Time Bomb(24)

Rashid could hear the strain in the other boy’s voice and prayed his new friend could hang on just a little longer.

Another inch. The gap was almost big enough. Almost . . .

Now. Rashid gave the bag a shove and sent it through the opening, then launched himself through. All summer he had heard from his aunts and cousins and grandmother how he was too skinny. He was glad for that now.

“Move,” the black-shoed guy said. “Not . . . much longer. Hurry.”

He did. Rashid rolled onto his back and pulled his legs and feet through the opening just as the slab of debris slammed back down.





Frankie





— Chapter 24 —


“ARE YOU OKAY?” Frankie called.

“I’m bleeding.”

“How bad?”

“If a vampire wandered by, I’d make his day. No effort required.”

Frankie would have laughed at the joke had he not heard the pain and the tears. The girl still had a sense of humor, but if she was gushing blood, she wasn’t going to be joking around for much longer.

He looked around for a board or something he could jam into the door to break it open. “Hang in there, Cassandra. I’m going to get to you.” He never lost, and he wasn’t going to start now. “While I’m doing this, you need to find a way to stop the bleeding.”

“No kidding.”

“Hang on,” Frankie urged as he wedged a metal bar into the space between the frame and the door and pushed hard.

Something cracked.

“I think I’ll sit, but thanks,” she called back.

Funny. The girl was bleeding and stuck in hell, and still she managed to crack jokes.

“Elevate the injury if you can,” he said to her as he wiped his hands on his pants to get a better grip on the bar. “They always tell us that in football practice. It slows down the flow of the blood, especially if you can raise it higher than your heart.” Or something like that.

When she didn’t reply, he yelled, “Cassandra?” Still nothing. His heart sank, and he pressed his ear to the door. He couldn’t have lost her. He didn’t lose. “Cassandra? Are you still there?”

He heard a muffled “Mhhhuh.”

“What? Are you okay?”

“I’m trying to tie a bandage, and I only have one hand. So I can’t talk right now.”

He let out a sigh of relief and shook his head at his freaking out. “Sorry.” Panicking wasn’t going to help. Cassandra needed him to be the guy everyone saw on the field.

Come on, Frankie, he could almost hear his father say. Time to show them what you’re made of.

Frankie positioned the bar a bit higher and pushed on it again.

Another explosion rocked the building.

Damn! The building around him groaned and began to shake again. Lockers flew open. Pieces of ceiling snapped and cracked and rained from above.

“Frankie!” Cas screamed.

“Take cover!” Frankie yelled as he got clocked on the forehead by a metal bracket. He grabbed hold of an open locker to keep from falling on his ass. He thought he heard other voices calling out. Other shouts for help. Faint. But there.

More people must have been in the school than he’d thought—and one of them was Tad. Only he didn’t have time to think about that now.

Coughing at the smoke that was getting thicker and warmer with every passing second, Frankie pulled on the metal bar, urging the door to break free. Wires above him hissed. Water dripped. Finally, something in the door snapped and gave way. He repositioned the bar again and pressed down with one hand while he tugged on the knob with the other.

Yes! He stumbled back as the door came unstuck and swung toward him.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are!” he shouted. Cassandra wasn’t the only one who could make jokes in the middle of this hell.

And “hell” was the right way to describe the room she’d gotten trapped in. The back corner was gone. Where there should have been a wall, he saw hints of sky and lots of black, billowing smoke. The parts of the wall Frankie could see were buckled and streaked with soot. This part of the school was going up in flames.

Where was Cassandra? They had to get out of here. “Where are you?” Could she have found another way out without telling him?

“What took you so long?”

At least that’s what Frankie thought she said. It was hard to tell in the middle of the snapping, crackling, and popping from all sides. He turned toward the sound of Cassandra’s voice, which was thankfully on the side of the room away from the fire and the missing wall and floor. The girl had been lucky, although he still couldn’t see her.

“Sorry, I must have misplaced my key,” he said as a hand came out of the rubble and grabbed the top of one of the art-table desks. Cassandra.

He leaped over an upended chair and raced around the wreckage as the top of her head appeared—dark hair that looked as if it had been sprayed by gray and white paint. And he recognized her. The clarinet girl from earlier today.

“Funny meeting you again.”

“Or not so funny,” she quipped back.

He flashed a smile as he knelt down next to her. Then the smiled faltered. Cas’s olive skin looked like paste, and there was blood everywhere.