Chapter 2
Part 2:
Then I smelled electrical insulation.
Sharp. Bitter. Chemical.
Every muscle in my body tightened.
“Everybody leave your things,” I said.
A mother reached for her purse.
“No bags. No coats. Now.”
Something in my voice convinced them.
I pulled the manual alarm beside the exit while the dance instructor organized the children.
Smoke was already sliding along the hallway ceiling.
The main stairwell remained passable when we entered it, but at the fourth-floor landing someone opened a door below us.
Black smoke surged upward.
Not gray.
Not thin.
Black.
Children screamed.
“Back up!” I shouted. “Everybody back to five!”
The secondary stairwell should have been our alternative.
Its door wouldn't open.
I remember grabbing the handle twice because my brain refused to accept what my hand was telling it.
Locked.
Later, investigators discovered that renovation workers had installed an electronic access system incorrectly. When power to the local circuit failed, the supposedly fail-safe door failed locked instead.
A technical mistake.
A small decision.
Exactly the kind Daniel and I had talked about on the morning we met.
I directed the dance instructor to take the children back into the fifth-floor studio and seal the door. The exterior windows could be reached with ground ladders.
Lily caught my hand.
“You're coming?”
“I'll be right there.”
Before I could follow, Miguel Alvarez, the building's maintenance supervisor, appeared through a service corridor.
“There are three people upstairs trying to get to the roof,” he said. “Roof key's in the fifth-floor cabinet.”
Then a mother screamed.
“My son! Owen isn't here!”
Six-year-old Owen had followed her when she went back for a costume bag and become separated.
I knew searching for him was dangerous.
I also knew exactly what smoke did to children.
“I'll check the corridor. You get that roof key.”
I found Owen thirty feet away, crouched behind a copy machine with both hands over his ears.
I dropped to my knees.
“Owen, it's Lily's mom. I'm taking you out.”
He wrapped his arms around my neck.
Smoke had dropped to shoulder height by then.
I covered his head with my jacket and started toward the dance studio.
Something cracked above us.
A burning strip of ceiling insulation collapsed into the corridor.
I couldn't see the studio anymore.
Miguel shouted from the service hallway.
“Rachel! This way!”
I made the decision.
Up.
The three office workers followed us toward the roof.
I carried Owen.
What I didn't know was that Lily had heard someone say I was still in the hallway.
She slipped out of the dance studio before the fire crossed the service corridor and ran after me.
When she appeared at the roof landing, I felt relief and terror at exactly the same time.
“I told you to stay with Miss Kara!”
“I couldn't find you!”
There was no time to argue.
Miguel shut the roof door behind us.
The latch clicked.
Then he tried to reopen it.
Nothing.
The inside release had been damaged.
We were trapped.
There were seven of us on the roof.
Five adults.
Two children.
I called emergency dispatch again and gave our exact location.
May you like
“North roof, Mercer Building. Seven civilians. Roof door locked behind us. No interior route.”
“Move as far from the mechanical structure as possible,” the dispatcher said. “Stay low. Help is coming.”
