by Joyce Lamb
He stopped before her, and she looped her camera strap around her neck so she could put her arms around him and hug him. He tried to hold her off with a laugh. “I’m a mess.”
“I don’t care.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss him for the first time, and the instant their lips touched, everything around her made a dizzying shift . . .
I’m choking on smoke, eyes tearing as I fumble a door open and lurch inside the van, drawn by the cries of a small child. My heart’s racing, hammering. Not this time. I’m not losing this one.
Where is she? Where is she? Can’t see a damn thing.
“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m coming. Talk to me, kid, talk to me.”
The inside of the van is hot, too hot. Just give me time. A little more time . . . and then something warm and soft brushes my fingertips. A bare leg.
I close my fingers around that soft, pudgy leg, trying to be gentle even as the need to hurry clenches in my gut. I use the leg to guide me to a car seat. Strapped in, the seat and the kid. Glimpse of pink flowers on a white T-shirt. A little girl. Oh, Jesus, a little girl. Small and helpless and counting on me.
This child’s not dying, damn it.
“Just hang on. I won’t let you down.”
I can’t see, can’t find the mechanism that releases the straps. And I smell hot metal, burning plastic and rubber, hear a weird, ominous crackle. Flames? Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus.
Still no straps, hands frantic as they move over the screaming, squirming child, searching, searching. Finally, there it is. The latch. Jesus, the metal’s hot.
Everything is so hot, making the sweat pour into my eyes, stinging along with the smoke. Two more seconds, and the latch is free, the girl all but sliding out of the seat into my arms.
A laugh escapes me, a touch hysterical, as I crawl backward, out of the death trap, out into humid, smoke-choked air. My lungs ache, burn, my throat raw.
But I’ve got the girl, this sweet, warm, wriggly child, in my arms, and nothing else matters. This time, I saved the—
An explosion shook the world.
Berkley Sensation Titles by Joyce Lamb
COLD MIDNIGHT
TRUE VISION