by Mark Stone
I stood, swallowing hard as I looked down at him. We both knew what he was going through was more than just a ‘splinter made of glass’. We both knew he very likely wasn’t going to walk away from this. But I also knew that Jack Lacey wasn’t the type to be convinced of anything. If this was what he wanted, then I would give it to him. I owed him that.
“Just hang on until I get back, okay?” I said, moving toward the burning house.
“Sure thing,” he muttered. “Just go do your job.”
With that, I ran toward the burning house, my heart in my throat and my mind racing. If Charlotte was in here, if she was still alive, I was either going to get her out or die trying.
22
My mind was a split thing as I rushed toward the burning house. On one hand, I was scared to death that when I came out, Jack would be lying dead on the ground. The ambulances would have been too late to save him, and I would have to make peace with the fact that I had let a man who had helped me more than maybe anyone else on the planet die all alone in a strange yard.
Of course, that might not happen. Jack could pull through this. Like he was so keen on reminding me, he was a former Coast Guard member, after all. I was sure he had been through worse than this. Hopefully, the training, resolve, and willpower he’d garnered during his time in the military would be enough to see him through this.
On the other hand, my mind was swimming in thoughts of Charlotte. The connection we shared aside, this was an innocent woman, a woman who was very likely going through hell (if she was alive at all). It was my job to protect the innocent. It was my job to pull them from the clutches of darkness, even if that darkness took the shape of flames.
I felt heat, destructive and intense, rush toward me, invading even my pores as I neared the house. Immediately, I was taken back to the day when I’d watched the house I grew up in succumb to flames much like the ones I was running toward right now. That had been the work of a woman trying to steal my father’s money. I could only imagine who was responsible for this.
I did make a solemn vow to myself as I took a deep breath and ran through the threshold of the burning home. Once I made sure Charlotte was alright, I wouldn’t rest until I found out who was behind this. I would bring them to justice, and I would make sure it hurt.
Darting through the first flames, hopping over them and feeling the heat of it singe at my feet, I landed inside the house. Smoke billowed thick and dense inside. I could barely breathe. I could barely see. It was quite clear to me that, if I was going to find Charlotte here, I was going to have to be quick about it. I wouldn’t be able to stay here long, even if by some miracle, the house didn’t collapse on top of itself in the next few minutes.
Another scream filled my ears. It was loud and bloodcurdling. I could tell a few things as I walked through the living room, listening to the horrible cry accompanied by the sounds of the crackling fire and the noise of the entire structure creaking.
This scream was coming from a woman who was either in immense pain or scared to death, and it was coming from upstairs.
“Of course, she’s upstairs,” I muttered, steeling myself. It didn’t matter that it was Charlotte. I would have run up those stairs for any person who needed my help. As I’d said, that was the job. The fact that it was Charlotte just added to the urgency, though. It just made all of this that much more intense.
I steadied myself as best I could as I moved toward the staircase. Though the smoke around it was thick and moving, it had thankfully been spared the fire thus far. That grace wouldn’t last much longer. I knew that as well as I knew my own name. I needed to be quick. So, I whipped off my shirt, leaving me just in my t-shirt, and pressed the button up against my face, hoping to create a sort of makeshift filter for the smoke. It wouldn’t buy me much time, but hopefully, I wouldn’t need it.
“I’m coming, Charlotte!” I yelled the instant before I pressed the shirt against my mouth. Running up the stairs, I heard the wood creak and crackle underfoot. The fire might not have overtly touched it yet, but the integrity of it had certainly been compromised.
As if that wasn’t evident enough by the noises, my damn foot went through the second stair from the top. I stumbled, falling up to my knee and twisting my leg.
“Damnit!” I yelled, pulling the shirt from my face, blinking hard, and grabbing the bannister to steady myself. It was hot, though not so hot that I wasn’t able to hold it long enough to jar my leg free from the hole. I would have taken a deep breath, but given the amount of smoke and heat, all that would have done was made me dizzy and perhaps sent me spiraling down the staircase. The last thing I needed was to end up hurt and unconscious in this burning house having not even saved Charlotte.
No. I needed to keep steady. I needed to be strong. I needed to keep going.
So, that was what I did. Pushing myself forward and realizing I now had an aching leg to match my aching nose, I rushed up to the top.
“Charlotte!” I yelled, realizing I saw three closed doors and only had time to open one. “Charlotte, where are you?”
“I’m in here!” A voice, tired, ragged, and terrified sounded from behind the third door. I ran toward it, pushing it open quickly, and rushing into the room.
Fire had already overtaken the place. I could barely see anything as I entered what was certainly a bedroom. Like a tracking signal, my eyes cut through what they could of the smoke, zeroing in on a redhead tied to a chair. She was faced away from me, and the fire would overtake her in mere seconds. Luckily, I would be quicker than the fire. For Charlotte, I didn’t have another choice.
“Charlotte, I’m coming!” I yelled, keeping my eyes on the red hair in the chair as if my life depended on it. I was so focused on her, so intently aware of how close I was to her, that I didn’t even feel it as I rushed forward, jumping over (and a little through) hungry flames.
