Page 158 of Kings & Corruption

“Come on, tiger. We have to get out of here. This whole place is going up.”

The fire was growing at an alarming rate, creating an insurmountable obstacle between us and the door. I could only vaguely make out Rock and Neo on the other side of it.

I coughed and Oscar helped me to my feet, prying the gun from my hands. “We’ll have to go out the window.”

He stripped off his shirt and wrapped it around his arm, then used it to sweep what was left of the glass out of the frame.

Gunfire sounded from the front of the cabin and Oscar looked over his shoulder, a stricken expression on his face. “What the fuck?”

The second man. Everything had happened so fast, I’d forgotten he was out there.

“There’s another one,” I shouted, too late obviously.

“Just one?” Oscar asked after another round of gunfire had subsided.

The fire was everywhere. I couldn’t see a thing beyond the space where Oscar and I stood. “I think so.”

He was digging my grave. They were going to kill me and bury me out here.

Like Emma.

The words drifted through my mind like the smoke filling the room.

The gunfire sounded again, farther away this time, maybe outside. Oscar got down on his knee and threaded his hands together. “You first.”

I put my foot in his hand and he boosted me to the window. Without the glass, it was bigger than the bathroom window in the admin building. I slid through it with no problem, dropping onto my hands in the dirt outside the cabin, coughing as the cold air hit my smoke-filled lungs.

Oscar followed a second later, just as Neo and Rock ran around the side of the cabin, their faces and clothes smeared with soot.

“Thank god,” Rock said, grabbing me and pulling me against him. He pulled back and held my face, running his hands down my neck and over my shoulders and arms. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

I shook my head. “I’m fine. The other man…”

“He ran into the woods,” Neo said.

“We wanted to make sure you were okay,” Rock said.

A loud crash broke thought the night as the roof caved in on the cabin, sparks rising into the darkness. It would have been pretty if I hadn’t come so close to being killed.

“We have to go,” Oscar said, taking my hand.

He pulled me along the side of the cabin after Neo and Rock, and we rounded the corner to the front and headed for the trees where I’d been kidnapped and dragged into the cabin.

I looked back and understood why some people were captivated by fire. Flames licked from the cabin’s window frames, reaching for the doorway like a living thing, a fiery beast consuming everything around it.

I thought of the man inside, the one who’d pointed the gun at my head.

“Wait!” I tugged my hand loose from Oscar’s. “The man…”

“Come on!” Neo shouted at me. “We don’t have time for this. We need to get out of here and call the fire department before this fire burns down the whole forest.”

I looked from him back to the cabin, then back at him, Oscar and Rock. “I’m sorry.”

Then I ran.

“What thefuck!” I heard Neo yell behind me.

The heat hit me like hellfire as I approached the door but I didn’t stop.

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