My right butt cheek buzzed. I stopped pulling at the wall and remembered that my phone was in my pocket. Last night, lying on the bed with Caleb, I had fallen asleep next to him in my clothes. He must have left when Sophie and Aaron came back from the restaurant and never bothered to wake me up.
The cell’s screen illuminated Aaron’s name and number, “Aaron?” I held the phone to my ear with one hand while I kept tearing at the drywall with the other.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In our bathroom.”
I could hear his ragged breath through the connection.
“The hallway’s on fire,” he said. “When we woke up…I couldn’t get across to you. We just now climbed down the drain pipes outside our window.”
“Our window is covered in smoke.”
“I know, I’m looking at it right now. Are you okay?”
I pushed Sophie away and started kicking at the hole. “We’re,” I kicked the hole again, “kicking a hole through the bathroom wall.”
He didn’t say anything.
“Aaron?”
“I’m thinking,” he said.
From the bedroom, I heard a loud crash.
Sophie stopped pulling, “What was that?” she asked.
I moved to the bathroom door and opened it a crack. On the far side of the room, near the window, the floor had collapsed into the room below. Flames licked up and grabbed hold of the curtains that caught fire faster than anything I had ever seen in my life. A second later, the bed began burning. I slammed the door. “Aaron, our bedroom is on fire!”
“How big is the hole now?”
“Six inches.”
“Charlotte, grab the back off the toilet and beat that shit inside out.”
I dropped my phone, snatched the tank lid off the toilet and swung at the wall. My aim was off the first few swings, but when I connected, a large chunk of plaster and wall fell to the floor. Between my swings, Sophie kicked. I could hear Aaron yelling up at us from the cell on the floor, but I didn’t stop to pick it up. We—slam—had—slam—to—slam, slam—get out.
Like an ill fitting lid on a boiling pot, smoke started pushing in all around the door’s edge. Sophie stopped kicking long enough to hold her hand to the bathroom door. “It’s burning hot,” she yelled.
“Come on,” I yelled as I swung my porcelain hammer and kicked wildly between strokes. Every muscle in my body stretched, contracted, released in a single focus of concentrated urgency—escape. Sophie returned to my side and kicked, and kicked, and kicked.
A loud cracking sound came from the door, like wood splintering under the blow of an axe. For a moment, the thought entered my brain that maybe there was someone, someone with an axe, someone in a bulky fire suit wielding a giant axe was bashing down the door to save us.
The door cracked again and this time I could see it wasn’t a fireman chopping down the door coming to rescue us. It was the fire itself, coming to kill us.
The sound of it filled my head, loud like a roaring thunder eating through the small slab of painted wood daring to stand against it. I stopped swinging, paralyzed by its raging ferocity, dwarfed by its swift power and will to consume everything in its path. Terrified by the realization that Sophie and I had seconds left to live.
Sophie’s kicking jolted me from my stupor.
The toilet lid swung high above my head and Sophie stopped just long enough for me to bring down a blow. Whatever seconds I had left, they would be spent in the unhinged strain to escape. The heavy piece of porcelain hit the wall and knocked a chunk of drywall loose before it broke in half and the end I wasn’t holding fell to the floor with a thud. I threw the other piece behind me and kicked the hole twice until the broken wall fell in on itself.
I stopped and hoped what I saw wasn’t just wishful thinking. It looked like it might be big enough—for Sophie.
“It’s big enough,” I yelled at Sophie. “Go!”
Hands above her head like a diver preparing for a cold pool, Sophie’s arms and head entered the room next door. As I pushed her legs, she squeezed her shoulders, first one then the other, past the ragged edge of the hole and then the rest of her body slipped quickly through onto the floor on the other side. She got up and faced me at the hole.
“Run for the window,” I told her and picked up my phone from the floor. “Aaron?” I called into the phone.
“I’m here,” he said.
“Sophie’s in the room next door, she’s going to find the window, you need to help guide her out.”
