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“No, but I know his face. Or part of it.”
Now the hollow wail of sirens comes to them over the treetops, distant but drawing closer—and as bad as this whole thing is, something occurs to Grace that makes it even worse.
“Where’s the printer?”
Beau looks at her as blankly as the fire watchers had. “What? Why the hell do you care about that stupid thing now?”
He doesn’t know! They never told anyone else how crucial it was, and so, without Risa or Connor there, there was no one to save it. Connor had said that the gears and mechanics and stuff were broken, but the important part—the printing part—was still okay. Maybe. But if it burns, there isn’t even “maybe” anymore.
Beau grabs her arm. “Come with us, Grace. I’ll find us a place to hide. We’ll be okay, I swear it.”
She gently pulls out of his grip. “You be smart with them, Beau. Run north, and maybe east, ’cause most people runnin’ away run south or west. Be smart, and keep them whole, you hear?”
Beau nods, and Grace turns and, without looking back, runs down the alley toward the back of the burning building.
The heat is so intense, Grace can’t even get near the back door. A few feet over, low to the ground, is that solitary window into the basement. Rather than spewing smoke, it’s drawing in air, breathing in oxygen to feed the flames above.
She gets down on her knees and peers in, but can’t see a thing—which means that there’s no fire down there!
Not yet, anyway. It may be too late to save Sonia and Risa, and for all she knows, Connor is dead too. She may be the only one left who knows of the printer’s existence.
Something heavy crashes in the shop. The flames crackle with nasty, vicious greed.
The window is so small, and she’s such a big-boned girl, she’s convinced there’s no way she can fit through the window—but she has to try. How terrible it would be if everything were to be lost because the window is too small and she’s too big. The odds are even money she’ll fit, and even money she’ll get to the printer before the floor above her collapses. That’s a 25 percent chance. Lousy odds, but they get worse the longer she hesitates.
Shutting down her survival instinct, she dives headfirst into the little rectangular hole.
As she suspected, she gets only partway through. Her hips are caught by the rigid wood, so she wriggles and squirms. The heat around her head is unbearable. And now there’s light. The angry fire spies her through the slats of wood up above, like sunlight sneaking through a closed blind.
She grabs a support beam and with all her might pulls on it, until she falls into the basement, cutting herself on broken window glass on the floor.
The air is almost entirely clear down here, because smoke only knows up—but the heat! She can feel the skin on her scalp blistering. She keeps as low as she can, rounding a corner, and there, in the place Connor left it, is the box filled with all the broken parts of the organ printer, waiting patiently for their chance to burn. Ain’t gonna happen. She grabs the box, then opens the stasis container, which is too large to take, and digs into the thick green gel to pull out the slimy ear, shoving it into the pocket of her blouse. Then she heads with the ear and the box of printer parts, back to the small window.
Behind her, a support beam gives way and the remains of the shop up above drop to the basement. The flames, fed by the oxygen-rich air, leap forward, flooding the basement like water. Grace reaches the window, shoves the printer through, then begins the monumental task of getting out the way she came in.
There’s no leverage outside. Nothing to grab on to. She’s stuck halfway in, halfway out, and she can feel the flames on her feet, melting her shoes.
“No!” she screams in furious defiance. “I won’t die this way! I won’t, I won’t, I won’t!”
And suddenly her deliverance arrives in the form
of a stranger grabbing her arms, and pulling. “I’ve got you!” he says. He tugs once, twice, three times. It’s the fourth tug that dislodges her.
The second she’s out, she kicks off her burning shoes, and the man helps to stamp out the fire at the cuffs of her jeans. She has no idea who he is—just a neighbor man—but she can’t help herself from throwing her arms around him. “Thank you!”
The sound of sirens now fills the air, coming from many different directions.
“An ambulance will be here in a second,” says the man. “Let me help you.”
But Grace is already on her feet and gone with the box of printer parts clasped to her breast like a baby.
39 • Connor
“There are places you could go,” Ariana told him, “and a guy as smart as you has a decent chance of surviving to eighteen.”
He’s back at the freeway overpass, on the ledge behind the exit sign. It was once his favorite escape spot/make-out spot/danger spot. This time, it feels like none of those things. And this time he’s alone.
He has been to many of the “places” Ariana had referred to. None of them were as safe as he wished they’d be. He did survive to eighteen, though. That should be enough, but it’s not. Twilight gives way to night as he nests there, on the overpass, gathering fortitude.
