“We were just hanging off the roof staring a thirty-foot fall in the face as we studied the loft and you didn’t blink, but a little animal scares you?”

“I didn’t get enough love as a child. Are you sure it’s little?”

Joe eyed the decidedly not-so-little silhouette hunched over and miserable. “It’s shaking like a leaf, does that count?” But since he couldn’t see its teeth, he still didn’t move. “Come distract it so I can back out of here.”

Into Joe’s peripheral vision came Kenny’s two boots not caked in muck like Joe’s. Kenny’s boots rarely got dirty. In fact, Kenny rarely got dirty. It was just one of the strange little mysteries of life.

“I’m going to scare it out from the back,” Kenny said. “So watch yourself.”

“Wait.” Joe began to scoot out from beneath the shelving unit, his life flashing before the eyes he didn’t want to have scratched out. “Okay now,” he said, dirty water dripping off him.

Kenny banged his flashlight against the metal, and with a screeching howl, the hissing thing zipped out from beneath the unit and into the inky blackness of the basement.

Both Joe and Kenny whipped around, shining their twin beams across the wet, dank floor to the far corner, onto the large, orange…cat. She had white paws and a deep scratch down one side of her face, which held one green eye, and one brown.

“A cat.” Kenny shook his head, a few drops of dirty water marring his glasses. He removed them and wiped the lens with a handkerchief he pulled from his pocket. “A damn cat.”

Filthy, wet, and overheated, Joe stripped out of the top part of his coveralls, letting the sleeves and torso hang off his hips. He wore a sweat drenched T-shirt beneath, but he left that on as he stepped closer in disbelief. “Socks?”

Unhappy and wet, the cat shook first one paw and then another, glaring at him the whole time.

Hunkering down, Joe outstretched his fingers. “Here, Socks.”

Above them the building rumbled ominously. He knew there was still an entire firefighter crew out there clearing hot spots and checking the soundness of the structure. Everyone knew he and Kenny were down here.

The ground shook again.

Kenny and Joe stared at each other. Kenny pushed up his glasses and gestured to the stairs. “Let’s hit it.”

“Yeah, but we’ll be back later.”

“Why, what did you find?”

“A rainbow-like sheen to the water beneath the unit.”

They both knew that could indicate an accelerant, such as gasoline or paint thinner. Since there was nothing in the basement but boxes of stock for a furnishings shop, the appearance of such a chemical was automatically suspicious.

Or was that simply because Joe had personally been in this very spot for another fire entirely? One that had ended in a terrible, tragic death?