Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 601(@200wpm)___ 481(@250wpm)___ 401(@300wpm)
We were creeping through what I was calling the chemistry lab when our luck ran out. A guard saw us and grabbed me, trying to wrestle me to the ground. Liliya hooked an arm around his neck and pulled him off me and the two of them staggered through the middle of the lab. One of Liliya’s elbows caught a complex web of glass tubing and it went crashing over, spilling chemicals everywhere. Then the guard knocked against a gas burner, and it tipped and—
The dark room suddenly lit up orange as flames licked across an entire tabletop. Shit! The chemicals must have been flammable. Fire was dripping down onto the floor, spreading to other tables. The workers began to scream and run and choking gray smoke began to fill the air.
The workers spilled out into the hallway. It was chaos, now: the whole place was still dark, with only flames and a few flashlight beams to light it up, and already the air was becoming hazy. My lungs were burning and like everyone else, I followed instinct. Get out, get out!
But as we reached the end of the hallway, the guard at the door raised his gun and yelled at us in Russian. The workers ducked in fear and retreated.
Oh fuck. Spartak couldn’t let the police find out about this place. The guard would be under orders: don’t let anyone out, no matter what.
They’d let us all die down here.
73
RADIMIR
We’d circled right around the dance floor and there was no sign of Bronwyn or Spartak. Where the hell are they?! I tried to push towards the center again, but the crowd was packed so tight I could barely move. I couldn’t even scare a path by waving my gun because there was nowhere for people to move to.
And then it got worse. My nose wrinkled and I whipped my head around to stare at Alexei. He nodded, looking worried. Smoke.
You could see the realization spread through the crowd. Then someone started to cough, and the panic began, people’s fears kicking in even before the smoke was really visible. The crowd surged towards the doors. But the guards at the doors wouldn’t open them: they were under orders because Spartak knew I was here. I ground my teeth. This is on me. People are going to die because I came here.
And I still couldn’t find Bronwyn. The smoke seemed to be drifting up from somewhere below. Was there another floor? I couldn’t find any stairs leading down and we’d tried every door. Where the hell is she?
There was a gunshot and Alexei shoved me aside. I heard a bullet pass between us. As the screaming started, I grabbed Alexei’s shoulder and ran with him to the bar that lay along one side of the hexagonal club. We dived over the bar and crashed head-first to the floor behind it. I got my foot trapped between two mini-fridges and twisted it trying to get it free. Pain blossomed in my ankle, and I cursed and finally got it loose. As more bullets passed over our heads, we knelt and peeked over the top of the bar.
Spartak and a handful of men were firing at us from across the club, not caring who they hit. The gunfire finally cleared some space on the dance floor, with people retreating to the edges and up onto the balconies, but that only made the crushes there worse. And the smoke was thickening: it was getting difficult to breathe and it was getting hotter, too: there was a full-on fire happening somewhere.
More bullets hit the bar. Alexei and I shot back, but we were hopelessly outnumbered. If we didn’t get out of here, we were dead. I saw Alexei’s jaw tighten and knew that he was thinking about his wife, out in the alley. The guilt crushed my heart in a fist. He’d been out of the Bratva, he’d been safe, and I’d dragged him back into it. Now he might never see his wife again. And I might never see mine.
74
BRONWYN
I doubled over, coughing. The smoke was so thick, now, that we could barely see. The room where the fire had started was an inferno and the flames were spreading down the hallway. The workers were screaming, hysterical. But there was still no way out. The guard at the door had tied a cloth over his mouth to help him breathe through the smoke and even though he was clearly panicked, he wasn’t moving. He probably knew Spartak would execute him if he let us escape. It actually made a grim kind of sense: Spartak could buy more trafficked women to work in the drug factory, rebuild what the fire damaged...but he couldn’t recover if the police found the place and arrested him. He’ll let us all die.