My grandmother called begging me to run for my life, completely unaware my brother was framing me for burning down our father's house.

Victoria’s fingers caught the brass base of the kerosene lamp, sweeping it off the mantlepiece.

The glass chimney shattered against the stone hearth. A brilliant sheet of blue and yellow flame instantly roared across the dry cedar floorboards, licking up the side of the heavy wool curtains flanking the rear window.

"If I'm going down, you're staying in the ashes with me!" she shrieked, driving her shoulder into my ribs.

The impact knocked the breath from my lungs, sending me sprawling across the rug as smoke immediately began to billow toward the rafters.

Outside, another gunshot cracked through the fog, followed by the wet thud of a heavy body hitting the mud, and Barnaby’s frantic, savage barking.

*Leo had taken down Garrett.*

"Gran!" I coughed, rolling through the encroaching flames, ignoring the scorch of heat against my hands.

Through an open pantry door at the back of the cabin, I saw her.

Grandma Evelyn was tied to a straight-backed wooden chair, her mouth covered with silver duct tape, her gray hair matted with blood where someone had struck her. Her eyes were half-open, glazed with heavy sedation, but when she saw me through the smoke, a faint, desperate light flared in her hazel gaze.

"I’ve got you, Gran!" I yelled, throwing myself into the small back room.

The fire was already chewing through the cedar partition, heat radiating against my face like an open blast furnace. I grabbed the utility knife from my pocket, slicing frantically through the thick nylon zip-ties binding her wrists to the chair rungs.

The plastic snapped. Evelyn’s hands dropped into her lap, limp and bruised.

"Maya..." she rasped as I peeled the duct tape from her cracked lips. Her breath smelled faintly of bitter chemicals—the phenobarbital Victoria had forced down her throat. "Maya, the child... Tyler... he didn't know..."

"Don't talk, Gran. We’re getting out!"

I threw her frail arm over my shoulder, hauling her eighty-pound frame off the chair. She groaned, her knees buckling completely. The smoke was dropping fast, turning the ceiling into an undulating sea of oily black soot.

When I dragged her into the main room, the front door was blocked by a wall of fire.

Standing on the front deck, silhouetted against the flames, was Victoria. She held the heavy iron fire poker she had retrieved from the floor, her face blackened with soot, her eyes twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated madness.

"You're not leaving, Maya!" she screamed over the roar of the burning cedar. "None of you leave!"

She raised the iron poker, preparing to drive it downward through my skull.

Suddenly, a hundred-pound golden missile crashed into her side.

Barnaby had slipped his lead.

The retriever hit Victoria’s chest with full force, his jaws locking onto the thick shearling sleeve of her jacket. Victoria shrieked, losing her footing on the wet, burning planks of the porch.

She stumbled backward through the shattered railing.

With a sickening splash, she plunged thirty feet down into the dark, freezing waters of the lake inlet, disappearing beneath the black surface and the floating timber debris.

"Maya! The rear window!" Leo’s voice cut through the inferno.

He appeared at the back frame, kicking out the charred wooden framing with his boots. He reached inside, his strong hands catching Evelyn beneath her arms and hauling her gently into the cold mountain air.

"Got her! Jump, Maya! Jump!"

I didn't look back. I scrambled through the frame just as the interior ceiling gave way behind me in a thundering avalanche of sparks, collapsing the central room into a pit of raging fire.

I tumbled onto the wet gravel beside Leo and Evelyn, coughing violently, vomiting gray smoke onto the wet pine needles.

Barnaby raced around us, whining and licking my soot-streaked cheeks, his tail wagging frantically despite the chaos.

In the distance, the wail of sirens was no longer subtle.

Four squad cars and an armored state police tactical vehicle tore around the gravel bend, their high beams piercing the mist, illuminating the raging inferno of the cabin.

Detective Sarah Miller was the first out of the lead cruiser, his sidearm drawn, sweeping the tree line.

"Oak Creek Police! Hands where I can see them!"

I sat in the mud, holding my grandmother’s shaking body against my chest, wrapping my arms around her as she breathed the cold, clean air of the woods.

Leo slowly laid his revolver on the hood of his Subaru, raising his open hands.

"Detective Miller!" Leo shouted over the sound of the burning timber. "Arrest whoever you want! But call two medical helicopters first! Evelyn Vance is alive—and the woman who lit both fires is at the bottom of that inlet!"

Miller froze. He lowered his gun two inches, his eyes traveling from Leo to me, and finally to the frail, living, breathing woman clutched in my arms.

The detective’s face drained of every drop of color.