Denes Varga had been shot at least fifteen minutes ago. His blood was on the concrete floor under his body and dribbled away from it in rivulets that had found their way into low parts of the concrete surface and pooled. In the mind of Leah Hawkins, he was dead, like his cousin Viktor Panko. He was not.

The smell of kerosene had been in every breath Leah had taken since Varga and Panko had poured it in the front section of the building hours ago, so she had almost stopped smelling it. She had not noticed that it had become stronger in the past few minutes, so she didn’t look around and notice that Denes Varga had opened the last can and let it begin to drain, running along the same track as his own blood toward the galvanized tub where Leah was working.

There was a sound of the metal wheel rasping against the flint, and then a flash that lit most of the air in the building into flame, and then as it subsided into a fire along the floor, Leah had a second of deciding. Move now or die. The fire was about to engulf her and the tub, but Denes Varga was alive. He was trying to burn her to death, but she couldn’t leave him to die in his fire.

She stayed low, grasping his wrists and hauling back, her arms extended and body leaning backward, dragging the wounded man to the door, trying to see through the haze of smoke that was filling the shop from the ceiling down. She stopped and dragged him to the threshold. Then she saw his face and chest. He didn’t seem to be breathing now. She touched his neck to feel for a pulse. He was dead too.

She stepped past him and ran toward the tub. There were almost sure to be more cards that would tell her things. She reached the tub just as the flames engulfed it and the plastic inside became something else, a black, bubbling mess. She felt searing heat and pulled her hand back. She had chosen wrong, dragged a dead man out and left the evidence to burn. She retreated to the doorway, switched off the light, and closed the door.

She ran to the SUV. She untied the rope from the vehicle’s trailer hitch, threw it inside, and scrambled into the driver’s seat.