Chapter 2 #2
Bennett grinned, looking disarmingly pleased for a second before his usual stoic mask dropped into place.
“Feel free to take off,” Lou said, starting to pull one of the tables back to its original spot.
“We’ll help you clean up.” Fifi grabbed the other side of the table, and the two women moved it across the room to its original spot.
Bennett lifted a table by himself, being a burly strongman type, and Charlie followed him with two chairs.
Once the shop was back to how it looked earlier in the day before the murder club meeting, the room felt silent… well, almost silent.
“What’s that buzzing?” Charlie asked. She’d watched a video about murder hornets a few nights earlier when she couldn’t sleep, and her brain instantly went into killer-insect mode.
The other three stood still and listened for a moment.
“Drill,” Bennett stated.
“Phew,” Charlie said. “I thought murder hornets at first—wait…why is someone drilling right now?”
“And what are they drilling?” Fifi asked.
“It sounds like they’re right outside.” Lou’s eyes went wide. With an audible inhale, she lunged for the locked door, the other three close behind her. Lou fumbled with her keys for a second before shoving it into the lock.
“Wait!” Fifi and Bennett chorused.
For once not taking the opportunity to make a joke about the way her sister and her new husband acted more like twins than she and Cara—her actual twin—did, Charlie eased the shade to the side so she could peer out into the darkness.
The buzzing had stopped, but there was something across the front of the door that hadn’t been there an hour earlier—or even ten minutes earlier, when Callum had left.
“What is that?” she asked, peering around again, looking for whoever had been making the noise.
“What’s what?” Lou wedged her face next to Charlie’s so she could see outside. “Oh, that’s what. That doesn’t look good.”
“What doesn’t?” Fifi asked, trying to get a glimpse through the gap Charlie had made.
With an irritated grumble, Bennett reached past their heads and snapped up the shade so the entire door was revealed. Halfway up, a two-by-six board was now spanning the width of the door.
“Is that…?” Lou unlocked the door and tried to shove it open. The door didn’t budge, the board holding it shut. “I guess it is. Why would someone bar the door?”
Only very bad reasons to block the door immediately struck Charlie.
“Back door,” she said, turning to see that Fifi and Bennett were already charging toward the counter and the employees-only hallway behind it. Rather than go around, Bennett, Fifi, and Charlie all vaulted over the counter.
“Can everyone except me do that?” Lou grumbled as she ran for the opening instead. Charlie waited for her to catch up before chasing after Fifi. By the time she reached the back door, Bennett was already slamming his body against it. The door shook in its frame, but it didn’t open.
“This one too?” Lou asked, her attention on her phone.
“Looks like,” Fifi said grimly. “Are you calling 911?”
Lou shook her head, her fingers flying over her phone screen. “Texting Callum. He has tools in his truck, a radio, and a quicker response time.”
A familiar smell drifted to Charlie. “Tell him to hurry—and to give his firefighter buddies a shout.”
“Is this really the time to finagle another meeting with your crush?” Fifi asked, obviously trying to keep her voice calm and light. As soon as the words were out, she paled, and Charlie knew her sister had caught a whiff of what Charlie had just smelled. “Oh no.”
“Is that…?” Lou inhaled. “Yep, that’s smoke.”
Even as she spoke, the air around them got hazy, and Charlie felt heat radiating from the outside wall. Reaching out, she touched it and then immediately pulled her hand back, shaking away the sting. “The wall’s hot.”
Fifi reached toward the painted surface, stopping a foot away, and gave her a scolding look. “Why would you touch that? I can feel the heat radiating from here.”
She shrugged, turning to head back to the front of the coffee shop. “I’ve always had to touch the hot stove, just to see for myself. Any openable windows?” The last question was directed at Lou, who shook her head.
“I mean, there are, but the one behind the counter isn’t big enough for any of us to fit through, and the big picture window is basically unbreakable.”
“How do you know that?” Charlie asked curiously as she stepped into the area behind the counter. “Have you tried to break it?”
“The owner got a little freaked out after everything with the headless dead guy a few years ago, and she had this monster installed.” Lou coughed, and Charlie felt her heart rate speed up.
