Page 15 of The Bronze Garza

Smoke fills the club so rapidly, thick and white, that there’s no way it’s all from the fire.

The screams and shouts grow louder, more panicked, as everyone fights to get through the narrow exit.

I crawl as fast as I can in the opposite direction. There has to be an emergency door somewhere. Has to be.

The smoke worsens, impeding my vision. Someone stomps on my fingers and I yelp, but I don’t slow down.

Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me. Please don’t see me.

Another loudpop.

A shout.

A shriek.

A chorus of hacking coughs.

A strong arm bands around my middle and lifts me up off the floor.

Dammit! No!

I open my mouth to scream and end up choking on a mouthful of smoke. I fight against the muscled arm around me but it’s like a band of steel. The man moves with me, a one-hundred-forty-five-pound human, like I’m a weightless doll. Fast and confident. And although the club is too nebulous to see much at this point, I know we’re headed in the opposite direction of the exit.

“Cut it out, Lyra,” the man growls above me.

Immediately, I do.

For two reasons: One, the voice isn’t Russian, but American. Two, he used my real name.

In the time I’ve been in this country, no one’s ever used my real name. Igor named us, and those names are what we go by. And I don’t think anyone but Igor knows our real names—that’s assuming he does at all.

I try to look up to see the man’s face, but all I’m able to make out through the smoke is a black balaclava.

We reach a door somewhere and my body flails involuntarily as he kicks it open. And then we’re outside. Arctic wind rakes over my bare skin like nails, calling goosebumps to the surface.

From my dangling vantage point, I can see the glint of chrome car rims plus two pairs of booted feet moving in our direction.

“Got her. Finish it,” the man tells someone, voice calm and indifferent despite having just ran through a burning building with an entire adult human-being under his arm. “But be sure everyone’s out first. No casualties.”

“Got it,” another man replies. “We’ll unblock the emergency exits now that she’s out.”

His heavy boots beat against the wet tar as he runs with me toward the chrome-rimmed vehicle. The back door flies open and he tosses me inside like I’m just a throw-pillow.

Before he’s even properly inside, the vehicle jerks, the tires screech, and we’re moving. He slams the door, shutting the cold out, and I exhale a breath of gratitude for the warmth.

I scramble up from the face-plant I was dumped in, righting myself into sitting position. My ankle twists against something on the floor and I glance down to see it’s a duffel-bag. To make room for my long legs, I pick it up and rest it on the seat, between the man and me.

In the front seats are two more men wearing balaclavas.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask them. “Are you with Igor?”

No one answers.

As the vehicle speeds in the opposite direction of the club, I twist around and peer through the tinted back windshield. Smoke billows from the building, pluming to the overcast sky.

If “finish it” means what I think it does, then that entire building will be up in flames soon. I wonder about Simone, if she got out safe.

Then, I think ofhim. That’s his establishment. Why would Igor do that to one of his biggest clients?