Chapter 28

Angel's worst fear was confirmed as he rounded the bend in the driveway and his house came into view. Billowing black smoke leaked from several windows, through which he could also see the violent red flicker that signified fire. He slammed on the brakes before he got too close, jammed the car into Park and leapt out without even thinking to shut off the engine. The only on his mind was to make sure Buffy was out of the house.

"Buffy!" he shouted, hoping that she was somewhere on the beach, safe from harm. No answer came.

"Buffy!" he screamed again while running toward house. There was no sign of Buffy anywhere. He couldn't see her or hear her.

Surely she would have gotten out of the house by now. The fire didn't appear to be all consuming. She should have been able to get out. But what if someone had done something to her? What if she'd been taking a nap upstairs and was unaware of the fire? Angel called to her once more, his eyes searching all around, pleading silently for her to be found. He saw nothing.

In the distance, Angel thought he heard the whirring of sirens, but he couldn't be sure. The crash of the waves nearby on the beach, and the growing roar of the fire in his house masked all other sounds. He didn't know what to do. Buffy could still be inside the house. That was the only thought that mattered. And if she was still in there, he had to take a chance and go in after her. The fire department, if that's the siren he heard, might not get here in time.

Stripping off his suit jacket and tie, he tossed them to the ground and was quickly up the front stairs. The fire looked to be coming from the kitchen area and somewhere near his office, but the front door looking unharmed. Carefully, he reached out a hand and touched the metal knob. It was cold. Thank God!

Angel shoved the door open and was immediately surrounded by thick, black smoke. He choked on the vile mixture, waving a hand in front of his face, but it did no good. Dropping to his knees, he found clearer air and moved into the foyer. From his position, he could see a red glow coming from the kitchen and also somewhere to his right, either the living room or his office.

The kitchen was too dangerous to go near. He could already feel the blast of heat. Instead he crawled right, through the doorway to the living room. Sight was poor as smoke clouded his vision. He crept further in, squinting his eyes in a vain hope of finding Buffy, but he could see no sign of her.

"Buffy!" he croaked, gagging as his lungs filled with smoke.

Over the increasing howl of the flames, Angel thought he heard something coming from somewhere behind him. He turned swiftly and headed on his knees back towards the foyer. Sweat soaked his dress shirt, poured down his back and over his face. It was getting hotter by the second. He needed to find Buffy, if she was in the house, and get her out quick before the whole place was engulfed in flames.

As he crawled forward, Angel didn't allow himself to think about the fact that Buffy may not be inside. In the back of his mind, he knew that, given the situation, it was likely someone had torched his home and that that someone could have taken Buffy, or worse, but he wouldn't allow himself to think about it. If she was here, he had to find her.

"Buffy!" he called once more. Over the cough that threatened to overwhelm him, he heard a faint reply.

"Angel!"

The stairs. It had come from the direction of the staircase leading to the second floor. Buffy was still inside! "BUFFY!" he bellowed, forcing the sound to come out as loudly as possible.

"Ang-...Angel!"

Angel forced himself to his feet, eyes watering and lungs burning, He nearly tripped over the first riser. In a half-crawl, he rose the steps, hands feeling the smooth wood to keep his direction. At the contact with skin, he almost fell backwards in surprise. Overbalancing, he fell forward, collapsing on top of a prone body and slamming his head into something hard.

Head ringing from its collision with what he assumed was a wall, Angel groaned. A mirroring sound came from beneath him and he forced himself to roll away. What had happened? Everything was a little fuzzy. He knew, though, that someone was with him on the landing. Buffy! It had to be her, but the heavy smoke kept him from seeing much.

"Buffy!" he tried to say, but it came out more as a cough.

"Ang-," came the response, cut off by a harsh gagging sound.

The faint voice was feminine and could come from no one other than Buffy. Despite the dizziness threatening to overtake him, Angel pushed to his knees as his hands felt around him. He grasped an arm and wanted to sob in relief. He'd found Buffy! She was alive, though possibly not unharmed.

Crawling forward, using his hands to guide him, he got as close to her as possible. "We...have to...get...out of...her," he gasped out, breaths getting shallower.

