LITMIR.BIZ

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couldn’t have got out that way!” Jewel cried.

      “The basement. He must have taken her to the tunnel.”

      As they ran for the basement, Jewel tripped over someone, turned to look, and saw Sirona, cowering in a corner, sobbing. Tessa was nearby, sitting on the floor looking shocky, her face blank, her body rocking.

      “Come on, come with us,” Jewel said, bending to grip Tessa’s upper arm, jerking her to her feet. Sirona followed wordlessly. Lizzie was several steps ahead of them by then. The fire was spreading—chasing them it seemed. “Hurry!”

      They made it to the basement stairs, then down them. It was dark, but Jewel saw Lizzie come to a sudden stop ahead of them and heard her as she shouted, “How could you? How could you try to save yourself and leave the rest of us to die?”

      Jewel raced closer, shocked into stillness when she saw Mordecai there, cradling little Sunny in his arms.

      “Go back to your room!” he shouted. “You have no idea what’s happening here!”

      “I know exactly what’s happening.” Lizzie’s voice was weaker than before. The red stain on the front of her nightgown was larger now, spreading. There was an explosion from somewhere close. It was deafening, and it shook them physically. A loud roar followed, and Jewel felt the heat.

      “Give me my daughter,” Lizzie said.

      Mordecai lifted one hand, and Jewel stiffened when she saw the gun he held. “Go back or die right here.”

      Jewel ran at him. He was so focused on Lizzie that he didn’t see her fast enough to fire, and she hit him with every ounce of strength she possessed, knocking him right off his feet and wrestling the baby from his arms as she fell on top of him. The gun skittered across the concrete floor. Jewel tore herself and little Sunny from Mordecai’s arms, and then it seemed like the end of the world as the beams and boards above them came crashing down like some fiery avalanche.

      She was knocked to her knees, and when she managed to get up again, holding the screaming baby close, choking on the smoke and heat, she saw Lizzie on her knees. Sirona and Tessa hovered two feet away, looking terrified in the dancing light of the flaming beams that littered the floor now. And beneath one of those beams, Mordecai lay, trapped.

      He held out a hand toward Lizzie. “Help me. Help me, and I’ll get you out of here.”

      Lizzie got slowly to her feet and edged closer to him. She stepped carefully over and around the burning beams that crisscrossed his torso. Then she knelt beside Mordecai. “I loved you,” she told him.

      “You still do, you know you do. It’ll be like I promised, Lizzie. You and me and Sunny, the plantation house in Virginia. A real family.”

      “Just like you promised,” she whispered. Then she reached out…and snatched the chain with the key dangling at its end from around his neck. She looked past him then, at the other girls. “Come on.”

      The flames blazed higher. Soon they would all be trapped. They hurried forward, and the four women ran as Mordecai cried out to them to save him. Then the rest of the ceiling came crashing down, and he was silent, buried under flaming debris.

      “Hurry!” They made it to the secret door that was hidden behind a set of false shelving, and Lizzie took the baby from Jewel’s arms and handed her the key. Then she leaned back against the wall, as if she could barely stand on her own.

      “Lizzie?”

      “Just get the door.”

      Jewel nodded, hurrying to fit the key to the lock, taking off the padlock, opening the door onto a pitch-dark tunnel. The air that wafted from it smelled of earth and cool dampness but, blessedly, not of smoke. “It’s open. Come on.”

      She turned back to Lizzie, who had slumped to a sitting position on the floor. Lizzie leaned close to her baby, kissed her cheek. Then she lifted her gaze to Jewel’s again. “Take her,” she said, her voice so hoarse and weak that Jewel could barely hear her over the fire.

      Jewel dropped the key, taking the baby from Lizzie’s arms, tucking her into one of her own and reaching down with her other hand to help Lizzie. Lizzie only shook her head from side to side and let her upper body fall backward to the floor.

      “Lizzie!” Jewel leaned over her.

      “Take her. Take her, Jewel. She’s yours now.”

      “Get up, Lizzie. Come on, I’ll help you.”

      “Take the money. There’s so much of it, there in the tunnel. Duffel bags full of it. Take it and make a good life for my Sunny.”

      “I’m not leaving you!”

      Lizzie smiled gently. “No. I’m leaving you.” She pressed her hand to her belly again. “It wasn’t glass, honey. It wasn’t glass at all.” Her eyes fell closed.

      Jewel shook her, but there was no response.

      Someone tugged Jewel away. Sirona. Tessa was already moving past them into the tunnel. “You have to go. You have to get the baby out,” Sirona said gently.

      “I can’t leave her!”

      “She’s gone, Jewel. She’s gone.”

      The fire surged closer, brighter and hotter. Jewel got up and handed the baby to Sirona; then she took Lizzie by the wrists and dragged her limp body into the tunnel. She couldn’t bear the thought of her being burned, or ending her life so close to Mordecai Young. She pushed the door closed behind them, then turned to take the baby from Sirona again.

      As she moved through the seemingly endless tunnel, she wondered how her life had managed to change so drastically over the course of one short summer. First her drunken, abusive father had hit her mother one too many times and wound up in prison for murder. Then the streets, where Jewel had fled to avoid ending up a ward of the state. Then this place, this supposed underground haven for runaway teens.

      And now? What now?

      She made her way through the tunnel, Sirona and Tessa flanking her. Eventually it grew lighter, and she spotted the duffel bags resting on the ground along the wall. She said, “Grab those and bring them. We’ll split up what’s inside once we get out of here. If we get out of here. And then we’ll go our separate ways.” She looked sternly at the two girls. “None of us can tell what happened here. Not ever, do you understand? If we do, little Sunny will end up a ward of the state—just like I almost was—or worse yet, with Lizzie’s family, whoever they are. And that couldn’t have been good, or Lizzie wouldn’t be…” She swallowed hard, lowered her head. “She never even told me her last name.”

      “I was in the system,” Sirona said. “It’s no place for Sunny. It’s okay. We’ll never tell.”

      “There’s enough money in those bags for all of us to start fresh, start new lives. We can never look back from here. Never. It’s a pact. Understand?”

      They both nodded.

      “Good. Then let’s go.”

      Sirona and Tessa each grabbed a bag and followed Jewel along the last leg of the tunnel. It angled slowly upward from deep in the earth, growing lighter and lighter, until finally it opened into sunlight.

      They climbed out, helping each other. “It’s morning,” Sirona whispered.

      Jewel turned to look back at the flames and smoke rising in the distance from what had been the Young Believers’ compound. Every building on the place must be burning, she thought. And everyone left behind must be dead.

      But that was behind her. She turned her back on all of it and faced the slowly rising sun that shone its red-orange light onto her and onto the baby.

      Her baby now.

      “It’s Dawn,” she whispered.

      Chapter One

      Sixteen

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