3rd Degree

Chapter 8

THIS WASN'T OVER.

I ran up to Captain Noroski, the fire chief, who was bark-ing commands to his men searching through the house. “Lightower's sister says there was a six-month-old baby inside.”

“No one's inside, Lieutenant. My men are just finishing the upper floor. Unless you wanna go inside and look around again yourself.”

Suddenly the layout of the burning building came back to me. I could see it now. Down that same hallway where I'd found the boy. My heart jumped. “Not the upper floors, Captain, the first.” There could've been a nursery down there, too.

Noroski radioed someone still inside the site. He directed him down the front hall.

We stood in front of the smoking house, and a sickening feeling churned in my stomach. The idea of a baby still in there. Someone I could've saved. We waited while Captain Noroski's men picked through the rubble.

Finally, a fireman climbed out from the debris on the ground floor. “Nothing,” he called out. “We found the nurs-ery. Crib and a bassinet buried under a lot of rubble. But no baby.”

Dianne Aronoff uttered a cry of joy. Her niece wasn't in there. Then a look of panic set in, her face registering a com-pletely new horror. If Caitlin wasn't there, where was she?