Page 41 of Up In Smoke

There were no windows back here.Of course not. You wouldn't want anyone peeking in on your massage, but now the only way out was through the fire.

Jo stepped out, now just as cold and soaked as Ivy. Then she immediately ducked back in and Ivy heard the shower turn on again. Jo emerged a moment later with a stack of wet towels.

Ivy pointed into the corner. “Shoes.”

There wasn't enough time to get fully dressed, but they shoved their feet into what they'd been wearing on the way over. Ivy was suddenly grateful for sneakers with thick soles. There wasn't time for socks.

Jo grabbed her and hauled the two of them to one side of the door. Reaching out, she pulled the knob and opened the door. Smoke thick and oily whooshed into the space, and Jo tugged them both down to the floor while she waited a beat to let the room adjust to the intrusion.

Ivy understood. One of the nights that she and Luke had been curled up on the couch watching TV, she'd asked him all kinds of questions about firefighting. Just out of curiosity, or maybe because an arsonist had torched her home.

He’d told her, “Anytime you open an airspace, you invite the fire.”

Jo was staying out of the way now.

Ivy felt her friend's hand wrap around her wrist through the wet squish of the thick robe. When she felt the squeeze, she understood the signal and began moving even before Jo tugged her along.

They crawled down the hallway. There should be an emergency exit to her right. The smoke was thick and they moved slowly on hands and knees, the heavy robes not making it any easier. Jo had been right: The ice cold of the water was quickly replaced with heat.

She couldn't see through the thick smoke and she struggled to pull breath through the heavy towel. It was tempting to pull it off and gulp, but she knew this beat the alternative.

They felt their way along, Ivy seeing only thick oily smoke through rapidly blinking and watering eyes. When the floor got too hot, Jo handed her extra towels to cover her hands as they crawled.

They ran into another woman who wasn't covered. She was dressed in pink scrubs, indicating she was an employee. Coughing as though a lung was coming up, she motioned them to turn around. “Go back!”

Jo made a motion back to Ivy, the heavy hand on her shoulder telling her to stop. Ivy couldn't see much of anything anymore. She’d pulled the towel up over her eyes and was working mostly by feel and a few wet-eyed peeks.

She heard Jo explaining to the woman, “There's an emergency exit ahead.”

“Yes. It's blocked!” The woman argued back with another epic cough.

“I’m going to go check it out. I'm a firefighter.” Jo said it with such conviction that Ivy almost laughed at the big fluffy wet beast that was her dearest friend. But there wasn't enough air to laugh.

Jo pushed the remainder of the still wet towels she was carrying at Ivy. “Wrap her up. Stay here.” And with that, Ivy was alone with the new woman.

Ivy motioned with one of the towels, putting it up over the woman's face and wrapping it around her neck like a scarf. She held up another towel, the last one, and hollered above the sound of roaring static. “For your hands!”

She watched as the woman went at the towel with gusto. Pulling the first towel down to get one tooth firmly into the fabric, she ripped it clean down the middle, making two smaller towels that she then wrapped around each hand. Ivy wished she had that kind of strength.

By the time she got the woman situated, wrapped up as best she could, Jo was back. Crawling in on her hands and knees, she motioned them to get moving the way they’d come. “It's blocked. The door itself has already caught.”

For the first time, as the three of them turned and headed toward the front door, Ivy felt an ice cold fear snake around her heart. No one had said it, but it was clear to her this fire had been deliberately set.

It had been set and she had beeninside.

Was it a coincidence?

She didn't have time to consider that. Her first—in fact, heronly—job right now was to save herself and the others who were in here with her.

Jo banged on closed doors as she went but only one of them opened. She moved them all out of the doorway, waiting for the smoke to equilibrate into the empty space. Luckily, it was another massage room. Also luckily, the woman who had been in there had the same thought they did. She'd covered herself in wet towels.

She hollered out, “Damn, I hoped you were the fire department.”

The smoke hadn’t gotten to her lungs yet, Ivy noted.

Jo hollered and coughed back, “I am the fire department!”

Then she gave instructions to join their little group of survivors. At least, that’s what Ivy had decided they would be. She’d just gotten her damned house refurnished and she wasn’t going to die like this now.

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