“You won’t fit,” said Kyle.
“Oh, I think I could make it. I’ve always been as wiry as a snake. But those shoulders of yours wouldn’t make it through, that’s for sure. I always said less time in the gym and more time in the library and maybe you’d make something of yourself. So it’s up the stairs, is it?”
“Or wait for the son of a bitch to come down.”
“I fear we won’t have that luxury,” said the old man.
Just then, as if on cue, a bomb went off.
CHAPTER 30
OR SOMETHING THAT sounded much like a bomb, an explosion that blew them both off their feet and sucked the air right out of their lungs. When Kyle opened his eyes, he could see a great tongue of blue flame reaching down the stairwell and lapping at his feet. Still on his back, he scurried away, pulled the old man, lying dead flat, with him.
“Dad? Dad? Are you okay?”
The old man came groggily to consciousness. “What in the blazes?”
“He set the house on fire.”
“The devil.”
“He’s going to burn us to cinders.”
“And burn the file, too,” said the old man.
“What?”
“The file. That’s what he’s after.”
“Who?”
“Did you look in it?”
“A l it t le.”
“Then you know.”
“The senator?”
“Who else?”
“The hell with it,” said Kyle, tossing it aside. “He can have it.”
The old man gasped, but Kyle ignored him. The heat from the flames coming down the stairs pressed upon Kyle’s skin. But the heat was coming from somewhere else, too. He stood up, raised his hand, could feel it pour down from the ceiling. The floor above was burning. It wouldn’t be long before the whole thing collapsed on their heads.
“We have to get out of here,” said Kyle. “Now.”
“All right, then. Up the stairs it is.”
“But he still has the gun. He’ll be lying in wait outside the house, probably in the back, hoping we’ll charge up the stairs and out the open door. We’ll be gasping for air as he picks us off.”
“Maybe he’ll get one, but it’s still our only chance,” said the old man. He slowly rolled onto his knees and then crawled toward the file that was now leaning up against one of the walls. “I’ll follow you.”
Kyle turned and looked at the old man as he scuttled across the floor. “It really is you, isn’t it?”
“In the flesh.” The old man grabbed the file and then, with much struggle, pushed himself to standing. “Let’s go, then. Up the stairs with you. ‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.’ ”
“What the hell is that?”
“Tennyson.” Pause. “Alfred Lord Tennyson?”
“What was he, a ballplayer?”
“A poet. Golly God, son, have you no culture?”
“Not yours,” said Kyle. “Then what’s a league anyway?”
The old man thought. “I don’t really know. Isn’t that something?”
“That’s something, all right.” Kyle looked at the old man. He wasn’t small, but there was something fragile about him. Kyle still wasn’t sure how this miracle had happened, but he knew instinctively that this old man was his father and that he desperately needed Kyle’s protection. And protect him he would, whatever the cost.
“Okay,” said Kyle. “Let’s do it.”
Kyle made his way toward the stairway and then stopped as the flames started dropping down, catching onto the wood step by step. The idea of rushing through the fire, his feet burning all the while, only to be shot as he cleared the doorway, seemed the most futile of acts. He stopped, shook his head, turned around, saw the rusted washer and dryer by the front wall, and flashed on a memory.
It was dark in the memory, and he was scared, just like now, and he was hiding, just like now. It was when he was sixteen, and it involved the empty Simpson house, a rat, a bong, and a small fire that had been accidentally set—the less said about all of which, the better. The police had shown up with their sirens, and they had, each of them, Kat included, stormed out of there and torn off in all different directions. He had headed home but he couldn’t rush in his house like a madman, he was more afraid of his mother than of the police. So instead he dove under his own front porch and stayed there, peering out, as the police cruisers slipped by, searchlights panning the doorways. And he remembered a comforting wash of warm, sodden air flowing over him as he cowered. A wash of warm, sodden air flowing from the dryer.
An explosion blasted him out of his reverie, forcing him into a crouch of fear. It was loud, but it hadn’t come from the house. It had a familiar sound, as if fireworks were going off nearby. Fireworks? That made no sense, but nothing made sense just then, and there wasn’t time to figure any of it out.
He pointed the flashlight at the dryer, found the exhaust pipe, followed it up to where it exited through the drywall.
“Hold this,” he told his father, handing over the flashlight as he climbed atop the dryer. With a single savage jerk, he yanked out the exhaust pipe, leaving a hole in the drywall. Wildly he started ripping the drywall away until he saw, behind it, a plywood patch, larger than any of the windows, through which the dryer’s exhaust had vented.
“What’s that you found?” said his father.
“Our way out,” said Kyle.
He banged the plywood with his fist but couldn’t break through. He grabbed hold of the hole in the exhaust and pulled, but it wouldn’t release. The patch had been screwed into a frame set into a large opening in the stone foundation. He reached up to an edge, worked his fingers as far into the crack as he could, pulled with all his might. Nothing.
Another explosion from outside the house, and then others closer, explosions like gunshots that seemed to come from the top of the stairs.
“I need a screwdriver, or something like a knife,” shouted Kyle in frustration.
A quick click-swish from beside him. He looked down. His father was holding out a black-handled knife with a long, narrow blade.
“Will this do?”
Kyle stared for a moment at the incongruous sight of his father holding a switchblade, something he could never have imagined in the years before this very moment, then grabbed the thing and started working the blade beneath the plywood and around the screws. He thought it would be a tougher job, but decades of moist, warm air had weakened the wooden frame. With a shot of leverage from the knife, the plywood began pulling away from the frame. When there was enough of a gap to get a proper grip, he put the knife in his teeth, took hold, and heaved. He almost fell off the dryer as the plywood wrenched free, leaving a wide opening leading to the area beneath the front porch of his house.