How had the fire consumed so much of Dawson in the fifteen minutes it took for them to turn around, floor it back to town?

The flames were crawling through the grocery store, across the street into the bank, and yes, chewing through the ER ward of the hospital.

The sight of it undid Kade.

Patients huddled in the parking lot, some of them sitting on the grass, others sprawled in cars, their IV stands like watchtowers. Black smoke boiled out of windows, now and again exploding to the screams of onlookers. Nurses, orderlies, and doctors ran out of the main door, pushing gurneys.

For the first time ever, Kade was grateful the medical center had never expanded. Maybe they’d be able to get everyone to safety.

Nash pulled up to the curb, parked, and Kade ducked as he got out, the fire turning the sky into a tempest of ash, cinder, and debris.

“We need to move these people right now!” Kade didn’t know whom he might be shouting to—and then found his mark. Sheriff Johnson was directing traffic out of the parking lot, maybe with the same idea. Kade ran up to him. “We need to clear these patients out!”

“I know. We called the school—they’re sending the buses. We’re sending people there.”

“When?”

“Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Not fast enough.”

Nash had left him, searching through the parking lot for Erica.

The torrent seemed to be creating its own weather, the firestorm casting tornadoes of ash and cinder into the air. Kade’s next glance at the hospital had the entire eastern wing engulfed, flames lapping out of the windows, so much black smoke it layered his eyes, his throat.

The fire department threw water on the inferno like it might be spitting on it.

Then he spied it—an empty flatbed truck across the street in the loading dock of the local feed store.

Oh no—feed meant fertilizer, which meant explosive. Which meant this entire area could go up, and soon. He sprinted across the street and leaped into the cab of the flatbed. Keys dangled in the ignition, and he took it as a sign.

Johnson waved him in and he parked near the entrance of the lot. “Everybody on the truck!”

The roar of the fire ate his words, but he stood in the doorway and laid on the horn. Waved.

They got it. Orderlies rushed patients on stretchers, and hands appeared to haul victims aboard. More stretchers, then the walking wounded, who found places in the nooks and crannies of the flatbed.

Nash crouched on the ground next to a brunette, and Kade ran over.

His friend clutched a little girl, and when he looked up, tears raked his face. Probably the smoke, but—

“Where’s Haddie?” the woman—Erica?—said.

Haddie? How did—but it didn’t matter—“What are you talking about?” Kade asked. “She went home—we told her to go home!”

“She was here—she treated Cassie in the ER and told us to get out.”

Behind them, a blast rocked the building. Screams reverberated as the east side crumbled in on itself. Kade stared, rooted.

Haddie.

“She was pushing people out of the building—I saw her at least twice—I’m sure she got out,” Erica said.

Kade stood up just as Nash picked up the little girl, who hung on his neck.

“It’s okay, baby, Daddy’s here.”

For a sliver of a moment, something curled inside Kade, hearing Nash’s words. Seeing Nash pull his wife against himself. Watching him carry them off to safety.

Thank you, God, that they’re safe.

But the swell of longing tightened his throat.

Haddie, where are you?

He jogged over to the flatbed, now full, the parking lot still emptying. A few cars near the entrance flamed, the rubber scent souring the air.

“Let’s go!” Nash said, climbing onto the flatbed. “We have to get out of here!”

Not yet. “Has anyone seen Haddie Brown?” Kade shouted. “Anyone—?”

Nothing. He glanced at the hospital. Please.

“I saw her!” A nurse stood up. “She went with Dr. Lilligren to the third floor to get the burn patients.”

The burn patients. “Where on the third floor?”

She pointed to the west wing. To the holocaust engulfing the building, the black smoke billowing into the sky. From here it seemed the world had turned to hellfire, a conflagration that would consume the entire town.

And Haddie was in there. “Nash—get them out of here!”

Kade took off for the hospital, not sure what he was doing, driven by the white heat that consumed his brain, his rational thought. Water misted his face from the hose spray as he ran past the row of fire trucks—all three of them, the complete arsenal of the Dawson fire department—and toward the building.

He hit the dirt with a whump, so hard it slammed his breath from his lungs. Tackled from behind, pinned. Kade threw an elbow back, hitting his assailant in the face.

“You’ll die in there!”

Nash. He eased up enough for Kade to roll over, to kick him off.

Kade scrambled to his feet just as flames blew out the front door. The heat seared his face, the wind of the fire in his ears.