"...trying...to...can't...see," Buffy replied in short, clipped words, her voice barely above a whisper.

Angel looked to his left, down what he was pretty sure the rest of the stairs and towards the door. They were only about thirty feet from safety, but their escape would not be easy. Nothing about climbing down approximately ten stairs through blinding smoke and rising heat was simple. To make matters worse, he could see the flames from the kitchen crawling down the hallway, closer to the front foyer. They needed to get out. Now.

Using all his strength, Angel reached forward and groped around until he had one arm under Buffy's back and the other under her knees. He pushed upwards, staggering under the strain. Normally, picking up Buffy would have be easy, but his muscles were burning, probably from lack of oxygen.

"Close...your eyes...gonna...get us...out," he ordered, leaning down to speak near what he thought was Buffy's ear.

"O...kay."

The wall was to his right, so Angel leaned in that direction until his shoulder made contact with the paneling. Using the wall as a guide, he descended the stairs quickly but carefully. The suffocating smoke hindered his breathing further under the strain of carrying Buffy, but he pushed forward. He was so close. Finally, his feet came into contact with the floor and he nearly stumbled to his knees, but he locked them together. Staggering the last few feet, he reached the door he'd left open.

Angel crashed into the porch railing after giving one last push to exit the burning house. Clean air filled his lungs and he coughed against the unexpected prize. In his arms, Buffy echoed the sound, her whole body shaking. All Angel wanted to do was fall to the ground and hold Buffy close, but they were still too near the burning structure.

With the last of his energy failing, Angel shoved away from the railing with his hip. He had just set foot on the top porch stair when he realized that there was a fire engine tearing down his driveway. It was of little consequence at the moment. He just wanted to get himself and Buffy farther away from the house. When his feet hit the soft sand, his knees gave out and he fell forward. At the last second, he twisted sideways so that he wouldn't crush Buffy as she clung to his neck.

Sprawled on the sand with Buffy on top of him, Angel gasped for air. His head twisted in the direction of the driveway and he saw the firetruck screech to a stop. Soon, men in fire gear were dashing everywhere, preparing hoses to fight the blaze. Behind the large truck, three dark sedans pulled to a stop. Out of one, Angel was surprised to see Gunn. He vaguely wondered what his sister's boyfriend was doing there, but thinking about that took too much energy. His eyes drifted shut, exhaustion slipping over him.

"Meow!"

The muffled noise caused Angel's eyes to shoot open. Was that a cat? He shook his head, trying to figure out what he'd heard. On top of him, Buffy wriggled around until she slid to the side on onto the sand. Angel manged to prop himself up on his elbows and looked at Buffy. When she reached down into her shirt, he was more than a little confused. The action made sense a second later when a furry little head popped out of the neck hole and gazed at Angel with frightened eyes. Of course! Shadow!

"I think...she's okay," Buffy said hoarsely, keeping the kitten in her shirt, but scratching her head with limp fingers.

"Are you...hurt?" he asked as he tried to get into a sitting position.

Buffy sucked in a breath then coughed violently. Tears streamed down her blackened cheeks from bloodshot eyes. "I don't...think...so. Hurts...to...breathe," she added.

"Angel!" came a shout from nearby. "Angel, man, are you okay?"

The worried call came from Gunn as the man ran towards them. Behind him, several paramedics were following at a slower pace, weighed down by equipment hanging from their shoulders. And behind them came another group, these guys in dark suits. Angel thought he recognized some of them from the meeting in Los Angeles with the FBI, but his eyes weren't at their best so he couldn't be sure.

"Angel?" Gunn asked again as he finally reached the pair on the beach.

"We're...fine. I think," Angel choked out.

"What-" Gunn started to question them about what had happened, but he was pushed aside.

"Excuse me, sir. We need to treat them immediately," a paramedic stated.

"Right, okay," agreed Gunn, though he was anxious to hear about whatever had gone on in Angel's house.

The first paramedic turned to Buffy and Angel. "Were either of you burned?" he began asking the standard questions in order to treat his two patients.

