“It was supposed to be a hay bale. I was just screwing with you,” said Ryan. “I didn’t realize the whole place would go up like that. When the cops found me in the woods, I had to say I was out running and saw who started it.” A wicked smile at Gabriel. “Too bad for you it happened in the middle of an arson spree.”
“You?” gasped Layne. “You . . . but Gabriel didn’t—”
“Really, I hadn’t planned on either of you being here, but it’s kind of poetic justice.” Ryan pulled a lighter out of his pocket.
Gabriel started forward. “It’s you. You’re the one starting the fires.”
“Nope. You are.” Ryan flicked the igniter.
And tossed it.
Layne didn’t see where it went. She was just aware of the blast of heat, the roar of flames, and the feeling of her shoulders hitting the brick wall of the library. Gabriel’s body trapped her there.
She couldn’t see anything but fire and smoke and the side of Gabriel’s face, all but pressed against hers.
“Lighter fluid,” he said. “He sprayed the whole area with lighter fluid.”
And the books were providing plenty of fuel. Layne coughed, her lungs trying to find oxygen through the smoke.
He pulled her down, against the ground, and suddenly it was easier to breathe.
“We have to move,” he said.
She nodded. “But can’t you”—she coughed—“can’t you do something?”
He pulled her along the wall, to the corner, then swore. All the stacks in this back part of the library were blazing. The school’s fire alarms were blaring now; one was right overhead.
He yelled over it. “I’m going to try to get us out of here.”
“No—the fire. Like at the farm.” Another cough. “In those houses. You can do something to stop it, can’t you?”
“Not if you want to keep breathing.”
She coughed again, and he pushed her closer to the floor. “What? I don’t—”
“Wrong twin.” His voice was grim. “I’m not Gabriel. I’m Nick.”
When the fire alarms went off, Gabriel’s pencil streaked across the paper. Students were suddenly flooding the hallways, laughing and roughhousing and carrying on, shouting over the alarms.
He looked at Ms. Anderson. “A drill?”
She was already slinging her purse over her shoulder, a grade book in her hands. “There wasn’t one scheduled, but they don’t always tell us.” She sounded exasperated. She took the test and put it on her desk, even though he’d only finished the third question. “Come on.”
He shouldered his backpack and headed for the hallway. His nerves were already shot, and the pulsing alarms weren’t helping.
But as soon as he hit the hallway, he felt it.
Come play.
He stopped short in the middle of the flow of students. They were all heading right, toward the stairs at the end of the hallway that would lead outside. The fire was somewhere to his left—and that left a lot of school to search. He’d have to fight a sea of students to find the source.
He saw Ronald Coello, a guy he’d played soccer with, heading his way.
“Hey, Coello,” he called. “What’s going on?”
Drawing attention to himself was a mistake. Ronald stopped and stared at him. So did everyone else in the general vicinity.
Another guy from soccer, Jonathan Carroll, gave him an unfriendly up-and-down and got in his face. “The school’s on fire, dickhead. You know something about it?”
Gabriel was ready to shove him back, but Ms. Anderson put a hand up in front of his face—and in front of Jonathan’s, too. “We’re evacuating, gentlemen. Keep moving.”
Ronald and Jonathan kept moving.
“You, too, Mr. Merrick.”
He hesitated. His element was calling him.
But his brain was warning him. If the school was on fire, being caught anywhere near it would be bad.
Then someone from behind him snorted and said, “Leave it to Merrick to find a way to set the library on fire.”
The library.
Layne.
And Nick.
He shoved a hand into his bag for his phone—which wasn’t there, of course.
“Mr. Merrick,” said Ms. Anderson. “We need to move.”
He moved all right—bolting left, fighting the surge of students, ignoring his teacher’s protesting calls behind him.
CHAPTER 40
Layne and Nick were trapped.
They’d been able to crawl to the “Cozy Corner,” an alcove the librarians had set up for casual reading. It was really just an old storage area, five feet high and four feet deep, and there was only enough room to sit on beanbag chairs. The back wall was painted cinder block with inch-wide openings that vented into the computer lab.
Which was deserted, of course, the door at the opposite side of the room closed. The library was at the dead center of the school. Any students would be heading away.
All the bookcases were engulfed in flames, completely blocking escape. The heat was intense. The carpet crawled with fire barely inches from where they crouched against the wall. She couldn’t hear students screaming anymore and wondered if anyone even knew they were stuck here.
The fire alarms, however, were deafening.
Simon.
He’d been at lunch, and she knew he’d taken to shooting hoops in the gym instead of submitting to ridicule in the cafeteria.
Would he even know the fire alarms were going off?
“Stay close to the vents,” called Nick. “I’m trying to create a gap in the oxygen so the fire stays out of here.”
Staying close to the vents wasn’t a problem. She practically had her face pressed against the cinder blocks, hyperventilating through the gaps. The air on the other side felt like it was coming out of a freezer. She was sweating through her clothes from the heat at her back.
She couldn’t worry about her brother now. He hadn’t been in the library, so he was probably in better shape than she was.
“How?” she gasped. “How are you doing that?”
“Maybe we can have that whole discussion another time.” Nick glanced over and she watched the firelight flicker across his features. He was sweating, too. “You all right?”
“Is that a trick question?” But his efforts appeared to be working. The fire hadn’t entered their little area yet. It gave her an idea. “Can you make a path through the fire that way?”
Nick grimaced. “I’d have to clear all the oxygen around us as we moved. It would take too much time.”
“How much time?” God, she couldn’t think with these fire alarms.
“Ten, twelve minutes maybe?”
Yeah, she couldn’t hold her breath that long. She probably couldn’t survive that long.
She was already starting to feel light-headed from whatever he was doing. She pressed her face to the gap again and inhaled. The air felt thin, and she took another deep breath. It felt like her lungs couldn’t inflate all the way. Smoke was collecting along the opening to the alcove as if a pane of glass kept it out.
“How long can you keep that up?” she said.
“We’re going to find out.” His jaw was tight. “I should have just taken that stupid test for him.”
“Gabriel was taking a test?”
“Yeah. The math teacher cornered him. He asked me to come tell you, but then Ryan Stacey showed up—”
He stopped talking. The fires went dark.
And all of a sudden, she was on the ground, looking up at Nick. His hand was patting her cheek, his eyes wide. “Layne? Layne.”
She sucked in a breath—a mistake, it was more smoke than oxygen. She coughed, hard. “What happened?”