I vomit up the wine I drank with Livy. Retching in the darkness, I take hold of the ankle and pull with all my strength. Something gives, and Ruby screams. At least she’s alive. A broken hip can kill an old woman, but not as quickly as fire.
Switching ankles, I pull with both hands, dragging her far enough to get clear of the flames. She’s moaning now, the sound like that of a wounded animal. I press my nose to the floor, take another breath of smoke, then get to my knees and heave her over my shoulder. As I struggle to my feet, dizziness pitches me against the wall, but somehow I right myself and stagger back toward the bedrooms.
The smoke is dense here too, but at the center of it is a dim, cool flicker of blue. I lean toward that blueness, trying to keep Ruby on my shoulder as I go forward. Move your feet, I yell silently. Move … It’s as though my nerve fibers are shorting out one by one, attenuating the signals firing from my brain. Again the stench of scorched meat gags me, but I’m almost to the light. With a last heave I lift Ruby onto the windowsill and hold her there.
I don’t want to drop her, but I can barely stand, much less lower her the six feet to the ground.
Suddenly two bright yellow gloves appear and pull her from my grasp. Male voices are shouting through the window, but I can’t make out the words. The world outside the window seems part of some other universe. More yellow hands reach out of the brightness, reaching for me, but they are too far away.
I am falling.
The sun is in my eyes, and the skin of my face is burning.
A teenager wearing a black fireman’s hat is holding something over my mouth and nose, and something like cool ambrosia is laving the burning walls of my lungs. I try to suck in more of it, but the effort triggers a coughing fit, great wracking spasms like blades tearing at my ribs and trachea as smoke pours from my nose and throat.
“Penn, I’m here,” says a woman’s voice.
“Mom?”
“Livy.”
I see her face beside the fireman’s now, her hair still damp from the Cold Hole. She takes my hand and squeezes gently.
“Ruby?” I ask.
“She’s right over there. Look to your left.”
As I turn, I see two paramedics rolling a gurney across the lawn. A third is holding an IV bag at shoulder level as it drains fluid into Ruby’s arm.
“I want to see her,” I croak, rolling over and getting to my knees.
“Easy, sir,” says the fireman. “You’ve been through a little hell in the past few minutes.”
He’s not really a teenager. He’s probably in his mid-twenties, with a thin blond mustache and a hank of straight hair spilling from under his helmet.
“The cop?” I ask, recalling Officer Ervin’s droopy beagle eyes. “The cop who went in after her?”
“We got him out. Take it easy.”
“I’m okay … really.”
Livy slides under my right arm as I get to my feet, supporting me with surprising strength. I’ve never felt so jittery in my life. All my muscles are quivering and jerking as though exhausted by an overexpenditure of adrenaline, and my heart is laboring noticeably in my chest.
“The library,” I remember. “My dad’s books.”
Livy shakes her head. “It’s too late. The whole house is going up. It’s a miracle you got out alive.”
“That’s a fact,” says the fireman. “We pulled you out just as the flames came through the bedroom door.”
“Thank you. I know I could have died in there.”
He smiles and gives me a salute. “You done pretty good yourself, buddy.”
With Livy’s help I make my way around to the front yard.
It looks as though every neighbor for a square mile has come to watch the fire. The crowd fills the surrounding yards and much of the street. Two fire trucks have their hoses trained on the house, and a third on the old oak with the creeper vine.
My mother runs up to me, her face ashen. “Penn! I can’t find Annie!”
I jerk erect and shake my head clear. “Where did you see her last?”
“After you went in. It was taking so long—I was looking for you. I just put her down for a second!”
“How long ago?”
“Three or four minutes!”
The area is so choked with people that Annie could be ten feet away and we’d still miss her. The only thing in our favor is that we know most of the people in the crowd. Within five minutes, everyone on the street is looking for her.
As I run shirtless through the throng, fighting down panic, all I can think is that this fire was no accident. The “boom” my mother heard had to be some kind of fire bomb. This whole disaster was staged to draw the attention of the cop watching the house. And it did. Officer Ervin bravely charged into the inferno to save Ruby’s life, and in the process left my mother and daughter unprotected. My similar effort completed the kidnapper’s work, by breaking my mother’s concentration.
After five minutes of searching in vain, I realize I have to call the police. I prosecuted several kidnapping cases in Houston, and I learned one thing from the FBI agents who worked them. The first hour is the best chance of finding the victim, and every lost minute can mean disaster.
As I run across the street to use our neighbor’s phone, a ripple of noise like the roar at a football stadium rolls through the crowd. I turn back to our house, expecting to see the roof collapsing, the spectacular climax of residential fires. But it’s not the roof. The crowd parts like the Red Sea, and my mother comes running through the open space.
She’s carrying Annie in her arms.
Relief surges through me with such force that I nearly faint for the second time. But I run forward and hug them both as tightly as I dare. Annie’s face is white with terror, and her chin is quivering.
“Someone dropped her off at Edna Hensley’s,” Mom gasps. “Edna answered her door and saw Annie standing there crying.”
A heavyset, blue-haired woman I faintly recognize has appeared behind my mother, wheezing from her exertions. Edna Hensley.
“Where do you live?” I ask her.
“About a half mile away. You’ve been there before, Penn. When you were a little boy.”
“Who dropped her off?”
Edna shakes her head. “I didn’t see anyone. Not a car, not anything.” Her gaze darkens. She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a folded sheet of construction paper, and hands it to me.
I unfold the paper with shaking hands. Printed on it in magic marker are the words: THIS IS HOW EASY IT IS. LAY OFF, ASSHOLE.
Livy
