Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(166)

“Save the blame for when the kids are safe.”

She blew out a furious, huffing breath. “Fair enough.”

Bruno knotted cord around some of the rings sewn into the curtain hem and tossed the whole thing out the window to measure the shortfall. They gazed down, dismayed. Still over two yards short.





A vehicle rounded the corner of the house, bouncing and thudding. A white Volkswagen panel van.

Bruno grabbed the curtain and flung it out the window, flapping.

“That might be more of King’s goons,” she warned.

“So? So they shoot us,” he said. “They’re welcome to. Have at it. At this point, they’d be doing us a goddamn favor.”

Ouch. Not what she wanted to hear. But he had a point.

The van jerked to a stop. Two people jumped out, waving. Lily squinted through the gloom. Not possible. She must be hallucinating.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, it’s Kev and Sean! Kev!” he bellowed. “Kev!”

Kev waved his arms, yelled back.

“You got some rope?” Bruno yelled. “The floor’s going to fall in!”

The two men leaped back into the van, accelerated over walkways and rosebushes until they were directly below the window. Kev got out, a coil of rope in his arms, stepped onto his brother’s linked hands, and leaped up on top of the van. Tears streamed down Lily’s face.

Kev grabbed the end of the curtain cord, gave it a reassuring tug, and threaded his coil of rope through it. He knotted it, tugged again.

“You go first,” Bruno said, as he hauled up the rope.

“The babies first,” Lily said.

“No. I’ll work faster and better if I know that you’re—”

“The babies first!”

He crouched, fixing the rope to the steam radiator. “Then get one of the kids strapped into the goddamn seat, quick!”

Their furious activity was punctuated by grunts of effort, coughing, the odd Calabrese obscenity. Soon, the unconscious little girl toddler was strapped into her seat, secured with the five-point harness and the webbed restraints. Lily got the boy strapped in to his seat while Bruno snapped the carrier’s handle into place and looped the rope around, jerking, knotting. The knots looked secure, but still they stared at each other, pale and sick when he poised the thing on the windowsill.

“This is so f*cking terrifying,” he said.

Lily coughed and gritted her teeth. “Go for it.”

They watched the child’s pale sleeping face slowly twist and twirl beneath them, getting smaller in the reddish glare as Bruno fed the rope out. Thank God the kid was still unconscious. The rope was more than long enough. Kev received the bucket seat, untied it. Bruno yanked the rope back up as Kev passed the baby to Sean.

The next one went faster. When the boy was safely down, Lily was able to breathe again, more or less. “You go next,” she urged him. “Let me go last. Since this whole thing was my idea.”

“Shut up,” Bruno snarled. He jerked her arms up. Knotted a loop of the rope beneath her armpits.

She stepped off into empty air, elbows tight to her ribs, clutching the rope. Staring up at Bruno’s anxious, soot-streaked face as he steadily lowered her down. She twisted and swayed, buffeted by blasts of heat coming out of the windows. The first floor looked like the pits of hell. Hands grabbed her from below. Yelling male voices. The world lurched, slid, twisted. Gravity sucked at her, buffeted her.

Then she was lying flat on her back on the hard stony tiles, ignored while Kev and Sean loped away to concentrate on Bruno.

She tried to get up, but her legs gave out, wobbling. She just propped herself up. The baby seats were near to her, the kids still asleep.

Crash, the second floor gave way. Heat and sparks blasted out, blowing her hair back. She screamed, stuffing her sooty fist into her mouth. Her heart stuttered. Her eyes watered so badly, she couldn’t tell if Bruno was still . . . how could he be? There was no floor beneath him.

Then she saw his silhouette, backlit by red-tinged billows of smoke, dangling on the rope. He climbed swiftly down, hand over hand, and landed lightly on top of the van. He leaped off it to the ground.

She must have fainted for a while. Or just shut down. She remembered being carried. Blazing, flashing lights, voices. A blanket was tucked around her. People discussing her, prodding at her. She clawed her way back to wakefulness by brute effort. She couldn’t afford to let herself go, like a fainting Victorian miss. She was alone. She had to keep it together, look out for herself. Nobody else would do it for her.

At some point, a hot paper cup of coffee was pushed into her hands. Someone wrapped her cold fingers around it.

She pulled her gaze into focus. She was sitting on a marble bench on the grounds somewhere in the midst of various emergency vehicles. Bruno crouched in front of her, hands around hers. She looked away from him. The babies were gone. Whisked off to a hospital. The house was burning, great arcs of water from fire hoses pumping into it.

Bruno was waiting for her to look him in the eye. She looked at his hands. They were filthy, scratched, scraped, burned, knuckles bloodied. She shut her eyes again. Let him wait.

“Lily?” he said, finally. “Are you OK?”

“No,” she said. No social lies left. It was all burned out of her.

“Please,” he said, after an agonizing silence. “Look at me.”