I could hear him shouting instructions at someone on his end. The bathroom door blazed and, like liquid, the flames worked their way onto the walls and ceiling above me. The heat in the room was like being trapped and cooked inside a giant oven, I wondered how long until my clothing and body just burst into flames.
“People are on their way,” he shouted.
Sophie still waited by the hole, “Go, they’re coming for you.”
“Come on then,” she said, not understanding that the hole wasn’t big enough for me.
“Stand back,” I yelled and kicked at the wall. I wasn’t giving up, but I wasn’t going to let Sophie die waiting for me to escape. “Run Sophie! Now!” I shouted and kept kicking.
The heat pressed on me and the physical effort of trying to take down the wall was getting harder to keep up. The walls burned quickly and the ceiling over my head was now in flames as well.
Even though my brain still frantically pushed for escape, my body felt slow, sluggish. I stopped kicking altogether when a thick fit of coughing dropped me to my knees. The room was too full of smoke now and not enough could escape through the hole to the other room to keep it clear enough to breathe.
On my knees, I clawed limply at the drywall. Sophie was nowhere to be seen on the other side—at least she had gotten out. My hands were slow, my breathing, loud and labored. It was difficult to hang on to consciousness—the smoke. The smoke was strangling my brain while the heat slowly cooked my body. Am I dying? Is this what dying feels like?
My hand stopped on the wall. I stared at it. Somewhere inside me, I wanted my hand to move, to keep trying. It didn’t move. Wouldn’t move.
Sound. I could hear sound, a loud crash that was far away. Again, again. Above me, my eyes watched the fire dance across the ceiling, blue and orange flames spilled across the white canvas. The crash, louder this time, close to my body even though my mind was far away. Suddenly, Sophie’s eyes were swimming before me. Her mouth moved frantically but there was no sound, like an old movie, her face wore a frantic expression but her mouth moved silently.
She started shaking me, gentle at first, then violent, impatient. She didn’t understand, it was impossible for me to move.
“I’m burning Sophie,” I tried to whisper but I didn’t think she could hear me.
She started dragging and pulling at my body. Suddenly, I was sitting up, propped up like a rag doll by Sophie’s hands under my arms. Leaning back, then being pulled through the hole. How do I fit? But then we stopped, stuck, my weight pushed down on the ragged edge and made it hard for her to pull me.
“Charlotte,” she pleaded. “You have to help me.” Her voiced sounded so desperate, so sad. I wanted to help her, help her with me, but I didn’t think my body was listening to my brain. My eyes opened and looked into her upside down face. “Please Charlotte. Please try,” her voice broke and I could hear that she was close to tears. She kept pulling at my stubborn body.
We were in the other room—almost. She couldn’t get me through the hole that seemed much, much larger than it had been. “Please Charlotte!” her voice was a wild and desperate scream now that bounced in my head.
I took a breath, the air on this side did more to clear my head. My back arched and lifted my butt while my arms, heavy and strained, tried to help push my body through the hole.
I moved.
Sophie pulled, I pushed. My body inched and inched until the majority of my weight was resting on the flo
or in the next room and only my legs needed pulling through. That was when Sophie got a better grip under my arms and began dragging my body across the wood floor until my legs dropped loudly onto the floor and followed us to the other side.
“We’re almost out now. The window’s just here and Caleb and Aaron are getting the fire crew to raise the ladder next to it.”
Someone was shouting, their voice sounded muffled to my ears but I could tell they were yelling on the outside of the window. “Here!” Sophie yelled back at them. “I’ve got her, here!” A moment later, Sophie stopped pulling my body and Aaron’s face, red and sweating, moved into my line of vision.
“Christ,” he said as he bent down and managed to collect my body in his arms.
“Where is she?” I could hear Caleb shouting from somewhere but couldn’t see him until I turned my head and saw him climbing through the window.
