Chapter 2

My heart plunged. The thing I dreaded most had happened after all.

I kicked open Ryan's door and pressed the wet towel I'd prepared earlier over his nose and mouth.

"Forget your stuff, get downstairs, now!"

I dragged Ryan through the smoke-filled stairwell and rushed all the way down to the open ground below.

Plenty of people from the complex had run down too, huddled together and coughing.

In the middle of the clearing, Tiffany lay slumped on the ground, her clothes in disarray.

Her face was smeared with black soot, and a large piece of her shirt at the shoulder had been torn away, exposing a bra strap underneath.

Ryan had barely found his footing, hadn't even caught his breath.

The second Tiffany saw Ryan, she screamed like a madwoman and scrambled backward, crawling and stumbling until she'd wedged herself into a corner.

She stuck out a trembling finger, pointed it at Ryan's face, and shrieked.

"Murderer! Help, somebody, the murderer's right here!"

The neighbors around her were stunned, sucking in sharp breaths.

Tiffany wailed as if her heart were being torn out, pounding the ground as she accused him.

"It was him! Past ten at night he knocked on my door, said his mom had stopped him earlier, so he'd snuck over now to fix my water heater."

"I was nice enough to let him in and pour him some water, and the second he was inside he locked the door behind him, threw me down on the bed, and tried to do that to me!"

Tiffany was crying and shouting all at once, clutching her torn collar in a death grip.

"I fought for my life, clawed his hand open, kicked him in the stomach, and that's the only reason he didn't succeed."

"He was humiliated and furious, and scared I'd call the police, so he grabbed a lighter and set the curtains by my bed on fire. He wanted to burn me alive in there to keep me quiet!"

The crowd erupted.

The woman with the gold chain from earlier jumped right out and cursed Ryan to his face, her finger jabbing in his face.

"I knew there was something off about your family this morning, so cold-blooded. Turns out this little punk was up to no good all along!"

"Playing the good boy, huh, when you go assault a young girl in the middle of the night and set a fire on top of it. You're an animal!"

"Call the police! Somebody call the police and get this animal locked up!"

Ryan's face went white in an instant.

He looked at the furious neighbors and shouted in shock.

"I didn't! I was home all night, I never set one foot out the door. Why are you lying about me like this!"

The building's security guards and several officers who'd rushed over at the news pushed quickly through the crowd and closed in around Ryan.

Ryan's legs buckled and he nearly dropped to his knees, but I caught his arm and hauled him upright.

Tiffany curled herself into a ball, shivering, and hid behind a female officer.

She deliberately tugged her shirt down to reveal several glaring, blood-red scratches across her shoulder.

"Officer, you have to help me, please, I almost died tonight!"

My face cold, I held tight to Ryan's trembling hand.

I looked past the officers and locked my eyes on Tiffany.

"You'd better watch what you say, Tiffany. Words like that have consequences."

"Making up lies out of thin air to frame someone for a serious crime. Do you have any idea how many years that gets you?"

Tiffany's crying cut off, and she shouted through gritted teeth.

"Don't you try to scare me! You're covering for your son. Your whole family's a bunch of murderers!"

An officer cut off our argument.

"That's enough, both of you. Talk proves nothing. Are there security cameras in the hallways?"

The property manager came hurrying over, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

"Yes! The hallway camera catches the door to her unit perfectly. I'll pull the footage right now!"