Hot as Sin (Hot Shots: Men of Fire #2)(47)
Author: Bella Andre

Sam could see that Dianna wanted to fight him on it, but he had to make sure she understood.

“I can’t help whoever is in the cabin if I have to help you too.”

“Just hurry,” she said, quickly giving in. “Please.”

Without his turnouts, the heat emanating from the ground was intense, but he’d been in far hotter forests. He ran toward the small building, all of his focus on finding a way to get inside, considering that the entire front half was already on fire.

Quickly jogging around the perimeter, he found no doors, no windows to enter from. He’d have to go in the front by diverting the fire from the door.

Grabbing a large branch off the ground, he climbed a nearby tree behind the building and launched himself onto the steaming roof. Moving quickly, he ripped off old roofing tiles, exposing the thin wood planks that covered the beams.

He worked fast with the stick, ramming it into the wood, busting a hole in the ceiling. Any second now, flames would find the new source of oxygen and shoot out the hole. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be caught in them, but if he didn’t make the hole big enough there wouldn’t be enough oxygen to divert the flames from the rest of the structure.

A split second before fire rushed out of the hole he’d made in the roof, Sam jumped out of the way, launching himself the eight feet to the ground.

Like clockwork, the flames moved away from the door. Moving around the front, he kicked it in. The smoke was black and thick, but he’d spent ten years maneuvering through these kinds of conditions, and his eye was trained to look for limbs, to listen for coughing and look for bodies.

But the building was empty. Completely empty.

Sam heard the familiar crackle of a building about to implode and in the nick of time he got out of the building and ran like hell. The walls started falling in on themselves before he reached Dianna.

“Where is she?” Dianna screamed at him.

“She wasn’t in there.”

She fell to her knees, her face in her hands.

Sam had never felt so helpless in all his life as he squatted down to gather her in his arms.

The man watched Dianna Kelley from the parking lot, waiting for the perfect moment to make his move.

Her sister was already in the trunk of his car. When he got back to his compound, he’d punish the girl for the way she was thrashing around, for the noises she dared to make. Fortunately, with all of the commotion from the fire—children and women yelling and crying, sirens finally making their way into the campground from an oncoming Colorado Department of Forestry fire engine and police cars—no one could hear his prisoner struggle.

He’d been furious when Mickey woke him up out of his dark dreams with the news that April had escaped. But it had been fairly easy to guess where she’d end up. Tigiwon was as close as they got to civilization around here and straight down the hill from his lab.

After speeding down the single-lane road to the campground, he’d spotted her on a pay phone, probably giving Dianna instructions on where to find her. Moving silently, he’d followed the girl after she hung up the phone, keeping out of her range of sight until she made the mistake of believing she’d really gotten away.

As she took the narrow trail that led between the parking lot and the ranger’s station, after first making sure they were alone, he’d jumped her, slamming his fist into her jaw once, then twice, until she crumpled to the ground.

Setting the cabin on fire had been pure genius. It was the perfect distraction so that he could not only take April to his car unnoticed, but given that he knew Dianna was on her way to collect her sister, it was the ideal opportunity to finally take his true prize captive as well.

If only that goddamned guy would leave her side for thirty seconds, maybe he could get close enough.

Moving away from his car, he headed toward the throng of people surrounding the fire engine. At the first available opportunity, he’d be ready to spring.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

TWO HOURS later, after the cop cars and fire engines drove away, after the crowd of bystanders had grown bored and dispersed back to their campfires and card games, after she and Sam had circled the campground twice looking for clues and found absolutely nothing, Dianna was on the verge of giving up hope.

She’d never been able to forget the pain of being eleven years old and watching the state official drive away with April. Losing her own baby had been brutal and, of course, the breakup with Sam had been horrible. But sitting against a tree, her knees under her chin as she wrapped herself into a tight ball on the forest’s dirt floor, knowing her sister was at the mercy of some anonymous creep … well, that was almost unbearable.

Sam had offered to deal with the police alone, but although she’d felt so raw and her fears about her sister burning alive in that cabin were still jammed in every pore, every cell, every single breath she took, Dianna had felt that it was best if she spoke directly to the cops.

Not that it had mattered. Sure, the police had taken notes. They’d looked concerned. But they’d also made it perfectly clear that they didn’t have the resources to jump on the case, not with a couple of recent murders in the area taking top priority.

“Why aren’t they going to do more to find her?” she asked Sam. “It feels like they’re hardly taking me seriously.”

To Dianna, it seemed like the cops had been much more concerned about who had set the fire, asking Sam endless questions about how he’d been able to put it out without a water truck and fire gear.

Sitting beside her now, his arm around her shoulders a shock of warmth against her cold limbs, Sam pressed his lips against the top of her head.

“Nothing’s changed from our original plan,” he reminded her. “We’re going to find April.”

She longed to believe him, but she wasn’t sure she could anymore. Her life had turned into a bad dream. A surreal nightmare. She desperately wanted to get the hell out of here and pretend that none of this was happening, that everything was exactly as it had been before she’d come to Colorado.

But she couldn’t do any of those things. Because April was still missing, even after they’d come so close to finding her.

“I’m not going to lie to you. I’ve been up against some pretty nasty wildfires, but I’ve never been in a situation like this before.” He paused, brought her hands to his lips, and pressed a kiss against her knuckles. “I’ve never had you by my side, either. That’s why I know we’re going to find April and bring her home.”