It might have burned me but that didn’t matter. None of it did. The only thing I cared about right now was Charlotte, and getting her to that door before it was too late.
“Charlotte!” I yelled, running to the chair and crossing around it. As I did, I saw the face of a terrified woman with tears in her eyes…a woman who was absolutely not Charlotte Cooper.
“Thank you,” she said through sobs. “Thank you so, so much!”
As the words left her mouth, a beam crashed down from the roof, slapping against the floor in front of the door, barricading it. Our only way out of the fire was now gone.
23
The bottom fell out of my stomach. I looked at the door,and then at the woman sitting in front of me. No. It wasn’t Charlotte. Still, it was a woman, an innocent person who had been tied to a chair and left to die in a burning house. Even if I had known she wasn’t Charlotte when I rushed in here, it still would have been my responsibility to save her. But how? A beam had broken, fallen and blocked our only exit.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, breathing in more smoke than could be healthy. “I’m going to get you out of here. I promise you. Just stay calm.”
It was a promise I had no business making, a promise I had no way of knowing I could keep. Still, I needed this woman to stay steady. I needed her to be as calm as possible if I was going to find a way out of this place in time.
Moving around the chair, I pulled my grandfather’s old hunting knife out of my pocket. I carried it around with me most times, and I thanked God silently that now was one of those times. Otherwise, I would have wasted valuable seconds fumbling with what looked to be expertly tied knots. As it was, my grandfather’s trusty knife ripped right through them like butter.
The woman in the chair gasped, either with relief or terror, as her hands were freed. I moved back around quickly, grabbing her hand and pulling her up. She turned around, and probably for the first time, saw just how close the fire was, just how blocked the exit was, just how screwed we were.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, throwing herself against my chest. “We’re going to die!”
“We’re not going to die,” I said quickly, another promise I had no business making. “I told you I was going to get you out of here, and I will.”
“How?” she asked, looking up at me, her entire body shaking. Her eyes quickly went wide. “I know! Can you break out the window? We can jump out. It’s not that far down. I did it a couple of times, and the worst that ever happened was breaking my ankle.” She looked back at the fire. “And that’s a lot better than burning to death in here.” She shook her head. “He kept finding me, though. He kept bringing me back before I could really get away. He put locks on the windows after that. So, you’re going to have to shatter the whole damn thing.”
There was a lot to unpack about that sentence. The way she spoke, talking about escaping a couple of times, about some man finding her, said she had been here for a while. Had she been held captive here? What had she gone through?
I shook my head hard, pushing those thoughts away. Those were all questions that could be answered later…if there was a later, of course. All that mattered right now was trying to get out of here, and there was a damn good reason why this woman’s suggestions wouldn’t work. As it was, it didn’t have anything to do with a broken ankle.
“We can’t do that, ma’am,” I said, taking as deep a breath as I could, given the way the smoke was rushing toward us. “Breaking that window would cause a backdraft that would swallow the both of us up in fire. What-what’s your name?” I asked through a cough, trying my best to calm her down.
“Ellen,” she said quickly, clutching my chest and pushing herself even closer to me. “My name is Ellen, and if you make it out of this and I don’t, please tell my baby I didn’t leave him. Please, tell my son I loved him more than anything in the world, and tell him I didn’t mean it. Tell him I would have never given him up if I’d had any other choice.”
My mind started to spin and not just because of the lack of breathable oxygen. What Ellen was talking about sounded a lot like what I’d learned Charlotte had gone through in the time leading up to her disappearance.
“No,” I said quickly, pulling her away and staring deeply into her eyes. “You tell him yourself. You’re going back to him today. You’ll see your son before the day’s over.”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she started to cry uncontrollably. I was really starting to pile up the promises I shouldn’t have been making, but something had changed in me. A switch had flipped. What happened to this woman had happened to Charlotte. Ellen had been forced to give away her son, and the same was true for Charlotte. I’d known as much the instant Justin told me he’d had that horrible conversation about Charlotte giving up her parental rights. Now, I had the first bit of evidence that what I’d known to be true actually might be, and it had spurred me on.
What was more, I had an idea.
“You were being held in this room, weren’t you?” I asked, looking at Ellen and then back at the fire. It would be here in seconds. We had to move quickly. “Day and night?”
“All the time,” she answered, tears still pouring from her eyes.
“What did you eat? What did you drink?” I asked.
“He brought me meals a couple of times a day,” she answered, sniffling. “And there are bottles of water in the closet.” Her eyes went wide again but then her face dropped. “It’s not enough, though. The fire’s too wild. It’s too big. We couldn’t make a path through it with what I have in the closet.”
“We don’t need to,” I said, grabbing her hand and running toward the closet. “I’m not looking to make a path, not really. I am looking for you to trust me, though. What I’m about to ask you to do is scary, and it’s not going to be easy or fun. If you can trust me, though, we might actually make it out of this. Do you think you can do that?”
Ellen looked at me for a long moment, her eyes drying up and her face steeling over.
