Chapter Eleven
Robin
Some wise and wholesome sage said to never take your smartphone with you into the bathroom.
Bad advice.
Crappy, if you ask me. No pun intended.
The one time I decide to mosey on into my bathroom without it, all hell breaks loose.
I shouldn’t even be here this late in the morning. Normally, by now I’m sitting at my desk at work, waiting for Mr. Rochford, my one-man-show do-everything lawyer boss, to belt out all manner of unreasonable demands that I follow, no questions asked. I may have a passion for singing country western classics, but I have to remind myself that my voice and guitar playing skills don’t pay all the bills.
Today, I get in my beat-up truck, drive halfway to work, and what do I do? I forget something at home. The file folder. It’s the one my boss sent me home with to research well into the night. And it’s sitting right where I left it at two o’clock this morning. I can blame both this morning’s forgetfulness and my lateness on the sleep deprivation, or on that mini-standoff between Reid and Dave, but my boss won’t care.
After the fifteen-minute return drive to my tiny old one-story house about twenty-five miles west of the Las Vegas Strip, I hurry inside. Rush hour isn’t bad on the highway, but it’s way too late for me to get in before Mr. Rochford today. I drop my keys and phone on the wall-mounted all-in-one coat rack shelving in the entryway, get the file, and then my nervous stomach kicks in. I’m sure to be late, but I know better than to leave the house without taking care of my bodily functions.
As I’m sitting there wishing I had my phone to at least call my boss and tell him about my lateness, I hear a loud thud. The floor and walls shake. There’s an ear-popping noise next, and the sound of glass breaking.
I lift the curtain covering the window behind me and crane my neck to look out the window that faces the backyard. The sky is still blue. There’s not a cloud around or anything else in the sky, which means that ruckus can’t be daytime fireworks, aircraft flying overhead, or rare bad weather.
My ears start to ring from the pressure change.
It can’t just be someone opening the front door, but I have hope for a logical explanation.
“Hello?” I call out, praying that it’s Josh, my older brother, and that he just used his set of keys, slammed the door really hard, and broke something on his way in. It’s a longshot, given that he lives and works over half-hour away in North Vegas. Still, I’m wishing for a simple reason for whatever is happening on the other side of this door.
“Josh? Is that you?” I shout.
There’s no answer. Then something else crashes nearby. I’m one hundred percent sure that I did not leave the front door open, so the sound has to be coming from inside the house. I finish my business in the bathroom, making sure to flush and quickly wash my hands, just in case it’s my landlord. I highly doubt it, on account of the fact that he’s a busy part-time casino owner and full-time cattle rancher who owns all the land around here for at least half a mile in each direction.
“Hello? Who’s there?” I shout out one more time over my shoulder as I dry my hands on a towel.
As I turn to reach for the doorknob, I notice the smoke.
What the hell?
Smoke starts to seep into the bathroom from under the door. It’s thick and black. I take a chance and touch the doorknob lightly. It’s hot as hell. That can’t be good. My father is a retired fire chief, and Josh is also a firefighter, as are pretty much all my male cousins, so I know what this means.
Fire.
A serious one, likely from some type of explosion so hot that it immediately burned some of the house contents to ash. The knot grows in my stomach as a new reality sets in.
I am trapped in the bathroom.
Part of me wants to push the door open and run like hell out the only other door that can let me outside fast—the kitchen door at the back of the house. I know better. I’d be unconscious from smoke inhalation, and probably dead from the killer heat before I make it ten feet. Shit. I should be thinking about my immediate survival, but my judgment is temporarily clouded by the panic-inducing fact that all my worldly belongings are burning on the other side of this door, including my phone and my boss’s files. If I survive this blaze, Mr. Rochford will kill me.
Giving up is not something I’ve ever done willingly before, so I begin to problem-solve. I grab all the towels on the rack, dump them in the bathtub and turn on the shower faucet to soak them. Once they’re good and wet, I wrap one around my mouth, nose, and head. Bundling up the rest, I jam them up against the opening at the bottom of the door. It does a good job of stopping more smoke from coming in, but I can’t delude myself about the trouble I’m in. A quick exit from this death trap is the only thing that will save my hide.
I look around the bathroom and check the double-hung window behind the curtain above the toilet tank. Each section on its own is way too small to get my hips through. Even if I strip down naked and grease myself down with petroleum jelly or lube, I’m sure to get my ass stuck. But hell, I’m willing to try anything. If I can punch or kick out two sections of glass and their wooden frame, maybe I can squeeze out sideways.
Opening this window is risky all on its own. I have to make certain assumptions, the biggest one being that once I break glass in this window, it’s not going to become another venting route for this blazing inferno on the other side of this door. Just in case it is, I douse myself with the leftover water in the bathtub. Climbing up on the ledge of the tub, I drag down the curtain rod, throw the plastic shower curtain as far away from me as possible, and I slam one metal edge of the curtain rod through the window to break it. I make myself as small as possible in the tub, counting to thirty just to be safe.
No backdraft.
Probably because the front window must be open and feeding enough oxygen to the blaze. Nothing changes in the room except for the fresh air entering through the now broken window. That’s a great sign. I remove as much of the glass from the window as possible, and when that’s done, I begin to bang against the wooden frame at the center of each double hung section. You would think panic has allowed the adrenaline and accompanying superhuman strength to kick in, but I’m no stronger than I was five minutes ago, before this all happened.
As I work at it, I call out for help. Not even my head and shoulders can fit through this quarter of the windowpane. If I can get higher, I might be able to kick out the wooden sections, but there’s nothing in this room that can support my weight. Standing on the toilet seat cover doesn’t help either.
It’s no use. I’m really trapped.
I can only pray that someone is driving along the road in front of my place, and that they’re paying enough attention to notice my house is on fire. All the homes on this side of the road are so far apart that none of my neighbors will hear me unless they’re right outside. And it’s all desert fields, cattle, and tumbleweed on the other side of the road.
“Help! Fire! Help me! If anyone can hear me, please call 9-1-1!” I shout, using the curtain rod to make more noise as I bang it repeatedly against the wooden window frame.
If this is going to be the last few minutes I spend on earth, I won’t go quietly.
That’s when the sexiest, yet second most unnerving voice booms through the window from outside.