Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(165)

“They were breathing when I came through before, and it’s not too smoky in here yet. But they’ve been drugged. I don’t know with what.”

“Son of a bitch.” Bruno sounded as scared as she felt.

Now what? He didn’t say the words, but they were loud in the air as th smoke crept in under the door, fogging up the room.

Lily redoubled her efforts with the ancient brass window latch. Then Bruno was behind her, his big arms circling her, his warm hands closing around hers. She couldn’t let herself like this feeling, not one bit. For a thousand reasons, imminent death by fire being on the top of the list. The latch creaked and opened. She elbowed him away, hard, and shoved the window open. She hung out of it, gulping cold, sweet air into her lungs. They stared out, assessing prospects for survival.

It didn’t look good. No terraces, no balconies, no lowlying roofs or awnings from the first floor. Not even a ledge to creep along. Not a tree or a bush to break their fall. Just a sheer, thirty-foot drop, down to the rose garden. Hard mosaic tile and spiky pruned thornbushes.

Bruno cursed and yanked his head in. Lily turned to find him looking around the room. More smoke crept under the door. A hazy cloud drifted in through the communicating door, too. She went to the door to the corridor, laid her hand against it. “It’s hot,” she said.

“No shit,” Bruno said. “So’s the floor.” He leaped up, grabbed two handfuls of the curtains, hung on them . . .

Rrrrrip, the fabric gave under his weight, ripping into tatters.

Undaunted, he groped around for the curtain cord. “The velvet’s rotten,” he said. “But I think this cord is silk. It still feels strong. There might be six yards of it or more.” He gathered armfuls of the tattered fabric into his arms, rolling them around his forearms, and leaped.

This time, the arms that held the curtain rod snapped under his weight, and the rod, rings, and curtains tumbled down onto their heads, along with a choking cloud of dust.

They fought their way out from under it. “Drag one of those cribs over to the window,” Bruno said. “They need air.”

That sounded smart. Lily got to it. The little girl was so floppy when she lifted her. Bruno measured out the length of an alarmingly thin cord. She could barely see it, pale in the dimness.

“Will that hold a person?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But it would hold one of them, if I could rig a way to lower them down. The curtains? Help me think of something.”

“They have those baby seats over there for a car, with webbing restraints.” Lily grabbed one out of the inky, foggy shadows.

Bruno glanced at it as he yanked out armfuls of cord. “Might work.” He hung out the window, dangling the cord as far as it would go. “Shit. It’s short. Over three meters short. Fuck, f*ck, f*ck!”

Lily peered at the shortfall. “And if you went down first?” she said. “And I lowered them to you? You could catch them.”

He let out a coughing bark of laughter. “And leave you up here?”

“I’d come down after them,” she argued.

“Yeah? Really? Hand over hand, on a curtain cord? You’d have to drop it anyway, to let the kids fall! I wouldn’t be able to reach it to untie it. Unless I find something five feet tall to stand on. You go down first!”

“Bullshit,” she snapped. “You’re the only one with a hope in hell of catching one of those things if it fell on you from above your head!”

“I couldn’t catch two at a time,” he pointed out.

“Oh! Well, fine, then! News flash! Neither could I!” she yelled.

He shrugged. “I doubt the cord would bear my weight anyway.”

“Then why are we f*cking with it in the first place?” She was screaming now.

“Because there’s nothing else to f*ck with!” he yelled back. “There’s not even a bed in here with a goddamn sheet! Nothing!”

She pressed her eyes until red dots swirled and danced. “The top hem of the curtains?” she offered. “The reinforced part, with the rings, the pleats? That might give us a little more length.”

He pawed through armfuls of the dusty fabric until he found the top hem, jerking it to test its strength. “I need a knife.”

“I have one,” she told him. “A little one on the key chain I lifted off Melanie. I cut your cuffs with it.”

She immediately wished she hadn’t mentioned that. Bad associations. He took it from her and started hacking off the top strip.

“How’d you manage that?” he said. “Taking her keys, I mean.”

“I had to kill her first,” she said.

Bruno stopped for a second. “You did what?”

“Focus, Bruno!” she snarled.

“I am focusing! I’m multitasking!” He jerked at the curtain to test its resistance. “Seems like there’s a lot I don’t know about you.”

“So I should think!” She couldn’t hold back. “Since you thought I was that psycho’s robot chippie! That’s flattering, Bruno. That just does wonders for my self-esteem.”

He hacked the curtain with renewed savagery. “Now you’re the one who should focus.”

“You can’t blame me for taking offense,” she said.