I lower my shoulder and lunge against the window, a window that was specifically built to not shatter, and ringing out over the alarm’s squeal and the lapping of the flames is a hideous roar, a hungry growl, as I bounce off the window and fall backward into the raging heat. A girlish, panicky squeal escapes my throat, like when Daddy and I used to play chase in the backyard and he was closing in. The flames hit my flannel comforter as my legs kick over to the floor, as I bounce up off the mattress and race the one-two-three-four steps to the window. It will just hurt for a few minutes, it will be teeth-gnashing, gut-twisting agony, but then the heat will shrivel off my nerve endings and I’ll feel nothing, or better yet I’ll pass out from carbon monoxide poisoning. This is my last chance, and I know, but don’t want to think about, what happens if I fail-that I have to start preparing myself for the pain.

The enemy is cornering me, daring me, Go ahead, Emmy, go for the window, Emmy. Still a chance to jump off the bed to the left and run for the window, the only part of the bedroom still available. The orange flames rippling across the ceiling above me, dancing around my bed, almost in rhythm, a taunting staccato, popping and crackling, like it’s not a fire but a collection of flames working together collectively, they want me to know, as they bob up and down and spit and cackle, as they slowly advance, This time it’s too late, Emmy. The putrid black smoke that singes my nostril hairs and pollutes my lungs.

The searing oven-blast heat within the four corners of my bedroom. I don’t know how long it’s been going off, but it’s too late for me now. The house alarm is screaming out, not the early-warning beep but the piercing you’re-totally-screwed-if-you-don’t-move-now squeal. This time, it’s too bright, there’s too much smoke. Read more murder weapons, no suspects.THIS TIME I know it, I know it with a certainty that chokes my throat with panic, that grips and twists my heart until it’s ripped from its mooring. More murders are reported by the day – and they're all inexplicable. That is, until Emma finds a piece of evidence he can't afford to ignore. Not even Emma's ex-boyfriend, field agent Harrison 'Books' Bookman, will believe her that hundreds of kidnappings, rapes, and murders are all connected. Now all she has are the newspaper clippings that wallpaper her bedroom, and her nightly recurring nightmares of an all-consuming fire. Obsessed with finding the link between hundreds of unsolved cases, Emma has taken leave from her job as an FBI researcher.

Invisible by james patterson