“No one could survive this,” Nash said. He had a hold on Kade’s collar. “C’mon—we gotta get out of here. The feed store is going up.”

Nash clamped his arm around Kade’s chest, pulled him back against himself, edging him away from the flames.

“Let me go!”

“She’s not in there—she can’t be!” Nash got around in front of him, hands on his shoulders. “Look at me, man! Anyone who is in there is dead. You can’t go in there!”

Kade turned boneless, his stomach a fist as he scrambled to wrap his brain around the wild hope that she wasn’t in there. Wasn’t burning to death.

That he hadn’t lost her again. This time, forever.

He turned away from the holocaust and bent, gripping his knees.

Wretched a little, right there, so much adrenaline and horror mixed together, it writhed out of him.

Please.

Nash grabbed him by the arm, wrangled him to the truck, and pushed him into the passenger seat. “Stay put.”

Kade had a retort, kept it in. But he had nothing left to fight with when Nash got in on the driver’s side.

She’s not in there—she can’t be!

He pulled out just as the rest of Dawson Medical Center fell in a furious heap of smoke, ash, and glowing cinder.

Anyone who is in there is dead.

Kade closed his eyes, pressed his hands to his face, and tried to silence the screaming inside.

It took less than fifteen minutes to bury her alive.

“Is everybody okay?” Haddie spoke into the pitch darkness, her hands braced on the cement floor of the underground shelter. She’d glimpsed her surroundings a few split seconds before the lights snuffed out, before the world collapsed around their bunker.

A cement bunker in the basement of the hospital—who knew? Apparently Dr. Lilligren, because the moment the third floor went up in flames, rolling across the ceiling like a river from hell, he’d picked up Ryan Harrison in his arms, dropped him into a wheelchair, and practically ran with him down the hallway to the back stairs.

Thankfully Adam Murphy was more mobile. He’d already struggled into another wheelchair, and Haddie had grabbed it and ran with him into the hallway.

Smoke clogged the so-called fire exit.

They should have evacuated this floor first, but Adam and Ryan were the only patients in the CCU and the nurses had their hands full with the fifteen other patients down the hallway.

Frankly, the two roustabouts had been forgotten.

Smoke filled the hallways, the fire roaring through the ductwork, chewing at the walls, the tongues of flame precariously near the oxygen tanks. It was only a matter of time before the entire building exploded.

So they did something epically stupid.

They took the elevator, the one place every fire escape manual warned against. Miraculously the lift dinged to life, as if waiting for them, and acting on sheer panic, Haddie followed Lilligren into the tiny box.

“Please, please, God, let this work.”

Lilligren hit the button for the basement, and only then did he fill her in.

“There’s a fallout shelter built into the basement—it’s got an external ventilation system and an escape hatch that leads away from the building. And it’s made of cement—it’ll keep the fire out.”

If they didn’t bake first.

Smoke filtered in as they hit each level. At the bottom the doors opened, and amazingly, down here, the smoke hadn’t yet penetrated. Lights flickered, evidence of the compromised electrical systems. She followed Lilligren down the eerie white corridor, to the former X-ray and surgical rooms, now used for storage. He heaved open a thick metal door to one of the rooms and flicked on the fluorescent light. It dripped on, as if angry to be roused from slumber.

“There—the metal door.”

An ancient, white-painted door—she had no doubt it might be covered in layers of lead-based paint—proved the hatchway to their salvation. Lilligren fought to open it. Haddie added her weight, and the door moaned on heavy hinges. As thick at her hand was wide, it opened to another door, this one unlocked.

“Inside!”

He grabbed Ryan’s wheelchair and wheelied him back, maneuvering him into the room. He flicked on the lights.

She followed with Adam and shut the door behind them.

Quiet. The roar couldn’t penetrate here.

“What if the hospital comes down on us?”

“We’re under the west parking lot. Help me get Mr. Harrison onto one of these cots.”

Four bunks of cots lined the walls, eight beds in total, with supplies in a cabinet, along with a few oxygen cylinders, and a table and sink in the corner.

She turned to help, and that’s when the entire building rumbled, a quake that, despite their bunker, she felt to her bones. Thunder boomed, a terrible ripping, and the lights flushed out.

Instinctively, she hit the floor, hands over her head. Only then did she remember Adam, and crawled over to his chair.

He’d fallen, trembling, and she crouched over him. The explosions continued, and she closed her eyes, shaking.

