Chapter 12: Terms Broken

The smoke was coming under the door.

I had the chair away from the knob and my boots on in seconds.

The orange light in the window was not the sign.

The deadbolt stuck.

Then the wall shook, and Boone's boot came through the cheap paneling beside my bed, and he was in my room with soot on his face.

"Out," he said. "Now."

"Birdie."

"She's out. The cook's got her at the road."

He took my arm and I let him.

The walkway outside Room 7 was already a wall of fire.

Someone had poured gasoline along the base of the doors, and the flames were running along the siding toward the diner.

We went the other way, through the back lot, past the shed, and into the trees with the heat on our necks.

Behind us the sign with the burned-out V went up in a single flare.

Birdie stood at the edge of the highway in her nightgown and a man's coat.

The fry cook stood beside her with a fire extinguisher, and she was shouting at the sky.

"I've got her," I called. "I'm fine. Birdie, I'm fine."

"Go!" she screamed. "Take her somewhere dry, Boone Gallagher, or I'll skin you!"

Sirens were coming from the south.

Boone had his keys in his hand already.

He pulled me onto the back of his bike, and I put my arms around his waist.

It was the first time I had ridden behind him since the Memorial Ride.

I pressed my face between his shoulder blades and held on.

He took us up a logging road I had never seen, and the headlight tunneled through the pines for twenty minutes.

The Gallagher mill sat at the end of the road, a black shed with a rusted door.

Inside was a lock-up room his father had once used for the club's cash.

Boone kicked the padlock off.

Inside there was a cot, a space heater, a bottle of water, and a pump sink in the corner.

He lit the heater and the orange coils glowed.

I stood in the middle of the room with soot on my hands and my teeth chattering.

"Lena," he said.

"They burned it."

"I know."

"They burned Birdie's motel while I was in it."

"I know." His voice cracked. "Lena. I know."

I turned around, and I saw that he was shaking too.