“I’ve got her,” Aaron said. “I’ve got her.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Burned
With the oxygen mask strapped to my face, my head began to clear. My arms and legs were tired and the muscles felt weak, but they moved and responded to my desire to make them move. I sat up in the back of the ambulance and watched through the open doors as men in black rubber boots, khaki pants, and short sleeved shirts dragged hoses through puddles of water and shouted orders I couldn’t understand while they worked to put out the rest of the hotel fire.
My legs were burned.
Sophie had managed to break the hole in the wall open with a granite floor vase that had been decorating the room next door, but dragging my limp, smoke poisoned body through that hole had taken some time and my legs had suffered longer than the rest of me. The brief view I had of them, before the emergency responder cleaned and wrapped them, shocked me. My own flesh, so red and blistered, “will be very painful,” an interpreter told me. “Once the shock wears off.”
Was I in shock? I looked around at all the rapid chaos around me, happening outside of me, separate. My eyes found Caleb, Aaron, and Sophie talking with the interpreter and the emergency responder who had taken care of my legs and then hooked me up to an IV. A clear liquid dripped quietly into my veins and somehow made me feel like everything was going to be just fine.
Just fine.
Drugged. This was what drugged felt like. This was what I had felt like in Emerick’s office the night I discovered the photos of my mother and Grace on his computer, right after he had injected something into my neck and just before passing out. Drugged didn’t feel bad, it felt good. Very, very good. Too good.
Caleb looked over his shoulder and met my heavy eyes staring at him. His brow furrowed when he saw me. He looked grumpy. Grumpy, grumpy, grumpy. How grumpy would he be if I told him about Hayden? That I dreamt almost every night of Hayden. Imagined Hayden’s hand in mine, his arms wrapped possessively around me, his lips, hungry on my own. “Sssshhhh,” I said shaking my head and laughing. “Sshh, sshh, sshh.” I liked the way the sound felt on my lips. Only, it wasn’t imagined, somehow. Somehow Hayden was with me. Hayden was here—wasn’t he? I had seen him, on the street, on this street I realized looking around.
Caleb left the group and walked towards me with his crinkled expression.
“How mad would that make you?” I suddenly yelled out at him and then burst into tears.
He stopped and yelled to everyone behind him and then ran to me. “Charlotte, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
I shook my head so hard it felt like my brain bounced inside my head. “No, no, no, no—”
His hands held my face and tried to make my head stop. “Charlotte, shhh. It’s okay, you’re going to be okay.”
Someone pulled something from my arm, when I opened my eyes I could see the Indian woman dressed in white doing something with the tubes that had been hooked up to my arm. “You wrapped my legs,” I blurted, forgetting almost immediately why I had just been crying.
She smiled and nodded at me before moving to the back of the tiny ambulance.
“She’s higher than a kite!” Aaron’s voice suddenly boomed in front of me. When I saw his angry expression I could tell he was about to do something, and then he pushed Caleb out of the way and lifted me out of the ambulance.
“It looks like a van,” I said.
Aaron looked at me and shook his head. “Christ, what a mess.”
“Shouldn’t we get her to the hospital?” Sophie asked.
“I’ll take care of her myself,” Aaron said.
“She needs to see a doctor,” Caleb insisted.
“She needs to get the hell out of here,” Aaron said, his face was red and his eyes bulged from the strain of carrying me.
“You’re really fat,” I said.
Aaron closed his eyes and I felt the deep sigh in his chest before I heard it escape though his mouth. Everyone seemed really agitated, I couldn’t remember why.
“Have you seen her legs?” Sophie’s voice sounded high, like she was crying, or about to.
Aaron ignored her and kept walking quickly, my head and arms bouncing in time with the pace of his thunderous steps. He really was very, very out of shape.
“We should call her uncle,” Caleb shouted from somewhere behind me, but Aaron didn’t even slow down. “Aaron!” Caleb shouted.
Aaron suddenly stopped and turned to face them, “Look at that building,” he whispered. “Do you see what that is?”
“Yeah,” Caleb shot back. “A bloody inferno that’s burned Charlotte’s legs all to hell.”
