The woman looked at her as if she had gone mad.

“Where is he?” Millie strode to where the woman was standing. “I know you went to see him!” She grabbed her by the arms and shook her hard enough to rattle her back teeth. “Tell me where he is, and I’ll tell you where your husband is!”

“At the new resort! He’s at the new resort!” The woman burst into tears.

“What the hell is going on?”

Millie spun around. A young man she might have recognized as handsome stood there, his immaculate suit looking ridiculous in the lurid glow of the fire. Behind him, his car was still running, the driver’s door open.

“My husband’s in there!” The woman, still sobbing, pointed toward the now-burning mill door.

Millie made her decision in an instant. “He’s hurt!” she said to the young man. “Please, please help him!”

He turned to look at the door and actually stepped toward it, which was more than she had thought he would do. Millie shoved him, hard, and was pounding toward his car before he had hit the ground. She slammed the door on his indignant shout, yanked the gearshift into reverse, and careened up the driveway. She spun around in the parking lot, tires screaming, and accelerated out the gate.

Clare rolled into a sitting position. Her head felt as if she were the clapper in a bell, ringing so loudly she couldn’t hear anything else.

Russ was pushing himself off the floor, rubbing the back of his neck. He turned to her, relief in his eyes. Clare? She could see his mouth move, but no noise came out.

She shook her head and pointed to her ear. He nodded and held out his hand, and together they staggered to their feet.

A table had overturned behind them, partially sheltering them from the brutal heat emanating in waves from the inferno that had been the dance floor. Only a few feet away, ragged tablecloths trembled from the violence of their destruction. Clare clutched Russ’s hand. If he had been a little bit farther from the door… She had just enough time to witness one of the magnificent antler chandeliers plunging into the maelstrom before Russ jerked her past the entryway and into the lobby.

Guests were surging, clotting, battering at the exits. She heard them faintly, shouts and crying from very far away. Mostly she heard the high-pitched ringing. Staff blocked the elevators, and the emergency stair had been chained open. As she watched, a middle-aged Asian woman emerged from the stairway, wide-eyed and shaking. Clare remembered what she had been going to do.

“The staff needs help making sure everyone gets out of their rooms.” Russ’s wince told her she needed to tone the volume down. “I’m going to go help.”

He shook his head and pointed to the reception desk, where four uniformed clerks were on phones. He turned her so she was facing him. They. Do. Job, he said.

“But what if the guests think it’s a false alarm?”

His eyebrows went up. He pointed behind him to where the ballroom was going up like a Christmas tree on a February bonfire.

She took his point. “Still. I ought to help.”

She saw rather than heard him sigh. Then he gathered her into his arms, held her tightly, and whispered into her ear. The ringing receded, and she heard him. “If you love me, you’ll leave. Now.”

Then he did something that amazed her. With dozens of people still struggling through the lobby, he kissed her, lightly, briefly, and then he put her away from him, stripped off his dinner jacket, and draped it over her shoulders.

“I can hear you now,” she said inanely.

“Go on. I’m going to make sure Mom and Cousin Nane got out okay.” She nodded. Turned. And found a frightened-looking elderly man, wearing dress shoes and pajamas and a black overcoat, watching her. She shrugged her arms into Russ’s jacket and crossed the lobby. She took the old man’s hand. “Father Aberforth,” she said. “Let me help you.”

Jeremy allowed himself sixty seconds to curse, kick the ground, and imagine what a roasting his dad was going to give him: letting one of the blackmailers get away by stealing his own freaking BMW.

After a minute had gone by, he put it aside and focused on the task at hand. The small, dark-haired woman who had screamed that her husband was inside stood by the lazily burning doorway, sobbing and hiccupping and calling, “Randy! Randy!” in an aching voice.

Jeremy crossed to her side. She looked up at him, her face wet. “Please,” she begged. “Help him.”

“I will,” he promised. “But I want you to help, too.” She nodded fiercely. “Go up to the new mill. There’s a phone inside the employees’ entrance. Call 911.” She nodded again. “Find the foreman. Tell him to have the men collect all the extinguishers we have in the building and bring them here. You got that?”

“Foreman. Extinguishers.”

“Tell him Jeremy Reid told you so.” Her wide-eyed shock at his name would have been comical under different circumstances. “That’s right, Jeremy Reid. So lay off my father.”

She bolted without another word. Jeremy looked toward the old mill. If he could get inside, he should be able to break through a window on the river side and jump. He was a strong swimmer, confident of his ability to keep even a scared and injured man afloat for the time it would take to reach the riverbank downstream from the building. If he could get past the fire. Into the water. Fire. Water.

He grinned to himself and dashed toward the river rolling past the old mill. He scrambled down the steep bank faster than he intended and wound up staggering the first few steps into the black water. It was dark down here, dark and fast-moving and steeply angled. He was afraid he would lose his footing or become disoriented if he waded in, so he forced himself to sit in the knee-deep water, sit, stretch out, and duck his head beneath the surface.

He came up gasping and yelping with pain. Christ, it felt like someone had taken a nutcracker to him. He staggered, dripping, up the bank, cupping his poor beleaguered balls. It would be a miracle if he was able to father children after this.

Facing the fiery door, he wondered if a good drenching was enough. Then he thought of the poor bastard stuck in there. It would have to be good enough. He took off his sopping suit jacket, draped it over his head, and ran inside.

Running through flame: crackling and hissing and a smell, not of smoke but of gas; heat coiling about him, his shirtsleeves crinkling, his pants legs stiffening; and then he was out, steaming but unharmed. He stumbled forward, sidestepping the antiquated machinery, wondering what was going to happen when the fire hit those monsters. Would they melt? Explode? “Hello!” he called. “Randy? Are you in here?”

Over the consuming growl of the fire, he heard a noise like a cross between a gulp and a cry. “Here! I’m over here!”

Jeremy followed the sound toward the back wall. He was expecting-He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t a guy his own age, lying on the dusty floor, surrounded by a backpack and pieces of food, bleeding from an iron stake shoved into his gut. Jeremy dropped to his knees. “Jesus Christ!” he said. “What happened?”

“Millie. She had this thing…” Randy waved toward the wound. A palm’s width of black iron stuck up from the side of his abdomen. “I didn’t pull it out,” he said weakly. “I thought it might bleed more.”

Jeremy rested his hand gently on Randy’s shoulder. “That was good, man. Good thinking.” He glanced up and saw right away that his breaking-the-windows idea had a serious flaw in it. The casement-style windows facing the river were a good twelve or thirteen feet above his head. “You just take it easy, man. I’m going to get you out of here. I need to take a look around, but I’m not leaving you. You got that?”