Priority Male by Susan Kearney

Author:Susan Kearney
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Romance, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780373224784
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 1998-06-24T19:50:12.158041+00:00

Chapter Eight

Hours past midnight, almost at dawn, Jasmine awakened in bed.

Low-slung oak branches clawed the roof, clicking like crabs trying to

decide on a direction.

Groaning, Jasmine rolled to her stomach and snuggled deeper into the

covers.

She’d tossed and turned for hours past her normal bedtime, thinking

about whether she should trust Rand’s judgment about leaving her

father’s chest in Irene’s care and who Rand’s secret visitor might have

been.

Inhaling deeply, Jasmine attempted to relax.

A whiff of smoke tickled her nostrils.

No.

She must be mistaken.

She sniffed again, and the acrid scent of gasoline fumes and smoke

burned her throat, leaving a foul taste in her mouth.

Fire!

Terror skimmed her spine and lodged in her stomach.

With a sickening sense of d6jh vu, she lunged from bed.

Quickly, she dialed 911 and gave the address, and all the while her

thoughts whirled.

Not another fire.

Not again.

Smoke, thick, dark and ugly forced her to take choppy breaths.

Without wasting another second, Jasmine grabbed the quilt from her

mattress.

Covering her shoulders, she barreled through the dark room toward her

door.

Dense smoke billowed at the windows and clung to the walls, spreading a

gloomy pall through the air, impeding her path to the door.

Pulse spiking and heart sputtering, she reached for the knob.

Oh, God.

This house had been old twenty-five years old when Talbot had known her

mother.

After baking for decades under Florida’s tropical sunshine, the aged

wooden walls would ignite like kindling, blaze into an inferno within

minutes.

The fire trucks might not arrive in time.

She had to warn everyone.

They had to get out.

Now.

Twisting the knob, she cursed when the door refused to budge, then

remembered Rand had locked her inside.

Snatching the skeleton key and her mother’s music box, she hurried back

to the door, fitted the key into the lock and turned it, waiting for

the click to signal her freedom.

The key didn’t work.

Her heart jammed in her throat.

Someone didn’t want her to escape.

Had Rand mistakenly taken the wrong key from the rack downstairs and

accidently mixed up the two keys when they’d fallen to the floor?

Squinting against the smoke that stung her eyes, she pounded the door

and screamed.

No one answered.

She could barely breathe.

In desperation, she set down the music box and clawed at the

old-fashioned pins in the door’s hinges.

Yanking at the rounded tops, she pulled first the bottom pin, then the

top pin free.

When the door remained in place, she knelt, shoved her fingers between

the door and the floor and jerked upward with all her strength.

Straining, blood roaring in her skull from oxygen deprivation, she

dislodged the door from the hinges and toppled it sideways before

tumbling into the hall.

Behind her, the door fell with a crash loud enough to wake the sleeping

Moores and Rand.

Smoke from her room filtered into the hall.

Jasmine ran, pounding on doors until the family staggered from their

rooms.

Clutching the music box in one hand, the quilt in the other, Jasmine

stumbled out the front door beside Charles.

Rand, wearing slacks but not a shirt was right behind, urging Irene,

Art and T.

J.

to hurry.

“Where’s Blain?”

Irene shouted, belting a robe around her waist.

Charles helped Jasmine down the front steps.

“He’s already out here.”

Dolphin Bay’s neon-yellow fire trucks, sirens screaming, raced to a

halt in front of the house.

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