Chapter 67
VERONICA
Naomi is going to burn the house down with me inside.
I have heard that burning to death is a horribly painful way to go. I imagine the smoke filling my lungs and the fire scalding my skin, burning me to a crisp. I can only hope that I pass out before that happens.
No. No. I can’t let that happen. I’ve got to figure out how to get out of here.
I struggle against the duct tape binding my wrists and ankles together. She used lots of tape, which is making it difficult. If I could somehow get my arms over my knees, I could try to work at the binding on my ankles. But it’s practically impossible.
Then I remember the scissors.
Naomi dropped the scissors right before she smashed that bottle of scotch. If I could get to them, then maybe I could cut through the tape. Except the scissors are half a dozen feet away, and it’s hard for me to move.
And Naomi will be back any second.
That’s when I hear it. A groan that comes from the bottom of the stairwell.
I thought that when Fletcher fell down that flight of stairs, he was a goner. But now he’s moving a little bit. He’s alive. And he’s regaining consciousness.
Also, he’s not tied up.
“Mr. Fletcher!” I hiss at him across the room. I can’t let Naomi hear me.
His hair is caked with blood, but he manages to raise his head just a little bit so that I can see his eyes.
“She’s coming back,” I whisper, as loudly as I dare. “She’s going to set the whole house on fire!”
Does he understand what I’m telling him? He got a really bad knock on the head, and I’m sure he’s really dazed. But I have to pray that my words got through.
It’s my only chance.
The door to the cellar creaks open, and Fletcher immediately drops his head again, playing dead, which makes me think he did understand what I was saying. Naomi’s footsteps on the stairs grow louder. She’s coming down.
She pauses for a moment as she passes Fletcher. She stares down at him, a strange expression on her face. Oh no, did she see him move? Does she know he’s alive?
But then she raises her face, and I can identify her expression. It’s sadness. She murmurs something that almost sounds like “so sorry,” and then she steps over him.
Now Naomi refocuses her attention on me. The sadness vanishes from her face, replaced with a look of determination. And in her right hand is a red lighter.
Dear God, she’s really going to do this.
“I’m sorry it has to be this way.” Naomi’s features take on an eerie glow in the dim overhead light. Hers might be the last face I ever see, and that is a horrible thought. “I wasn’t going to kill you. I just wanted to disfigure you, that’s all.”
I try to focus on Naomi’s face and not focus on the fact that a dozen feet away, by the stairs, Fletcher is quietly attempting to get to his feet. But it’s quickly obvious that his leg is broken, and he collapses to his knees, his face a mask of pain.
“I want you to know,” she says, “that I will take very good care of Teddy. I will raise him like he is my own, as I have been. He will have a great life—I promise you that.”
Fletcher has given up on trying to stand and has instead decided to crawl across the floor. But he’s not moving toward Naomi. He’s moving toward the wine racks—one of the ones that isn’t close to the broken bottle.
“You don’t have to do this,” I plead with her. “You don’t have to kill me. You can disappear. You can start over again. Have a child of your own.”
Her face crumples slightly. “No, I can’t.”
“Then…” I search for something else to say as Fletcher slowly pulls a large, heavy bottle of wine off the rack. I think Jeremy told me that sort of bottle is called a magnum. “You could…adopt?”
Obviously, she can’t adopt. She would be on the run. But I don’t care what she does. I just need her to keep talking to me until Fletcher can hit her with that magnum bottle.
“I’m sorry, Veronica,” Naomi says. “But it has to be this way.”
She flicks on the lighter and moves toward the broken bottle on the floor.
Fletcher’s eyes widen when he realizes his time is up, and he abandons all pretense of being quiet.
He starts crawling across the floor as quickly as he can, but he’s not quick enough.
She lowers the lighter, and almost instantly, the scotch spilled all over the floor ignites.
Just as the alcohol goes up in orange flames, Naomi notices Fletcher crawling toward her. She sucks in a breath, and for a moment, a smile lights her face. “Ezra? You’re alive!”
He doesn’t pause. He slams the magnum bottle into her knees, and she drops to the floor.
Now she’s injured. She tries to crawl away from the flaming alcohol, but he goes after her. And now that she’s on the floor, he’s able to bring the bottle down right on her skull with a dull thud. She collapses, unconscious.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps as he goes for the scissors. “I…I wasn’t fast enough to…”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, which is the understatement of the century.
We move as quickly as we can. Right now, the fire is contained to a small area on the floor, but the second those liquor bottles ignite, it will be out of control. Fletcher manages to cut the duct tape off my wrists and ankles, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Thank you,” I manage. “Thank you so much.”
He nods, his brow covered in a line of sweat. “I wish I could have done it sooner.”
I get to my feet, looking up at the flight of stairs to get out of the cellar, then down at Fletcher on the floor, his leg clearly broken.
“Let me help you up the stairs,” I say.
Fletcher glances over at the flight of stairs, then back over his shoulder at the fire spreading across the floor next to the racks, getting dangerously close to the hard liquor.
I don’t know how long we have until the whole thing goes up in flames, but it won’t be very long. Seconds rather than minutes.
“Teddy is upstairs, right?” he says.
I nod.
“You have to go get him.” He points at the stairs. “You have to get him out of here.”
“But you can’t walk…”
“I’ll make it out myself,” he says firmly. “Don’t worry about me—I can do it. I’ll be fine. Just go upstairs and get Teddy out of the house.”
I don’t know what to do. I can’t believe he’ll be able to make it up the stairs on his own. I suppose he could bump himself up on his butt, but that will take forever.
“Go!” he says sharply. “Get out of here! Now.”
His voice is enough to jar me into motion. He’s right—Teddy is up in his bedroom, and I’ve got to get him out of here. There’s no time to waste.
I turn to leave Fletcher behind, taking the steps as quickly as I can, but when I’m about halfway up, he calls out, “Veronica?”
I pause, turning back to look at him. He’s still at the bottom of the stairs and hasn’t made any progress yet.
“Close the cellar door behind you,” he says. “That will keep the fire contained.”
I start to ask him why he needs me to do that, because he can close the door himself when he gets out. It’s at that moment that I realize he doesn’t expect to get out.
But I keep moving.