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Her eyes open, clouded and dazed, but definitely alive.
“Cal?” she croaks.
There’s no time to untie her. I pick her up and throw her over my shoulder. As I turn toward the doorway, I see a hulking shape blocking our way.
Gently, I set Aida back down on the bare floorboards. I can feel the heat radiating upward, and I can hear the fire getting louder and louder. We must be right over the kitchen. The wallpaper is starting to blacken and curl. The fire’s in the walls, too.
“It’s enough, Oliver,” I tell him, holding up my hands. “We have to get out of here before the whole house collapses.”
Oliver gives his head a weird, twitching shake, like there’s a fly buzzing around his ear. He’s hunched over, limping a little on one leg. Still, his eyes are fixed on me, and his fists are balled at his sides.
“None of us are leaving,” he says.
He charges at me one last time. His shoulder hits my chest like an anvil. We’re grappling and clawing at each other. I’m swinging punches at his face, his ear, his kidneys, any part of him I can reach.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Aida slamming her hands down against the windowsill. No, not her hands—her cast. She’s trying to break the cast off her right hand. Grunting with pain, she bashes the cast down one more time, breaking the plaster. Now she can pull her hand loose from the rope, and she begins to fumble with the ties around her ankles, her broken fingers clumsy and the knots too tight.
I lose sight of her as Oliver and I roll over again, each of us grappling with all our might. We’re both big men—I can feel the floor groaning dangerously beneath us. It’s getting hotter by the minute, the air so black and dense that I can barely see Aida at all.
She jumps to her feet and I shout, “Get the gun, Aida! It’s in one of the rooms . . .”
She won’t be able to find it, though. I couldn’t see it before, and it’s ten times smokier now.
Really, I just want her out of here. Because the fire is raging beneath us, and I have a feeling I’m about to plunge down to hell.
I get my hands around Castle’s throat and I pin him down, squeezing as hard as I can. His eyes are popping. He’s clawing at my arms, reigning blows on my face and body, weaker and weaker each time. I tighten my grip, even as I feel the floor starting to shift and groan beneath us.
The whole corner of the room gives way. The floor becomes a titled platform, a slide leading from the door down into the fiery pit that’s opened up beneath us. We’re sliding down, Oliver Castle and me on top of him, sliding and falling into the bonfire that once was a kitchen.
I let go of Castle and try to scramble backward, but it’s too late. I’m sliding faster than I can climb. There’s no way to save myself. Until something seizes my sleeve. I see Aida, clinging to the doorframe with one hand, and my wrist with the other. Her teeth are bared with effort, her face a rictus of pain as she tries to hang on to the frame with her broken hand.
I don’t grab her arm, because I can see how weak her grip is. I’m not dragging her down with me.
“I love you, Aida,” I say.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” she yells back at me. “You grab my arm, or I’ll jump in after you!”
With anyone else, it would be an idle threat.
Aida is the only person I know who’s stubborn enough to actually do it.
So I grab her arm and I haul myself upward, right as the joists give way and the whole room collapses. Oliver howls as he tumbles down into the flames. Aida and I fling ourselves through the doorway, scrambling down the hallway hand in hand. There’s no going down the stairs again, that much is obvious. We run to the opposite end of the house instead, finding a child’s room with sailboat decals still stuck to the walls. Oliver’s old room.
I wrench up the windowsill and climb out, letting out a fresh pillar of dark smoke. I hang from the window frame and then drop down. Then I put up my hands to catch Aida.
She jumps down into my arms, still only wearing one shoe.
As we sprint away from the house, I can hear the distant wail of sirens.
I’m pulling Aida down the drive to the Jeep. Aida yanks her hand out of my grip, yelling, “Wait!”
She runs in the opposite direction, past th
e inferno of the house, out on the sand toward the water.
She pauses, stooping to pick something up—her purse.
Then she runs back to me, her white teeth brilliant against her filthy face as she grins at me.