“If you can get me to my son, I’ll walk through the damn fire,” she answered.
“Good,” I said, swallowing hard and pulling the closet open. “Because that’s exactly what I’m about to ask you to do.”
24
“What?” Ellen asked, her face going even paler than it had been before. I could see the fear all over her as she looked down at the six or so plastic water bottles and then back up at me. “What are you suggesting we do?”
Bending over, I grabbed a bottle of water and twisted the cap. After it opened, I grimaced and dumped the contents of the bottle over Ellen’s head.
“What are you doing?” she asked, shrieking as the water ran over her head and down her face and back.
“I’m giving us our best chance,” I said, shaking the bottle to make sure every available droplet was out of the bottle and on Ellen. “If I dampen us with enough water, that’ll give us a shot at going through those flames as unharmed as possible. As soon as we get through the doorway, we’ll have a bigger space to navigate. We can dodge the flames as best we can. Of course, we have to get out the door in order to do that, and if we’re wet enough-”
“Got it,” Ellen said, opening a bottle herself and tossing the contents on her. In seconds, Ellen was soaking wet. We had two bottles left, half of what we’d used on her. Since I was roughly twice her size, the math wasn’t in my favor. Still, if I was going to give someone a better chance at making it, I wanted that person to be Ellen.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, dousing myself in as much water as I had left. After I did that, I was looking at the woman through dripping bangs. “Now, I want you to listen to me and do exactly as I say.”
Ellen nodded.
“I’m going to go first,” I said, looking at the doorway. “I’m going to look at our exit space and figure out the best place to get through. You follow exactly in my footsteps. You got that?”
Again, Ellen nodded.
“It’s important that you do as I say,” I told her. “The fire is going to overtake this house completely, and the structure is already weak. You step on the wrong spot, and you could go through the floor entirely.”
“Oh my God,” Ellen muttered, her jaw tightening.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said quickly, trying to tamp down the fear rising in her. I needed her mind to be clear enough that she did as I said. “Just follow me exactly, and I’ll get you out of here, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, her voice shaky.
Turning, I motioned for Ellen to follow me. She did so, and I moved quickly toward the flames, as I said a quick prayer and trying to tell myself that I had been through worse than this before, even if I couldn’t quite bring the when and where to mind at this particular moment.
Taking another breath, as deep as it could be, I scanned the doorway. Spotting a sight where the flames were a touch lower than they were everywhere else, I decided that was the spot we needed to go through. And now was the only time we would have. Waiting any longer in an environment like this could serve to put us in any number of unforeseeable situations.
“Come on,” I said, running forward and leaping right into and through the flames. They seemed to jump right back at me, rising as I did, and biting at my arms, legs, and feet.
I slammed hard against the floor on the other side, which was mercifully free of flames.
Pushing myself up, I turned to find Ellen standing there, still on the other side of the doorway. I couldn’t tell where I had been burned yet. There was too much adrenaline pulsing through my bloodstream. Instead, I yelled at the woman.
“Ellen, you have to move right now!” I said.
“I can’t!” she answered quickly, tears running anew down her cheeks. “I want to, but I can’t.”
I understood that. What I was asking her to do was completely insane. Still, it was the only move we had to play in all of this. So, in order to get her to do what I needed her to do, I decided to go for the throat, to bring out the big guns.
“Your son, Ellen,” I responded. “Think of your son. Think of how he’ll feel if you never come back to him. You say t
here’s nothing you wouldn’t do for him. I believe that, Ellen,” I said. “I believe in you. All you have to do now is put your money where your mouth is.” I lifted my hands up, as though I was going to catch her. “You can do it, Ellen. You’ve got this!”
Ellen shook as she considered what I’d just said. She looked down at the floor and then back up at me. She nodded firmly and I recognized the look on her face. It was a look I’d seen on Charlotte’s face before, a look I’d seen on my mother’s face as well.
She took a couple of steps back and then ran forward. She leapt through the fire, slamming into me and knocking me backward.
“Thank God,” I muttered.
“I think- I think my arm is burned,” Ellen said, looking up at me.
“That’s okay,” I answered. “We’ll take care of you just as soon as we get you out of here. I promise.”
That, as it turned out, was a promise I was more confident I could keep.
Grabbing the woman, I swept her up into my arms. Careful to dodge the hole I created in the staircase the last time I was on it, I practically flew to the bottom floor. Fire was nearly everywhere, but thankfully, there was still a space for me to exit. I did so, taking a valley of a breath as clean, fresh air collided with me, cooling everything in the world.
I ran as far away as I could, but as I did, I felt the adrenaline bleed out of me. Exhaustion and probably a little bit of smoke inhalation took its toll quickly.
I fell to my knees, setting Ellen down as gently as I could. I saw she was unconscious too. As soon as she was against the ground, I crumpled down beside her.
Looking over, I saw Jack Lacey again. He was in the same position as when I left him. His face was paler, and he wasn’t moving. A torrent of fear ran through me, until I saw his eyes cut over in my direction. He wasn’t dead. At least, not yet.