He took the knife in his shoulder, but his adrenaline was up now, and he didn’t even feel it. He body-slammed Calligan into the wall; grabbed both his shoulders and slammed his head up sideways into the filing cabinets. Calligan’s eyes rolled up into his head, and David let him fall.

He pulled the knife out of his shoulder with one hand while he kicked the door open. The flimsy lock didn’t hold past the second kick.

Now the flames covered the back wall entirely.

He took the two steps he needed to reach Jennie, thanking all the gods that she was tiny, then slung her fireman-style across his good shoulder, as blood poured from the wound in his other shoulder, soaking his shirt.

As he turned, he took a fraction of a second to look for the artifacts, knowing that Jennie would ask after them, remembering that she had said they were important. But there wasn’t anything anywhere in sight, and he had no time, no time left at all—

He plunged through the door, stumbled down the stairs, and staggered across the bare, sandy ground—the office was going to go up at any moment, and they needed some cover, quick—

There. He spotted a pile of bags of sand for concrete and tumbled around in back of them, dropping Jennie as soon as they were behind them and falling to his knees—

He pulled her further into safety, then took a quick, nervous peek around the edge.

Just as that whole corner of the lot went up.

Jee-ZUS!

He fell back as the ground beneath him shook, momentarily blinded and deafened.

But by the time he could see again, the fire department, half the cops in Tulsa, and everyone in the neighborhood were converging on the site, sirens and people screaming.

“No, sir,” Jennie said politely to the cop, while the paramedic bandaged David’s shoulder. “We don’t know what happened. David and I were delivering the divorce and protective orders from my client, Toni Calligan. You can check that with the Women’s Shelter yourself. Mr. Calligan wasn’t happy about it, but—” she shrugged. “He threw us out.”

David had stalled the cops just long enough to think of a story they might believe. “She’s being polite, officer,” David put in, grimacing a little with pain. “Mr. Calligan told us to go to hell and went berserk, and threw us out of the office. Threw Jennie, literally, and she landed on the steps and got knocked out cold. Then for some reason he assaulted me with a letter opener. You get a look at Mrs. Calligan, you’ll see what I mean; that bastard was a psycho. That poor lady’s black and blue.”