Cold Air. Then Heat. Then Terror.

J. Freedom du Lac: He didn't hide his scars. That part of the healing had finally begun.

Nearly half of Kevin O'Toole's body had been burned the night a vacant house turned into a firetrap, injuring seven Prince George's County firefighters. O'Toole had gotten the worst of an arsonist's malevolence, and surgeons had operated on him 13 times since – at first to save his life; more recently to reconstruct his hands, which were so badly damaged that doctors feared that he'd never regain use of the right and that they'd have to amputate the left.

Now he was sitting in the Bladensburg Volunteer Fire Department's day room, the same spot he'd been when the box alarm sounded on the night everything…