I stopped and gasped, turning to Harry with a wild look in my eyes. "That's it!" I yelled, but then I lowered my voice to not draw attention to what I was going to say. "I know how we can get out!"

"How?" He asked, obviously not following my line of thought.

I closed in on him so I could whisper close to his ear, even though I was pretty sure no one could hear us. "We're going to start a fire."

"Are you crazy?" He asked me, a child-like fear overcoming his face.

"No, Harry, listen to me for a minute. If we start a fire that's big enough so they can't put it out themselves, they'll have to call the fire department. If it's the same here as in the US, when they call 911, the dispatchers automatically send firetrucks, ambulances, and police. It's standard protocol."

He shook his head, looking agitated. "It's dangerous."

"I know it is, but I think it's our only chance," I said, trying to comfort him. "We'll just make sure we can get out through a window before we start it."

"Why not the back door?" He wondered.

"Theodore put a guard there, too."

"What?!" He cried in desperation, tear droplets gathering in the corner of his panicked eyes.

"It's not hopeless," I assured him. "If we get through a window on the north side of the house," I pointed to the kitchen window, "we can go straight up the side to the main house and the fence without having to get past the guard." I went over and opened the window. "See? And when the emergency crews arrive, we just have to yell for help."

"Oh," he said, finally considering the possibility of my plan. "But Theodore and the guards will be looking for us, won't they?"

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe..." I swallowed my anxiety. "Maybe they'll think we're still inside...and just let us burn. That would be an easy solution to Theodore's problem."

His face became dark with the implication of my words. Theodore was intent on killing us and we both knew it. Period. We had to get out, no matter what it took. He shook his head again and finally breathed, "Okay."

"Let's eat first and then we'll check out our escape routes. Then we can stock the kitchen with as many flammable items as possible. We should set the fire at night, when everyone is sleeping so it will hopefully take them longer to respond."

He nodded and we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We added a few chunks of cheese to our lunch, after we cut off the moldy parts. "It's nice to just eat together again, isn't it?" I asked him, trying to ease his anxiety. And mine.

"It's the best," he grinned. "I have enjoyed every single meal I've eaten with you."

"Aww, you're always so sweet," I said. As we finished, we didn't bother cleaning up. I looked at him with a chuckle. "It's gonna burn anyway."

He laughed but he looked uneasy. I walked directly to the window in the kitchen and unlatched it again, intending to inspect the screen more closely. 

"Wait!" He said in a loud whisper. "What about the cameras?"

"Oh," I laughed. "I smashed them all. With your baseball bat."

"You what?" He shouted in laughter.

"I broke them. I guess you could say I had a little breakdown," I said and shrugged. Then I turned back to the window. I found, however, that the screen was screwed into the frame. It wasn't ideal but we could always cut the screen if necessary. Honestly, there had to be at least one egress window in the damn place. By law, there was supposed to be one in every room, but since when did Theodore follow the law? We systematically checked every window and we found that the screen in my room just popped out. Luckily, that was the north side of the house, facing the woods, as well so hopefully we could sneak out unnoticed.

I left the screen in place and closed the windows. "Yes!" I pumped my fist. "We'll leave this until the last minute." The I lowered my voice to a whisper, just in case. "Now we have to figure out how to build a fire that will catch fast enough so they have to call emergency services." I thanked the architectural gods who designed the kitchen because the stove and microwave were in a corner that shared a wall with the bathroom behind it. Meaning, there was no window nearby and it would take longer for them to notice the fire. Hopefully.

"Right," Harry agreed. "You're so smart."

"You are, too," I said gently. "Time to put some of your science knowledge into action. Now we have to find everything in the house that will burn, okay? Anything flammable. Check the labels if you're not sure."

We worked quickly, assembling a stockpile of things from other rooms - nail polish and nail polish remover, rubbing alcohol, hairspray, cleaners and anything else in aerosol cans. I had also scored a bottle of Drano. We sat down in the kitchen together and took a break for a few moments, brainstorming for more ideas.

"Sugar!" Harry yelled and then lowered his voice. "Didn't you say sugar burns easily?" He pulled out the bag and set it on the counter next to the other things.

"Yes, great thinking!" I agreed.

At that very moment, the doors to the suite opened and we both turned in abject horror. Dr. Blake strode into the room and greeted us as if we were old friends. "Hello," he smiled. "What are you two up to?"

