Page 73 of Caesar DeLuca
“I’ve done it before,” he answers, a hastiness about his tone. “But we need to hurry. See the smoke coming in from under the door? We only have a matter of minutes.”
My cheeks are wet and my breath pants out of me as I rush to do as he’s instructed. I dig a bobby pin out of my clutch purse with my free hand. Caesar’s already reaching for me as I reach for him, trying to stretch across my large bed so he can grab it from the other side.
The second he’s able to touch it with the pad of his fingers, he’s snatching hold of it. I can hardly bear watching him jam the little piece of metal into the keyhole. He jerks it around, his teeth gritted, his jaw tight and angular.
Outside our door, flames rage on.
Smoke fills up the area, spreading down the hall ‘til it’s slipping in under the crevice of the door. It’s so thick you can’t see anything through it.
An itch develops in my lungs and forces a cough out of me.
We don’t have much time at all. The fire has engulfed the entire house and it’s a matter of minutes before it’ll collapse in on itself.
Caesar gives the bobby pin a final jimmy and the lock clicks. The handcuff clenched around his right wrist glides open. He’s flying across the room by the time I blink. He grabs my wrist and begins working on the handcuff binding me.
“Caesar,” I cough. “There’s no time. The house will probably collapse any?—”
“Hold still!” he growls over me. “We either escape together or we’re going down together, you understand?”
Something about the conviction in his rough tone quiets the panic inside me. It chases away the fog that’s swallowed me up and made me cry and struggle to keep calm. I blink, my eyelashes wet and stuck together, and I let myself believe him.
Caesar’s not going anywhere without me.
He’s going to find a way to get us out of here… or die trying.
“There we go,” he grits out as the lock clicks. He tugs me free from the cuffs ’til I’m on my feet, being dragged half a step behind him. He darts for the door and edges it open to check on the situation we’re facing in the hall.
A blinding dark cloud of smoke surges toward us as if it’s been waiting for the moment we opened the door.
Caesar quickly slams it shut and turns back around to me.
“We can’t go out there. The flames are already eating up the hall.”
“Could we… would we be able to jump out the window…?” I stammer.
“Let’s find out.”
He’s yet to let go of me as he runs over to the window. His fingers are secured around my wrist tighter than the handcuffs were. Yet in a deadly situation like this, it only provides me more comfort. More solace that Caesar quite literally has me.
We’re going to find a way out as a team.
He lifts the window and then punches out the screen. “We’re going to have to jump onto the porch roof. It’s the only way we make it out of here.”
I don’t have time to second guess or hesitate. He guides me toward the window and helps me climb onto the ledge.
Since it’s at a slant, there’s a chance I’ll lose my footing and tumble down.
But what other choice do we have except burning alive?
“GO!” Caesar yells. The crackling has grown frighteningly loud. Smoke has begun to invade the room to the point of enveloping my bedroom furniture. “Ariana, go now!”
I barely balance myself on the ledge before I take the leap. I’m airborne for a brief second as I leave the safety of the window and drop down onto the slanted porch roof.
My landing is anything but graceful—I stumble and trip over my own feet, almost falling forward. Thankfully, I catch myself at the last second.
Caesar quickly follows. His landing is a little smoother than mine, though he still stumbles by a step or two. His hand immediately wraps around mine as we begin the next phase of our escape.
“Now, we climb down the porch column. We’ll be able to drop to the ground from there.”
