and wrapped it around her. A rush of warmth vibrated through her body. “How did you know?”
“Ann called me.”
She tensed and dug her heel into the muddy mulch. “We need to take pictures. Preserve evidence.”
“The fire department is on the way. So is Clarke. There will be plenty of people to figure out what happened here.”
Her fingers had taken on a gray cast, but they still trembled, not with cold but with a surging adrenaline that she knew would keep her wired for hours, if not days. She looked back at the shed’s exterior, still smoldering and streaked in soot. The siding had melted and curled.
“I woke when I heard an explosion,” she said.
Gideon coaxed her forward. “Thank God you did. If that had spread to the woods, we’d have had a much bigger problem on our hands.”
She expelled the stale air in her lungs and pulled in her first deep breath since she had awoken. “How did it happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Nate was out here just watching the fire. He wasn’t screaming or running for help or trying to approach the flames. He was simply standing there and staring.”
“I haven’t talked to Nate yet. But I will.”
“He could have seen who did this.”
Moonlight glittered over the brim of his hat, shadowing his face. “Joan, you have to get in the car and get warm. You’re going to go into shock.”
“I’m fine.”
He grabbed her by the arm. “You’re not fine. Accept the goddamn help, Joan.”
The temptation to surrender was palpable. But lowering her guard would accomplish nothing. “I know what I need.” She gritted her teeth so they would not chatter.
“Sometimes. But not now. Now you need to get warm and out of wet clothes. Once you’re stable, then you