Time Bomb(37)

Rashid turned and started walking again. “You’re right. I don’t know a thing about you. But not knowing me didn’t stop you from passing judgment.” Rashid rounded the corner. “Your double standard is—”

Rashid suddenly went quiet. Tad raced around the corner and almost crashed right into Rashid, who was standing as still as a rock. Then Tad looked beyond Rashid and realized why.

Smoke. Waves of it poured down the stairs located smack in the middle of the hallway. Dark tendrils were coming from the blackened ceiling. And there were flames.

“Aw, hell!” Tad looked back down the hallway they had just come from and then toward the staircase in the middle of the hallway . . . near the fire. “This sucks. This really and completely sucks.”

Rashid didn’t move. He was just staring straight ahead as if he’d fallen into some kind of trance. Great. This was just perfect.

Tad stepped around Rashid, swallowed down the pulsing panic, and rubbed the back of his sweat-coated neck. The fire hadn’t reached this floor yet. It was still in the upper stairwell. The stairwell going down looked okay. But who knew how long that would last?

“Screw it. I’m going.”

“What are you doing?” Rashid asked, grabbing his arm. “You could get burned. We should wait for the firefighters to put out the fire.”

“If we wait, the fire will spread to the rest of the staircase.” He pulled his arm out of Rashid’s grasp and started down the hall, trying hard to ignore how much hotter the air was with every step. “I lost one escape route because I decided to save you. I’m not going to lose another.”

“And what about the friend you said was still in the school?” Rashid called. “Do you intend on leaving him to die?”

Tad turned. “I don’t even know for sure that he was in the school when the bombs went off. He probably stood me up.”

The heat pushed like a stiff wind, stealing the air around him.

Pressure built in his chest.

He wiped his stinging eyes and turned back toward the stairs. The fire was moving down them, closer to the second-floor landing, but the stairs going down to the first story were still clear of flames. “I think we can make it.”

The smoke was terrifying. Flames crackled as they licked the stairs, getting closer to their level. Tad started forward, but Rashid grabbed Tad’s arm and yanked him back. Tad stumbled and slipped on the wet floor.

“Let me go.”

“Stop.”

“We can make it if we go now.”

“Just stop.”

“You want to stay here, fine, but I’m going.”

“Wait!”

Rashid’s fingers dug into Tad’s arm and refused to let go.

“Look in that locker!” Rashid yelled, pointing through the growing haze toward the wall near the stairwell.

“Who cares about a locker? We can—” That’s when Tad saw what Rashid was pointing at. A flicker of red light glowing near the bottom of one of the lockers.

He squinted and took a step forward to get a better look as a wave of hot air swept over him. Sweat dripped down his back. “What the hell is that?”

Something in the stairwell above snapped and cracked, and a flaming board crashed down the stairs.

Rashid grabbed his arm and pulled hard, but Tad held his ground as he studied the stairs. He could still make it. He was fast. If he went now, he might get down to the first floor. Then he looked back at the locker, squinted into the haze, and realized what the red glow was. Numbers. And they were counting down.

“Tad! Run!”

Holy hell.

Something cracked.

The fire roared down the stairs.

Tad took two steps backwards, then turned and followed Rashid’s lead. He ran.

“This way!” Rashid shouted over his shoulder as something else came crashing down in the stairwell. Tad ran faster. He couldn’t breathe. Rashid rounded the corner. Tad raced right behind him. The minute the flames reached that locker, all bets were—





Z





— Chapter 32 —


“SCREW THEM! They have to come help.” Z slid his head and one arm out the narrow window and waved at the people standing at the parking lot far in the distance. “Hey. Yo! We need help. Hello! It’s time to do your freakin’ jobs. Are you blind?”

“They see you,” Diana said as he craned his neck to get a better view of the parking lot and the dozens of people in uniforms who were standing in the hot sun, looking up at the building while gesturing and shouting but essentially doing nothing. Nothing!

“Look over there,” Diana called to him. He looked down to where she pointed, farther to the right, where people in dark blue jackets were standing at the base of the north set of steps, which led up to the front entrance. On the back of the jackets were stamped the letters FBI.

“Hey!” he screamed down at them. “Move your asses and get us out of here!”

Still they didn’t budge. Damn it!

“You might as well stop screaming,” Diana said. “They aren’t going to pay attention to you.”

“Well, it’s not like we have a hell of a lot of other choices,” he said, kicking the wall beneath the window. Diana was right. Between the sirens and the people shouting and the helicopters whirring overhead, there was no chance anyone could hear him. Still, standing around doing nothing wasn’t an option.