Charles Gunn stood a few feet away from the ambulance, conferring with some of his colleagues. The guy to his left was saying something, but Gunn's mind was elsewhere. More precisely, he was mentally kicking himself for not being prepared enough, for not protecting both Buffy and Angel. He tried to temper that knowledge with the fact that there had been no reason to suspect something bad would happen.

Chief Walker and Mayor Wilkins, the two people at the center of this investigation, had no reason to take retribution. Well, not in a specific sense. Those two had a penchant for doing bad things, but nothing about today's raid on the police station files should have set them off. He and the others on the investigation team had plotted their actions endlessly. They couldn't just go in and seize all files relating to Buffy Giles. That would have been a definite giveaway. So they had taken files relating to numerous cases and crimes. The action served two purposes, the first being that they would throw the focus off taking Buffy's files, and the second relating to the FBI's suspicion that if the police had covered one crime, they likely had covered others. If they reviewed other cases, it was entirely possibly they would find more infractions to add to the list of charges against their quarries.

Somewhere, somehow, the plan had gone wrong, and Gunn was kicking himself for it. Angel's house had been torched and Buffy and Angel had been in serious danger. Gunn had no proof the fire was arson, but he'd bet his new Jag that it was. The fire and today's seizure of police files were just too much of a coincidence. It had to have been deliberate. For what reason, he wasn't quite sure yet, but he intended to find out. In the meantime, he couldn't quite stop beating himself up for not putting a man on Angel's house to keep watch. What was he going to tell Fred? She was not going to be happy her brother had almost been killed.

"Excuse me," he said to the group around him before turning to go back to the ambulance. At the back of the vehicle, he stepped up next to one of the paramedics. "How are they?"

"Lucky," the paramedic answered. Gunn noticed his nametag said Riley F.

"Any serious injuries?" Gunn questioned, his eyes trained on the two patients in the ambulance.

"Not that I can see. Neither have any burns. It's mostly just smoke inhalation and irritation to the eyes. Buffy is a little worse off than her friend," Riley explained the results of his examination. "They'll need to go back to the hospital to get checked out, make sure there's not any lung damage, but I think they'll be fine. In any case, a couple hours on oxygen will be needed."

"Right." Gunn rubbed his forehead. That was going to be a definite complication. He pulled Riley aside. "Listen, we might have to work something out about that, but I've got to make a phone call. Before we work on that, though, I need to ask you to keep the woman's identity to yourself."

"Sure, uh, okay," Riley agreed, but seemed uneasy.

Placing a hand on the paramedics arm, Gunn put on his most serious face. "This is extremely important. A matter of life and death, if you want to call it that. No one at all can know she was here. Do you understand?"

Riley's eyes drifted to the young woman with soot-stained blonde hair who was huddled next to a much larger man. He couldn't help but wonder what she was involved in that put her in such danger. Was she in the Witness Protection Program, or was something going on here in Sunnydale? Riley wasn't sure. He had only moved here six months ago. He didn't want to see the woman hurt, though, so he would do as the agent named Gunn asked, even if it meant breaking a rule or two.

"Whatever you need me to do, I'll do," Riley told Gunn.

"Good, thanks. Is it okay if I go talk to them? I need to get some information about what happened here," Gunn informed him of his intentions.

"Sure. Just make sure they keep using the oxygen."

Gunn nodded at the request and left the man. In a few steps, he was standing at the back of the ambulance. Both Buffy and Angel looked battered and tired, but otherwise okay. Their faces were stained with soot, clothes blackened by it as well, and Buffy had a scratch on her arm. Gunn was just grateful that neither had sustained any burns.

The second paramedic, a woman named Tara, was attending to the cut on Buffy's arm. When she finished Gunn gave her a look and jerked his head. "Could you give us a few minutes?" Hesitant, the woman stared at her two patients and frowned. "Don't worry, I'll make sure they keep breathing the oxygen." he assured her.

"O-okay. I'll b-be right over there if you n-need me," Tara answered with a noticeable stutter in her voice that gave Gunn pause. Was she nervous about something? He eyed her critically but saw nothing to make him suspicious.

