“He appreciates what I do as a private investigator and I appreciate that he gave up drug dealing. I just hope he stays the course.”

Alicia laughed and said, “At least he changed course, even if it only proves temporary. But I have a good feeling about your brother. I think he’ll make it.”

We stopped on the street in front of her cute apartment building. The two-story brick building had been around since I was a kid. Now it was divided into apartments. Two big ones downstairs and four smaller ones upstairs.

She turned to me and said, “Thanks for a lovely time. I could’ve wasted it watching TV.”

“What about catching an episode of Game of Thrones? After that, you can study till your eyes fall out.”

She smiled. “That’s a lovely image.”

Just then, the world seemed to turn upside down. For a split second, between the noise and the concussion, I thought it was an earthquake. As I stared almost directly at the window to Alicia’s apartment, a roar of an explosion and a flash of flame shattered the glass. The concussion made me take a step back just in time to catch Alicia as she lost her balance.

Glass and debris made a clanking sound on the front walkway of the apartment complex. Smoke poured from Alicia’s window.

The front door to the building burst open and a couple of people rushed outside screaming and crying.

I had to make sure there was no one else inside.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I raced to the front door of the building. Just as I stepped inside, a woman handed me a child. A screaming little girl about two years old. The woman was coughing violently in the haze of smoke billowing down the stairway. I led her out the front door, and Alicia met us halfway down the walkway. I handed her the little girl and turned back to the building.

There wasn’t a roaring fire, but the smoke was blinding and made it difficult to breathe. I pulled my shirt over my mouth and ducked low as I scrambled up the stairs. An older woman I knew from the diner stumbled out of her apartment at the end of the hallway.

“Mrs. Siddiqui, are you okay?”

She coughed and looked at me. She said in a remarkably normal voice, “Mitchum, how is your mother doing after the accident?” Good manners become part of someone’s being, even in a crisis.

I heard someone moan down the hallway. I told Mrs. Siddiqui to wait right there. The smoke poured out of Alicia’s apartment. The door had been twisted off the hinges and lay in the hallway. That’s where the moaning was coming from.