“Stay behind me,” he murmured, his voice barely a breath.

The air outside the truck was cold and smelled of damp earth and river rot.

We stepped over the weeds growing through the cracked asphalt of the parking lot.

I pulled my coat tighter around my shoulders, my heart hammering against my ribs.

As we neared the loose plywood, the sharp, chemical smell of gasoline hit my nose.

“They’re going to burn it,” I whispered.

Wyatt didn’t answer, but his hand gripped my wrist, pulling me toward the dark opening.

We slipped through the gap where the plywood had been pried away from the doorframe.

The air inside the basement was thick with dust and the fumes of accelerant.

Footsteps echoed from the floor above us, heavy and hurried.

“Hurry up, Richard,” a woman’s voice hissed from the stairs.

It was my mother.

“I am going as fast as I can,” my father grunted from somewhere deeper in the dark.

“The files in the metal cabinets are what we need,” Melanie’s voice chimed in, sharp and impatient.

“Just pour the gas on the floorboards and let’s go,” Melanie added.