For a beat, they just stood, all of them breathing hard—Ziggy, RJ, York and Roy. The others she’d rescued had already left, through the bedroom where they’d landed, out into the small kitchen and living room and into the hallway.

They were probably already out in the street.

Sirens now sounded outside the window.

RJ had gotten scuffed up on her chin and elbows in the fall. He touched her face. “If we hadn’t gone with you, we might be trapped inside the stairwell.”

She drew in her breath, then simply put her arms around him and pulled him close, breathing hard. He buried his face in her neck.

“What happened?” Ziggy said now. She was looking at Roy’s wound. “I think you re-broke it, champ.”

“It feels that way,” Roy said. “I stumbled over that woman…” He blew out a pained breath.

“What is going on?” RJ said.

“I think it was Director Grey’s room,” York said. “But who knows. Let’s get out of here before the fire takes down this place too.”

Indeed, the building, attached to the hotel, had started to tremble.

York grabbed RJ’s hand and they found their way out to the hallway.

Other tenants had filled the stairwell, and they followed them out, many holding pets. York kept a grip on RJ.

A crowd had gathered in the street, also, and now he and RJ joined them in watching the fire brigade battle the flames that streamed out of the top half of the luxury hotel. Water arched from two boats in the river, and a firetruck had set up in front of the building, the ladder extended to the third floor where firemen had rescued people from adjacent rooms.

“That’s definitely Grey’s room,” Ziggy said. “I remember the balcony. His room was second from the end.”

York ran his hand across his face. “But he wasn’t there.”

“No,” Roy said. “Which only we know. The hotel doesn’t know it. And presumably, neither do anyone else.”

“Did he know about the threat?” Ziggy asked.

Roy lifted a shoulder.

“Looks like it,” RJ said.

Indeed.

Then she looked at York. “Ziggy said you searched the room. Did anyone let you in?”

“We used a key card provided by the hotel staff,” Roy said.

“To be precise, we got it off hotel security. When we told the security lead who we were, he recognized us from the list Logan had sent to the secret service. He’s the one who told us that Grey’s security team had left. He’d been given the card to turn in by the Secret Service leaving the building.”

“So, it belonged to one of his Secret Service members?” RJ asked.

“Maybe.”

She was staring at the building, watching. Flames turned the top half of the building black, the lower half still relatively unscathed except for the water barraging it.

Conference attendees and hotel guests jammed the street.