The faint hint of smoke touched her nose. “We’re going to burn—”

“No. It’s the outside air filtration system—it’s letting in the smoke,” Dr. Lilligren said.

The roar rose around them, and she had no doubt that outside these doors, the fire had turned into a conflagration.

Please let this little shelter not turn into a furnace. Indeed, the temperature had risen, but the floor felt cool. Beneath her, Adam still shook. She leaned up, pressed her fingers to the pulse at his carotid artery. Fast but steady.

“It’ll be okay, Adam.”

But she wished that it might be Kade next to her, because more than anything, she longed to unravel, hear his voice.

“Dr. Lilligren, are you okay?”

His answer came too slowly for her liking. “I’m fine.” Then a light flicked on. He held up his phone and scanned it around the room. He, too, sat on the floor, but Ryan lay on the cot next to the wheelchair—how the old man had gotten him on the cot she hadn’t a clue. Adrenaline, maybe.

“Is he okay?”

Lilligren leaned over, pressed his ear to Ryan’s chest. “Yes. For now.”

She hated the for now part. “Are you sure we’re not going to suffocate in here?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me why not, because I can smell smoke.” She tried not to let her voice quaver.

“There’s a ventilation hatch—not real big, but enough for a small person to crawl through. The ventilation system runs through that, filtering air from the surface.”

“So much for avoiding toxic fumes from a nuclear blast.”

“Actually, the radioactive matter from a nuclear bomb comes from a tiny particle of matter, which attaches itself to pieces of dust or sand from the site of the explosion and carries in the air. Hence the name, fallout. One piece of fallout won’t hurt you—it’s the blinding wash of a fallout storm and the dust that layers the ground in great quantities that can be fatal. So, with a good filter, you can avoid all that dust and sand and live without radioactivity inside the shelter. Or very little of it.”

Probably the good man was just trying to keep her mind off the fact that they were trapped in a tiny box below the earth, with one flimsy tube to fresh air.

“Adam, how’re you doing?” With the aid of Lilligren’s light, Haddie helped him to a cot.

“Alive, thanks to you,” Adam said, but she recognized fear in his eyes.

Yeah, well...maybe he shouldn’t thank her yet.

“So, how do we get out of here?” She walked over to the supply chest and found it empty. Probably so were the oxygen canisters.

“The hatch. We can crawl through, get help.” Lilligren got up and flickered his light around the room until he found the ventilation box near the ceiling.

She dragged the table over and climbed on it. Put her nose to the ventilation hatch. It smelled rusty, earthy, and nothing of smoke. “I don’t think the smoke is coming in from here.”

Lilligren frowned. “Is there any air getting through?”

She put her hand to the grate. “I can’t tell. But it doesn’t feel like it.”

And indeed, the reek of smoke had thickened. She hopped off the table. Only then did she realize the weight against her thigh—Erica’s cell phone. She pulled it out, opened it, and found the flashlight app.

Shined the light around the tiny room. Painted an oh-so-cheery, not life-sucking-at-all gray, the room possessed all the charm of a crypt. She pressed her hand to the door and found it devastatingly warm. And at closer examination— “The smoke is coming through the cracks in the door.”

Lilligren had climbed on the table and was working the ventilation grid free. It fell with a clatter onto the table, and he shined his light in.

“The metal sheeting has corroded, and it looks caved in.” He gave her a wry, sad expression. “I’m so sorry, Haddie. I believe we’re entombed here.”

Nice choice of words.

She stared at him for a long moment, then, “Not if we can get hold of someone, let them know we’re here.”

She turned the phone over. No bars—wait, maybe a flickering bar. She got up and lifted the phone, moving around the room. Nothing near the doors, but as she moved away from the metal, across the room, nearer to Lilligren... “I think I could get a text out, maybe.”

She recognized Kade’s number. Weird that he’d called Erica last, but... Oh, please.

She opened the last received call and hit reply with text. SOS. This is Haddie. Alive with 3 others. In bunker under hospital. Help!

She pushed send.

Held up the phone.

Tried not to smell the smoke thickening the air.

When the message failed to send, she copied it and pushed send again.

Tried not to cry as the message failed again.

And again.

And again.

She climbed up on the table, her back to the wall, and kept sending.

And then she added prayer. Because she spied trouble coming in the rearview mirror, and she didn’t know what else to do.

Please, God, send help.

It was too much to ask that the help be in the form of Kade Logan. But she hoped it anyway.

And pushed send.