Thirty seconds. For a life-or-death choice, for Janeal to flee the front staircase before it was fully engulfed, for Sanso to return to the main door below, for him to lock her in.
Thirty seconds for Katie to die on the metal and vinyl stool she was tied to, for Janeal to burn alive with her if she stayed. Because in the time it took Janeal to pass through that wall of fire and free Katie from the ropes—if that was possible—there would be no time to leave.
Thirty seconds for Janeal to retrieve the money and flee this camp, survive this nightmare.
“Janeal, help me.” Katie’s voice was weak but calm. Much calmer than the lightning storm in Janeal’s brain, firing its prickly energy at random. Janeal could no longer see her friend. Her mind went to the shock she’d received at the stairs yesterday. Then to the zinging touch of Mrs. Marković’s hand.
“Can you bust up the stool? Bounce it, break it, something?” Janeal said.
Janeal could see Katie’s shadowy form rocking atop the rickety thing, swaying enough only to fall sideways into a Coke machine. Katie’s shoulder landed in it, sounding a metallic thud.
“My ankles . . . they’re locked in.”
“Keep trying.”
Twenty seconds. The flames fanned out from the center of the room. If she went now, she’d never get back across.
“Janeal. I need you.” Katie coughed.
“Is my father . . . ?” Dead for sure, but Janeal couldn’t think of any other reply to Katie’s plea.
Katie didn’t answer.
Smoke expanded, clogging its upward escape, and filled Janeal’s head. She could hardly breathe. Would the smoke kill her before the flames reached her? She dropped to her knees.
“Janeal, we could still get out through the door back here!”
She felt her head sway slowly from side to side, heard the words she hadn’t dared speak aloud. “I can’t. I’m so sorry, Katie, I can’t.” Not when she could almost certainly save herself. Any other choice had an unknown outcome. She would burn alive. They would both die.
Sanso would win.
“You can’t? You can’t because you have to save your precious money!” Katie shouted.
The metal and plastic frame of the foosball table started to pop and snap.
“You found the money! You took it already! Janeal, what have you done?”
Tears welled in Janeal’s eyes. “I—yes, but it’s not that!” What was it, then?
Daughters, you are full of deceit.
Ten seconds.
“Janeeeeeal . . .” Katie’s plea turned into a moan, chilling Janeal in the blazing room. Her friend, her best friend since they were five, was about to die.
“Please! Pleeeaase!” Katie started to shriek. Janeal’s tears evaporated in the heat. “Pleasepleaseplease!”
In a moment of pristine clarity, she knew that she must attempt to save Katie, no matter the cost. She could never live with herself if she turned her back now.
Janeal stared at the rising flames and felt her certainty pushed back by the heat. A million dollars and a chance to survive. A suicidal effort—or was it a mental obstacle?—to save a dear friend’s life. The slimmest possibility that they could both live.
She wished for a chance to turn the day back, to stand on that mesa and refuse to go with Sanso.
A groan escaped her. Katie, Katie. Janeal couldn’t do this. Wouldn’t. There was nothing she was honestly willing to do but buy her own survival.
Janeal raised her palm toward the fire. The heat pushed back in visible rippling waves as if it were liquid. She could smell the singed crispness of her own hair. She coughed and coughed.
In her mind’s eye she saw herself leap to her feet and rush at the fire, screaming for her friend to hold on. She saw fire blister her skin the moment it made contact.
She couldn’t do this. Running into the flames was lunacy!
A white light flashed on her horizon, then collapsed to perfect darkness, as if the flames had melted her eyes. The air cracked over her head, striking down as though it possessed hands and a whip. She dropped to her hands and knees, absorbing the shock of the explosion. The room went silent. Perfectly still and completely black.
For a moment she knelt unmoving in the darkness, wondering if she’d been killed, if this absolute darkness was death. Her life at age seventeen had come to a flaming end and her last act had been to turn her back on her closest friend for the promise of a fortune.
Emptiness swallowed her. Fear coiled its long fingers around her throat and chest, a wraith that was claiming her as its own.
But she was shaking, so she couldn’t be dead.
The darkness faded and she found herself facing a wall of flame waiting to consume her. She was alive. She was alive, but something had changed.
She sensed this truth in the blood that pounded through her veins, tasted it in the choking air she drew into her lungs. The fire roared, licking hungrily at the walls and ceiling. She had to get out! She pushed herself to her feet, scrambling for orientation. The wall of flame was impenetrable now, no chance to—
Movement caught her eye. A figure staggering across the room.
She blinked, and when her eyes opened again, the shadow through the flame was gone. Someone had been watching? Katie had managed to break free? Or Janeal was seeing things. Either way it was too late; she had to get out, leave the dead to the dead.
Janeal swiveled her neck to see the stairs. Miraculously, the way was still clear. She fled.
The clock of her beating heart ticked, a two-faced time bomb.
Five . . . four . . . three . . .