“The senator?”

“Who else?”

“The hell with it,” said Kyle, tossing it aside. “He can have it.”

The old man gasped, but Kyle ignored him. The heat from the flames coming down the stairs pressed upon Kyle’s skin. But the heat was coming from somewhere else, too. He stood up, raised his hand, could feel it pour down from the ceiling. The floor above was burning. It wouldn’t be long before the whole thing collapsed on their heads.

“We have to get out of here,” said Kyle. “Now.”

“All right, then. Up the stairs it is.”

“But he still has the gun. He’ll be lying in wait outside the house, probably in the back, hoping we’ll charge up the stairs and out the open door. We’ll be gasping for air as he picks us off.”

“Maybe he’ll get one, but it’s still our only chance,” said the old man. He slowly rolled onto his knees and then crawled toward the file that was now leaning up against one of the walls. “I’ll follow you.”

Kyle turned and looked at the old man as he scuttled across the floor. “It really is you, isn’t it?”

“In the flesh.” The old man grabbed the file and then, with much struggle, pushed himself to standing. “Let’s go, then. Up the stairs with you. ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.’ ”

“What the hell is that?”

“Tennyson.” Pause. “Alfred Lord Tennyson?”

“What was he, a ballplayer?”

“A poet. Golly God, son, have you no culture?”

“Not yours,” said Kyle. “Then what’s a league anyway?”

The old man thought. “I don’t really know. Isn’t that something?”

“That’s something, all right.” Kyle looked at the old man. He wasn’t small, but there was something fragile about him. Kyle still wasn’t sure how this miracle had happened, but he knew instinctively that this old man was his father and that he desperately needed Kyle’s protection. And protect him he would, whatever the cost.

“Okay,” said Kyle. “Let’s do it.”

Kyle made his way toward the stairway and then stopped as the flames started dropping down, catching onto the wood step by step. The idea of rushing through the fire, his feet burning all the while, only to be shot as he cleared the doorway, seemed the most futile of acts. He stopped, shook his head, turned around, saw the rusted washer and dryer by the front wall, and flashed on a memory.

It was dark in the memory, and he was scared, just like now, and he was hiding, just like now. It was when he was sixteen, and it involved the empty Simpson house, a rat, a bong, and a small fire that had been accidentally set—the less said about all of which, the better. The police had shown up with their sirens, and they had, each of them, Kat included, stormed out of there and torn off in all different directions. He had headed home but he couldn’t rush in his house like a madman, he was more afraid of his mother than of the police. So instead he dove under his own front porch and stayed there, peering out, as the police cruisers slipped by, searchlights panning the doorways. And he remembered a comforting wash of warm, sodden air flowing over him as he cowered. A wash of warm, sodden air flowing from the dryer.

An explosion blasted him out of his reverie, forcing him into a crouch of fear. It was loud, but it hadn’t come from the house. It had a familiar sound, as if fireworks were going off nearby. Fireworks? That made no sense, but nothing made sense just then, and there wasn’t time to figure any of it out.

He pointed the flashlight at the dryer, found the exhaust pipe, followed it up to where it exited through the drywall.

“Hold this,” he told his father, handing over the flashlight as he climbed atop the dryer. With a single savage jerk, he yanked out the exhaust pipe, leaving a hole in the drywall. Wildly he started ripping the drywall away until he saw, behind it, a plywood patch, larger than any of the windows, through which the dryer’s exhaust had vented.

“What’s that you found?” said his father.

“Our way out,” said Kyle.

He banged the plywood with his fist but couldn’t break through. He grabbed hold of the hole in the exhaust and pulled, but it wouldn’t release. The patch had been screwed into a frame set into a large opening in the stone foundation. He reached up to an edge, worked his fingers as far into the crack as he could, pulled with all his might. Nothing.

Another explosion from outside the house, and then others closer, explosions like gunshots that seemed to come from the top of the stairs.

“I need a screwdriver, or something like a knife,” shouted Kyle in frustration.

A quick click-swish from beside him. He looked down. His father was holding out a black-handled knife with a long, narrow blade.

“Will this do?”

Kyle stared for a moment at the incongruous sight of his father holding a switchblade, something he could never have imagined in the years before this very moment, then grabbed the thing and started working the blade beneath the plywood and around the screws. He thought it would be a tougher job, but decades of moist, warm air had weakened the wooden frame. With a shot of leverage from the knife, the plywood began pulling away from the frame. When there was enough of a gap to get a proper grip, he put the knife in his teeth, took hold, and heaved. He almost fell off the dryer as the plywood wrenched free, leaving a wide opening leading to the area beneath the front porch of his house.

“Can you make it through?” said Kyle.

“Watch me,” said his father as he struggled to lumber atop the dryer.

Kyle reached out a hand and pulled him up and then dropped to his hands and knees to make a stepping stool.

A few moments later, they were lying side by side beneath the front edge of the front porch. It was a strangely delicious moment for Kyle Byrne. He was racked with fear, yes, and in pain still from the beating, yes, and the heat bearing down on the two of them from the house was excruciating, despite the cool air that was now bathing their faces. But here he was, in the same spot where he’d been lying alone ten years before, once again smack in the middle of trouble, but this time with his father.

An explosion overhead, and the street, already illuminated by the fire raging above them, lit up even brighter. In the distance, sirens could be heard.

“My car is in the driveway,” said Kyle, “around the back. Stay here while I grab it.”

“Don’t play the fool, boyo,” said his father. “The car’s gone, along with the house.”

“The house I don’t really care about, the bank took it already, but the car’s pretty much all I have left.”