Then suddenly Jake appeared. He was soaking wet and dragging heavy linens behind him. I choked a bit in shock when I saw him, but I didn’t argue. Especially since he tossed a sopping towel at me.
“Wrap that around you.”
Um, right. Oh, shit. This was getting real. And I was completely terrified. Fortunately, Jake was totally calm, and his steady presence helped settle me down.
“Hang on, buddy,” he said as he tied a bedsheet to the railing. He was knotting it twice and yanking hard when I managed to find my voice again.
“His name is Ben.”
“Okay, Ben. I can see that you’re scared, so I’m coming over to help you. Okay?”
“What?” I gasped out.
He looked back at me, his expression grave. “It’s not a big leap.”
It sure as hell looked like a big leap to me. Eighteen-stories-high kind of big. And there had to be at least six feet between our balconies. Or was it ten? I sucked at spatial measurements, but it was definitely too big to leap.
“Can’t we wait for the fire department?” I asked.
His expression was grim as he looked at the smoke billowing out of Ben’s hotel room. Oh, shit. It was getting thick. Maybe Ben didn’t have a lot of time. But still…
“I can do it,” he said as he tied the other end of the bedsheet around his waist. I quickly scanned his “rope.” It was two sheets plus a blanket, I now realized, tied together by big knots.
“Oh God,” I murmured
“I’m coming over, Ben,” he said as he climbed up onto the top of the railing. “Hang tight, buddy.”
I wasn’t a very religious person, but I prayed right then, with every cell in my body, not to mention my heart and soul. I prayed that he would make the leap while I watched him balance there on top of our railing. He crouched, poised there for a split second, and then…
He flew.
No, he didn’t fly. He leaped, and he didn’t make it.
His jump was short, but not by a lot. So, instead of landing with his hands and feet, he hit the top of the railing with his ribs, then his upper body dropped forward. He teetered there for a moment with his butt aimed up to the sky and I worried that he was too winded to move.
“Jake!” I screamed.
The boy rushed forward, grabbing Jake’s arm. And while I watched, Jake used his hands to grab hold of the kid. It wasn’t pretty, but he managed to drag his lower body over the railing and onto the other balcony. It wasn’t until he sat on the floor there that I saw he was struggling to breathe.
“Jake!”
He held up a hand, and I thought I saw him inhale. A wheezing breath? I couldn’t tell over the sirens. But then I saw him roll to his side. He was okay. He was moving, though slowly. And the first thing he did was look into the boy’s hotel room.
I didn’t like the look on his face. It wasn’t horror, but grim determination. And then he started unknotting the bedsheet from around his waist.
“What are you doing?” I bellowed, but he didn’t answer. It didn’t matter—I figured it out pretty quickly.
As soon as he was free from the sheets, he wrapped them around Ben. There was plenty of slack in the makeshift rope, but what the hell was he planning? I saw them talk, Jake being calm and intense. He had his game face on, and I was both reassured and terrified by the sight. And then Ben cautiously nodded before wrapping his arms around Jake.
And then I got distracted. It was a simple thing. The air around me was blistering hot. I hadn’t even noticed the rise in temperature, but now I did and when I looked behind me, I nearly swallowed my tongue. The hotel door was glowing red. I’d never thought I’d see something like that outside of a movie theater, but there it was.
I looked back to Jake. I desperately wanted to ask him what to do, but no words came out. He had Ben wrapped up across his chest, the boy’s arms and legs tight around him, with his head tucked against Jake’s neck. And the two of them together were poised on the railing while Jake adjusted the length of tied bedding.
WTF? He couldn’t jump! He’d barely made it last time. No way could he make it back. Then he looked to me and bellowed.
“Ellie! … brace … railing?” I couldn’t hear what he said. At least not all of it. But I could see the shape of his lips and understand what he meant. I couldn’t believe it, but what other choice did he have? As bad as my hotel room was, there were flames shooting out of the other one.
I rushed over to the railing and did what I could to hold it firm against what he meant to do. He was going to jump from his balcony and swing over. Or down. Or I didn’t know where, but the weight of his body and Ben’s would be on the knot and the railing. Which was crazy. But I set my feet, braced my side against the wall, not that it would help much, and gripped the metal to give a counterweight to him and Ben. Then I held on for dear life.
