The grand ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria was a sea of silk, diamonds, and tailored tuxedos.
Kylee walked through the crowd, her hand resting lightly on Justice's arm. She nodded politely to police chiefs and former professors, her social mask flawless. But her eyes remained detached, scanning the room out of pure habit.
Justice felt the tension radiating from her rigid spine.
He smoothly intercepted a waiter, grabbed two flutes of champagne, and guided Kylee away from the suffocating crowd, pushing open the heavy glass doors to the outdoor terrace.
The crisp autumn air hit them immediately.
Kylee walked to the stone balustrade and looked out over the Manhattan skyline. She took a sip of the champagne. Her shoulders finally dropped an inch.
Justice stood beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
"Better?" he asked softly.
Before Kylee could answer, the night sky to their left erupted.
A massive, blinding ball of orange fire tore through the darkness.
A split second later, a deafening boom hit them. The shockwave rattled the champagne flutes and made the terrace glass vibrate violently.
Kylee's pupils dilated. The chemical smell of burning accelerant hit her nose on the wind.
"Gas explosion," she said, her voice instantly dropping into her clinical, deadpan register.
The fire was close. Less than two blocks away, in a neighborhood of old, dilapidated tenement buildings.
Justice dropped his champagne glass. It shattered on the stone. He ripped his police radio from his belt. "Dispatch, 10-60! Major explosion on 4th and Elm! Roll fire and bus immediately!"
He turned and sprinted toward the service elevator.
Kylee didn't hesitate. She reached down, unbuckled the straps of her designer high heels, and kicked them off.
Barefoot, she hiked up the skirt of her blue gown and ran after him.
They burst out of the hotel lobby and sprinted down the sidewalk, pushing against the tide of screaming pedestrians running away from the blast.
They reached the scene. The entire third floor of a brick apartment building was engulfed in roaring flames. Thick, black smoke billowed into the sky.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but the fire trucks weren't there yet.
A group of residents stood on the sidewalk, screaming and pointing at the third floor.
Kylee looked up. Through the smoke, she saw the silhouette of a young woman leaning out of a shattered window, coughing violently, her clothes singed.
Justice moved to rush toward the burning entrance, but Kylee grabbed his arm, her grip like a steel vise, stopping his blind rush.
"The wind is pushing the thermal column east! The fire escape will melt in three minutes!" she commanded, her voice an icy blade cutting through the panic. "Take the central stairwell, breach the door, and stay below the neutral plane!"
Justice nodded, drawing his gun out of habit and plunging into the smoke while Kylee directed the arriving engine companies from the perimeter.
The heat inside the stairwell was agonizing. The air burned Justice's lungs. Sparks rained down, but he didn't stop.
Justice kicked open the door to the third-floor apartment.
He dropped to his knees to find breathable air. In the corner of the living room, the young woman had collapsed, gasping for air.
Justice scooped the woman up over his shoulder. "Move! Move!" he yelled.
He scrambled down the stairs. The moment his feet hit the pavement outside, the structural beams of the third floor gave way with a sickening crunch. The roof collapsed inward, sending a pillar of fire into the sky.
Paramedics rushed over, pulling the survivor onto a stretcher.
Kylee stood on the curb, her face smeared with black soot from the fallout, her bare feet bleeding from the broken glass on the street. She was panting hard, but her eyes were wide, wired with adrenaline and analytical calculation.
Justice dropped to one knee in front of her. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gently wiped the soot from her cheek, his hands shaking slightly as he checked her for burns.
Thirty minutes later, the fire was reduced to smoldering ash.
A fire captain, his face grim, walked over to Justice.
"We found bodies in the back bedroom," the captain said heavily. "Two of them. Burned beyond recognition. One adult male. And one infant."
The word 'infant' made Kylee's head snap up.
She pushed the paramedic away who was bandaging her foot. She limped past the yellow tape, ignoring Justice's protests, and walked straight to the coroner's van.
Two black body bags lay on the asphalt.
Kylee stared at the adult male corpse. The fire had charred the flesh, but the musculature was visible.
Her eyes locked onto the neck. "The posture is anomalous," Kylee muttered to herself. "It lacks the typical symmetrical flexion of a fire victim's pugilistic stance. The cervical contraction mimics a mechanical asphyxiation reflex. We need a full autopsy to confirm, but I suspect he was dead long before the ignition."
Kylee slowly turned her head. She looked at the back of the ambulance, where the young mother they had just saved was sitting.
The woman-Allena-was staring at the burning building. She wasn't crying for her dead baby. Her eyes were completely, terrifyingly empty.
The alarm bells in Kylee's meticulously ordered brain began to chime. A mother who just lost her infant in a fire shouldn't have eyes that empty. It wasn't clinical shock; it was a psychological void. There was a glaring, dangerous discrepancy here, one that required immediate dissection.