The smoke was thickening, and it looked like they were trapped in the burning building.
She still managed to make a mental note to ask Lou about the headless dead guy once things were a little less life-threatening.
“That’s why the doors are reinforced.” Lou’s tone was apologetic as she looked at Bennett.
“Okay, doors are blocked,” Fifi said in her too-reasonable voice that she only used when she was three seconds away from freaking out. “Windows are out. Any suggestions?”
Bennett reached into his pocket. “See if I can take the door off the hinges.” He pulled out his multi-tool.
“Figured you’d start with a grenade or something,” Charlie joked, but she could hear the underlying hint of panic in her voice. “Blast us out of here.”
“Plan B.” He headed over to the door.
“Stay low!” Fifi called after him and then began coughing. Taking her own advice, she crouched. Charlie followed her lead, and Lou did as well.
“Any word from Callum?” Charlie asked.
Lou checked her phone. “He’s on his way, and Fire’s right behind him.”
“ETA?” Fifi’s voice was tight.
“Seventeen minutes.”
The women studied each other as the simmering dread low in Charlie’s belly grew even heavier. “Why so long?”
“Well, it’s Simpson,” Lou said huskily, her words ending in a cough.
A rasp built in Charlie’s throat, but she ignored it, knowing that if she started coughing, it’d just make her throat feel worse.
“Everything’s pretty spread out up here, so response times can be long.
Plus, there was a rockslide blocking Highway 34. They have to go around.”
Losing the battle to hold in her cough, Charlie hacked for an endless moment as her brain spun, trying to come up with solutions. “Can we go through the ceiling?” she asked once she’d stopped coughing and caught her breath.
Lou and Fifi looked up doubtfully. “Maybe, but how would that help us get out?”
“Through an air intake?” Charlie raised her hands in a shrug.
Her knowledge of commercial HVAC systems was pretty much nil, but she hated her current helplessness.
At least Bennett was doing something to possibly get them out.
She didn’t want to sit around doing nothing while the smoke thickened and the flames blazed around them.
“You have a flathead screwdriver around here?”
Staying low, Lou shuffled closer to the counter and rummaged in a compact tool kit. The screwdriver she handed Charlie was small, but it’d have to do.
“Thanks,” Charlie said, waving toward the hallway. “I’m going to work on the back door’s hinges.”
“Be careful,” Fifi warned before turning to Lou. “Got a hammer in that kit?”
When Lou held up the tool, Fifi offered her a shaky smile.
“Let’s see if we can enlarge this window.” She gestured toward the small square of glass set in the wall behind the counter.
“Oh, I picked the wrong tool,” Charlie said, trying to hide her anxiety when her voice came out rusty from the smoke. “I want to smash.”
“Go on.” Fifi waved her toward the doorway, giving her a sympathetic smile that told Charlie her sister knew exactly what she was really feeling. “We smash. You screw—well, unscrew.”
She hurried down the short hallway to the back door, noticing it was definitely hotter and smokier now. Charlie wasn’t at all tempted to touch the wall this time. In fact, she carefully stayed in the middle of the hallway, as if playing a real-life version of The Walls are Lava.
The smoke made it tough to see, and she blinked tears from her eyes just in time to stop before she ran into the door.
Crouching, she felt for the hinge, which was painted the same color—dark green—as the door.
She set the screwdriver in place, although she wasn’t very hopeful with the paint slathered over the screws.
There was little chance she could get the screws out.
With both hands, she cranked the screwdriver to the left, holding her breath as she strained.
“Come on, come on, come on.” When she started coughing again, she quit her muttered mantra and just put all her effort into trying to turn the screwdriver. When she heard a crack, she jumped with delight, sure that the sound meant the screw had broken loose of its paint prison.
Then the majority of her borrowed screwdriver fell into her lap.
Her stomach dropped, and she fumbled to grab the remains of her tool. A roaring sound distracted her from her fruitless task, and she looked up, just in time to see the ceiling burst into an upside-down sea of flames.
Unable to look away, Charlie breathed, “Well…shoot.”