"How are you both holding up?" Gunn asked when the were finally alone.

"Been better," Angel grumbled

"Just peachy," Buffy moaned at the same time.

"Right. Kinda figured that." Leaning against the door, Gunn released an apologetic sigh. "I'm sorry. I should have been more careful. I should have had someone watching the house."

"It's not your fault," Angel relieved him of his guilt, or tried to. "None of us really thought anything would happen." He paused and then looked more seriously at his friend the FBI agent. "Do you have any idea yet what did exactly happen?"

"Not really," he admitted with a weary shrug. "I started to get a bad feeling when we seized the files at the police station and after. We didn't have taps on anyone's phones, couldn't get the warrants for it, but we were monitoring if they made any calls through cell phone logs. There was a jump in activity just after we got to the Sunnydale PD and afterwards."

"What do you mean?" Buffy jumped into the conversation.

"Just that after our arrival, there were a bunch of calls going between Walker, Mayor Wilkins and at least one other person. That wasn't sitting right with any of us," Gunn explained the events from earlier. "We were trying to trace the other number on the logs and the whole thing was just seeming more off so I was gonna head over here to keep an eye on Buffy. Just as I was about to leave, we caught a call to 911 about a fire."

"So that's why you got here at the same time as the fire truck," Angel concluded, remembering how he'd seen the dark sedans pull in behind the firemen.

"Yeah." Folding his arms over his chest, Gunn studied both of them. "I assume it was one of you who called for help."

"I didn't-"

"It was me," Buffy cut Angel off.

"Right. Which leads to my next question. What exactly happened here, and don't leave out any details," Gunn stated firmly, needing to make sure nothing was left out. It could be important later.

Buffy took a deep breath, then coughed. Her smoke-damaged lungs hadn't appreciated the effort. She pulled together her memory of the afternoon, though her brain was still a bit scrambled from everything that had happened. "I was doing some cleaning since there was nothing else to do. My mind was sorta elsewhere, thinking about everything. I'd just turned off the vacuum when there was this crash."

"Crash?" both Gunn and Angel interrupted.

"Yeah," she nodded, eyes narrowing. "Glass breaking. Honestly, I didn't think anything of it at first. I thought the kitten had gotten into something again. So I went looking for her, but when I got to the kitchen the curtains were on fire, the window was broken, and there was a bottle on the floor."

"A bottle?" Gunn said sharply. "What kind of bottle?"

"One of those cocktail-thingys, I think. I don't know what they're called."

"A Molotov Cocktail?" chipped in Angel.

"Right. That's it!" Buffy exclaimed. "One of those was on the floor below the curtains and they caught on fire."

"Arson," Gunn growled angrily. So he'd been right. Someone had taken retribution. The exact reason was yet to be determined. "What happened then?"

"I just sorta stood there for a minute. I mean, the house was on fire. I didn't even really have time to think what that meant because I knew I had to try to put it out." Buffy shivered at the remembered feeling of helplessness. "I was filling a big pot with water to throw on the curtains when there was another crash coming from I thought the living area. I didn't even bother to look. I knew what I'd find, so I grabbed the phone and dialed 911. There was no way I could do anything with two places on fire."

"How come you didn't get out right away? The fire department guys said you and Angel were just exiting the house when they arrived," Gunn inquired about the discrepancy.

"I couldn't leave without Shadow. I went looking for her and finally found her under my bed upstairs, but she was petrified and wouldn't come out." Buffy pointed at the cut on her arm. "She did that when I managed to grab her. When I got back to the hallway, it was filling up with smoke. I could barely see and it was getting hard to breathe. I was about halfway down the stairs when Angel found me."

"So you weren't home?" Gunn asked Angel for clarification.

"No." Angel then went on to explain how he'd had to go in to work for a little while. He told them both how he'd asked Willow to keep in touch with Buffy by phone since he was so busy, and about how Willow had called him saying she wasn't getting any answer at the beach house. "I rushed right out and drove to the house," he concluded.

"Seems like you got there just in time." Gunn squeezed Angel's shoulder, sharing without words the knowledge that they'd escaped. Barely.

