Chapter 13 - The Burning Corridor
The heavy door burst open, swinging wide on broken hinges.
Julian Croft lunged into the doorway, but he wasn't holding a crowbar anymore. In his right hand was a glass jar sloshing with amber liquid, a crude wick of cloth stuffed into its neck, already hissing with a yellow flame.
"Get down!" Daniel roared, throwing his entire body weight backward to knock me behind the heavy oak desk just as Croft hurled the improvised incendiary.
The bottle shattered against the mahogany floorboards five feet from our hiding spot. A wall of roaring orange fire erupted with a terrifying *whoosh*, immediately licking up the embroidered drapes and consuming the dry carpet. Smoke, acrid and chemical, filled the air, choking the breath from my lungs.
Through the curtain of flame, Daniel fired twice. The loud cracks of his Glock echoed deafeningly in the enclosed room.
A high-pitched shriek of pain tore from Croft’s throat. A thud followed, then the rapid, uneven scuffle of shoes scraping backward across the polished hallway floor.
"Elizabeth! The fire escape behind the bookcase—move!" Daniel shouted, coughing against the rising black smoke. He grabbed my arm, hoisting me upright. The jarring movement sent a white-hot knife of pain through my pelvis and spine, remnants of the balcony fall that had barely begun to heal.
"The envelope! Chloe's record!" I gasped, tears streaming down my cheeks from the blinding smoke.
I dove across the burning edge of the desk, scorching the cuff of my sleeve, and snatched the thick manila envelope labeled *CLOE: SURROGATE RECORD #2* from the safe’s steel cavity, along with the Harvard genetics report. I shoved them inside my zipped leather jacket against my ribs.
Daniel kicked open the hidden latch behind the recessed shelf. The false bookcase swung outward, revealing a narrow stone spiral staircase that led straight down into the cellar foundations of the manor.
May you like
"Go, go!" he urged, keeping his weapon trained on the burning doorway as flames began to lick the ceiling beams.
We stumbled into the damp, cold blackness of the hidden stairs just as the ceiling above the study collapsed in a shower of sparks and falling timber, sealing the entrance behind us in an impenetrable furnace.
