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She closed her eyes against the painful mirage and put more energy into escaping. If they both died, the truth would never get sorted out correctly.
“Hold still!”
Hannah’s eyes popped open. It was Bart’s voice, and his eyes under the soot and blood staining his face. It was his strong and gentle touch that removed the gag and unrolled the wad of fabric to cover her nose like a mask.
He was wet, from the towel draped over his shoulders, she noticed belatedly.
Her legs dropped free as he sliced through the zip ties. When he freed her hands she threw herself at him, crying with relief.
“Easy. Just hang on.” He drew the wet bath sheet over her. “We can’t go out the front. Kellerman will be watching.”
She agreed, but the inferno behind them didn’t offer much choice. “Then what?”
“Trust me?”
Always. She nodded, her throat too full of emotion and too raw from the fire to say the words. He was alive, that was anoverwhelming relief in and of itself. The rest of her feelings she could hardly decipher right now.
When they got out of this, and she was confident he had a plan to save them, she owed him more than one apology. But all of that would wait until they were safe.
With his arm around her waist, he guided her past his bedroom, down the hall toward Kyle’s room. Through the flames, she thought she caught sight of the morning sky. She knew that couldn’t be a good thing for Bart’s apartment, but she didn’t know if that was good or bad for the life of the fire.
He pushed her ahead of him into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. Holding her shoulders, he swapped places with her, so he could open the narrow linen closet. He reached inside and she heard a click, then he pulled back the shelves to reveal an access she was sure wasn’t wide enough for his broad shoulders.
“Panic room,” he said once more urging her forward ahead of him. “Fireproof. Soundproof. Go on.”
“Not without you.” She grabbed his hand, clung shamelessly.
“Where else am I gonna go?” His smile was a little off with the cut and swelling in his lower lip. “Ladies first.”
She went through the narrow opening and found a small room. She tugged the bandana from her face as she looked around, trying to judge how he’d managed to carve this space out of his compact living quarters.
Two pistols and a semi-automatic rifle were mounted on a rack on one wall and a first aid kit was mounted on the opposite wall. Boxes of ammunition were stacked in one corner, a case of water and a box of MREs in another. In the center of the room was a brass pole.
“Interesting choice for entertainment,” she said when he’d locked them in.
“Pull your head out of the gutter.” He winked at her and then reached down, pulling up a piece of the flooring near the pole.
“A fireman’s pole?”
“You got it.”
“To the utility corner in the store room downstairs.” She’d figured out the logistics.
“We can check Kellerman’s position, and hide until the fire is out if we need to.”
It would be the perfect place to tell him the truth about the baby. If Kellerman’s attack proved anything to her, it was the preciousness of time. “I’m sorry. He sent me a text message telling me Gonzales had escaped and was headed this way. I had to try to stop him.”
“Don’t apologize. I would have done the same thing to protect you.”
“Really?”
“I wouldn’t look as good in the process though.”
She glanced down at her denim shorts and one of his old t-shirts and back to him. “I think you’re looking pretty hot.” His t-shirt fit him perfectly, while the one she’d borrowed swamped her.
“We can take a vote later. Down you go. Kellerman won’t know he didn’t succeed until it’s too late.”
She grabbed the first aid kit, then reached out and slid down the pole into the clean, cool air of the store room. Bart landed with barely a sound a few seconds later.