Just then, a furry black head poked out of the neckline of Buffy's shirt and stared owlishly at the assembled group. Gunn peered at it curiously. "You do know you have a cat in your shirt, right?"

"Oh." Buffy blushed and tugged Shadow out of the safe cocoon she'd been in. "I didn't have anywhere else to put her."

Beyond them, they heard a commotion and all three heads turned to look toward the driveway. They couldn't see anything, but soon heard someone shouting.

"Buffy! Buffy!"

"Daddy," Buffy whispered, recognizing the strained bellow.

"Here," Angel took the kitten from Buffy and gave her a nudge. She stood shakily and moved beyond the ambulance doors. It took only a few seconds for Giles to spot her and then he was at her side, pulling her into his arms.

Angel knew there were still strained emotions between them, but at that moment, they didn't matter. He was still Buffy's father and she latched onto him tightly. The shudders working through her body told Angel she was crying. That was not unexpected. She'd been through a lot today.

For the first time, Angel had the chance to gather his bearings. He raked a hand through his hair, his eyes never leaving Buffy. So close. He'd come so close to losing her. She may have gotten out of the house on her own, but what if she hadn't? What if she'd collapsed on the stairs and he hadn't gotten there in time? He should never have left her!

Before Angel could fall deeper into second guesses, he shook himself out of it. They were both fine. That was all that mattered. But as he sat there gazing at Buffy clutching her father, he knew that things were about to change drastically. Everything from her past was about to come to head. He didn't need Gunn to tell him that. He knew. Angel wondered where that would leave him.

"I'm guessin' that's her father," Gunn's voice intruded on Angel's thoughts.

"Yeah."

Wrapped in her father's arms, Buffy couldn't seem to stop the tears that trailed down her cheeks. Everything was overwhelming her and when she'd seen her father racing toward her, all she'd wanted was to have him hold her and tell her everything would be all right, like he'd done when she was a little girl. All the distance and angry feelings between them ceased to exist. At least for the time being.

"Are you okay?" Giles whispered, his face buried in her dirty hair.

Buffy nodded. "Yeah. Just a little smoky."

"Thank God!" he hugged her tighter, needing the reassuring feeling of presence. "When Angel's assistant told me he'd rushed out, I knew something was wrong." Just then, Giles looked up and saw Angel and a man he didn't know approaching. He glared at Angel, finding the need to blame someone. "What the hell happened?"

"Excuse me, sir. I believe I can answer that," Gunn interjected.

"And who, may I ask, are you?" Giles demanded.

"Charles Gunn, sir." He flashed the badge attached to his belt. "FBI."

"FBI? But what-"

Giles didn't get a chance to finish his question as another set of shouts sounded from nearby. The calls this time came from Willow and Spike, who were dashing across the driveway towards them.

Gunn placed a hand on his firearm and eyed the newcomers uneasily. Once they were closer, he realized he recognized them as two of the people who had accompanied Buffy to the meeting in Los Angeles. "Those are two of your friends, right?"

"Yes," Buffy answered just seconds before she was swept up in a hug by a frantic Willow.

After assuring everyone that both Buffy and Angel were relatively unharmed, Gunn ushered them back towards the ambulance. Both paramedics, Tara and Riley, had been giving him unhappy stares over the fact that their patients weren't following orders by breathing the prescribed oxygen. Once he had the two settled back on the seats in the vehicle with the masks attached to their faces, Gunn took the lead on explaining the events that had led to that point.

Giles' displeasure at everything was obvious. He hadn't wanted to involve the FBI in the first place. All he'd wanted was for Buffy to remain safe. Still, he remained silent, but didn't hesitate to glare at the people he felt responsible for putting his daughter's life at risk.

Gunn had just gotten to the point in the story where he'd come on scene when his cell phone rang. "Excuse me," he said, pulling the device off the clip on his belt and turning his back. He kept his voice low and no one could tell what he was saying, but when he turned back around two minutes later, there was a strange look of triumph on his face.

"We caught the guy who torched Angel's house as he tried to haul ass outta town. He's currently being transported to FBI headquarters in Los Angeles."

TBC