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Special Agent Weathers drove theht over to Mandy Hunt&039;s house - or as left of it Brent could see right away he&039;d picked the right friend Maggie had been there, and she hadn&039;t left through the front door
Not that he could see a front door The entire front side of the house had collapsed inward, broken boards and sheared-off rebar sticking up at crazy angles, the roof slu hole where the front wall had been Water sprayed diagonally across the street fro to sles and broken plaster that spilled across the driveway and into the road
If Maggie had dropped a boe But Brent knew instantly what had really happened She had been in such a rush to leave she had punched her way out right through the house It didn&039;t surprise hi such havoc He knew her strength, since he shared it
"Stay in the car, I&039; the fire department," Weathers announced, but Brent had already pushed his door open and jumped out onto the sidewalk
"Co his"I can&039;t let you go in there! It&039;s an insurance nightht be people in there, and they could be dead by the tiet here Stay with him, Luce," Brent said, and in the backseat Lucy nodded Her face ide open, her eyes locked on the destroyed house
Finally, he thought A chance to do so people fro Standing by and waiting with Weathers would be unthinkable
Brent jurabbed a steel bea a little, he pushed it up over his head and then jumped inside It fell back behind hiht have been a living rooh it was hard to tell Ahead of hiely intact but wreathed in flames
"Hello!" he shouted "Is there anyone in here?" He would feel pretty stupid if there wasn&039;t There was no answer, but anyone in the wreckage h the kitchen, flaht on fire so he slapped it out To his left was a stairway leading up, to the right an empty bathroom He headed for the stairs - and then ju down fro the air with red dust that h
He didn&039;t haveacross the plaster and then down the kitchen wall He bent his knees and sprang upward, srabbing at anything he could hold onto and pulling hih the hole he&039;d made
He found himself in a master bedroo the s The floor sloped to one side and the bed had rolled down to s the doorway so he grabbed it and hauled it out of the way, then jumped out into an upstairs hallway There were doors on three sides of him, then, and they all looked like they&039;d jammed inside their crooked fra - the floor was littered with broken wood and burning shingles The next door was a linen closet with all the towels and sheets in a pile on its floor
One ood run up and hit it hard with his shoulder It collapsed instantly under his irl&039;s bedroom with horses on the walls
In one corner of the roo She didn&039;t react when he shouted her name
Brent took a step toward her - and the house shifted over to its right The wall above Mandy tilted inward and started to collapse, while all the furniture in the rooround its way doard the lowest part of the uneven floor
Plaster and sheared-off sections of lath showered down on Brent&039;s head He could hear nails popping as they were pulled free of the floorboards, and downstairs he heard a whoo fire
At any second the house was going to collapse under its oeight He could hear the sirens of a fire truck in the distance but he kneould never arrive in ti," he called, in case Mandy could hear hie chunk of plaster pinwheeled down fro her pale skin with blood Brent dove across her just as the entire wall gave way and ca down