“No,” Aaron hissed. “What that is, is an attempt on her life. A planned fire with one purpose…to kill her. When we opened our door to the hallway between the rooms, you know what the first thing I smelled was…gas. Gas poured all up and down the hallway separating us from her. Look at the building, the fire started in that hall, and in the room directly below Charlotte and Sophie’s. That’s until it spread, as expected, up into the girls’ room.”
Caleb was staring at the building, considering what Aaron was telling him. My head felt like it was starting to sharpen, focus back on what was happening around me. The fire was mostly contained by the fire fighters, black blankets of soot swept up the side of the building and I could see that what Aaron was saying was true. The fire in the room below ours had spread to our room, but the rest of the building looked untouched.
“That fire started quick and spread like it was wild…it had help.”
“Who would want to hurt Charlotte?” Sophie asked.
Aaron turned and headed away from the crowd of people watching the end of the activities. “A lot of people will eventually want to hurt her, but right now, there’s only one man who suspects what she’s capable of.”
“Emerick,” Caleb said.
Aaron stopped at a small, rusted out car. “You’ll have to take her,” he said to Caleb and they passed me between them.
“You can put me down,” I offered.
“No he can’t,” Aaron said and pulled a set of keys from his pocket. “Your legs and feet have second degree burns all over them. I realize that painkiller they dripped into your system is blunting the pain right now, but I doubt even that will help you if you try to put any weight on them.” Aaron inserted a key into the trunk and lifted—the puzzle box and a small black bag were in the back of this strange car.
“How did you—” I began.
“They were the first things he grabbed,” Caleb explained, the sharp edge of accusation hung on his every word.
“That’s right,” Aaron said, like he was proud of the fact.
“Before he even checked to see if we could get to you.”
Aaron pulled the black bag from the compartment and slammed the trunk. “We need to get moving,” he said. “Whoever started the fire is no doubt hanging around and knows that he didn’t complete what he came here to do. And if he was watching us escape, he’ll also know about the box.”
“Is that a problem?” Sophie asked.
“It will b
e,” Aaron said, squeezing his huge body into the tiny space between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. The whole car rocked when he shifted his weight and pulled his leg in. “As soon as he reports it to Emerick Wriothesely.”
“How will Emerick know it’s of any importance?” I asked.
“If it was important enough for me to bother strapping it to my back in a bed sheet before escaping a burning building, he’ll know it’s important enough for him to want. Now get in,” he said and slammed his door.
The pain woke me up. A bright, sickening wave that started at my legs but, without the pills, turned into a symphony of agony that radiated through my entire body. The pills were something Aaron had somehow managed to purchase at a small chemist on our way out of Delhi.
“Don’t you need a prescription?” Sophie had asked when we had stopped outside the tiny, dimly lit store. Through the window I could see stacks and stacks of tightly packed white boxes stuffed into makeshift shelves that lined all three walls from floor to ceiling.
“Yes,” Aaron said as he turned off the engine and opened his door. “A prescription helps, but so does enough cash.”
“Aaron,” my voice barely rose above a whisper. Caleb was asleep next to me on the backseat, his head propped uncomfortably against the window, while in front of me, Sophie rested against the sweatshirt she had balled up between the front seat and the door. “It’s starting again.”
He didn’t even look back, only reached into the small paper bag he kept near his feet and handed me the stiff card that held row after row of the tiny red pills that rattled behind individual plastic blisters. Quickly, my hands already unsteady from the pain, I pushed out one pill and washed it into my body with what was left at the bottom of my water bottle. I handed the card back to Aaron, “Where are we?”
“About thirty minutes outside Ellora.”
We had been driving for hours, stopping only to go to the bathroom and always on the side of the road with a roll of toilet paper Aaron had purchased along with a case of plastic water bottles and foreign sacks of snack food I didn’t recognize and didn’t feel like eating. When Aaron had explained the bathroom situation to Sophie, I had braced myself for the barrage of complaints she would surely have. But when she simply took the paper and headed out into the arid landscape to squat behind some brush, I realized how scared she was.
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