Shit!

Fucking shit, we were busted.

What now? I took a deep breath and explained with utmost confidence, "Harry was asking about kitchen safety. I decided to expand it into a lesson about household fire safety."

"A lesson better suited for the outdoors, don't you think?" He asked.

"Of course," I agreed. "Except it appears, by the presence of an armed guard outside the back door, that we are no longer allowed outside."

"Oh yes," he said, laughing snidely at our plight.

"The sink is stainless steel," I pointed out. "We'll just use small amounts to make sure nothing catches."

"Fine, whatever," he said, waving off my explanation as if he really didn't care. "Let me see how your shoulder is doing."

"I took the bandage off," I fibbed. I wonder how he would react if I told him it came off when Harry and I were having sex. I laughed to myself at the thought. "I think it's healing well."

"Do you need any more pain reliever?" He asked. "I could bring some more to you later today."

"No, I'm great," I said, shaking my head insistently. "I still have a few left and the pain is pretty minimal. But I'll let you know in a few days if I need more."

"All right, then," he said. "I have to run. I have to teach a class this afternoon but I thought I'd check in on you first."

"Thank you," I said, trying to muster a smile. "I really do appreciate your help." Even if your brother is an absolute maniac, I added in my head. I wondered if Dr. Blake's students had any clue what he was covering up for his psycho brother, or that he was treating a gunshot wound inflicted by his brother, or that he had illegally prescribed drugs to keep an innocent kid under his brother's control for twenty years. If they saw him the way I had first imagined him, as a kindly older man with a gentle nature, they probably loved him. The thought made me sick. I hoped he and Theodore would rot in prison for the rest of their lives once this was all over.

"You're welcome," he said. "I'll check on you in a few days then."

He left and I started crying. "He knows! What if he knows?" I said through panicked tears. "We're never going to get out of here." I sat at the table and sobbed, laying my head over my arms.

I felt Harry's warm hands on my shoulders. "Jules," he whispered. "Hey, it's going to be okay. I think he believed you."

"Why would I be teaching you science?!" I cried desperately. "He's not stupid."

"I think he is," Harry said flatly.

"I'm serious," I answered him in a sharp tone.

"So am I," Harry insisted. "You said that Theodore brainwashed me, right? Is that the word you used?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I think he has Dr. Blake brainwashed, too. Whenever the two of them were together, he acted like...well kind of like me when I used to believe everything that Theodore or my nannies told me. Without question."

I remembered Dr. Blake insisting 'My brother is not a murder' and saying he'd have to check with Theodore about when he could talk to me. I guess he did seem to be under Theodore's thumb. And that was all I had to go on. "You're right, thank you," I told Harry with a proud smile. "Dr. Blake is probably brain-washed, and he didn't seem the least bit interested in what we were doing." Harry beamed proudly as well, which made everything so much happier in that moment. "So let's keep getting ready," I said. "Let's just try to make it as inconspicuous as possible." Harry nodded eagerly. "So where were we?"

"Sugar," he answered.

"Right. Then let's get as much paper as we can from the learning room. Crumple it up into loose wads so that they have room for oxygen to feed the fire. We'll stuff all the cabinets around the stove, especially the ones up above. Then we'll douse everything with flammable liquids and wait for the right time."

After crumpling paper and stuffing cabinets full, we searched the rest of the kitchen for anything in cardboard cartons like cereal and crackers, and we made sure they were in the closest cabinets to the stove. Next were cooking oil, cooking spray, paraffin wax. I felt like we had hit the jackpot with everything we found. At least if anyone else came in while we had all of that on the counter, it might just look like we were planning on doing some cooking at that point.

Well, we were...kind of.

The next step was to disable the smoke detectors. I got a chair from the kitchen table, but I still couldn't quite reach the one on the ceiling in the kitchen. "Can you get it?" I asked Harry. Just twist it a little to get it off the bracket."

He got up on the chair and reached it easily. He pulled the smoke detector off the ceiling and handed it to me.

"Yes!" I cried in triumph. "It's not hard-wired so we can just take the battery out. Let's get the other ones." We went to each room, pulled down the smoke detectors and pulled out the batteries. Oddly, that part was the most upsetting to me. It was counter-intuitive to be disabling life-saving devices, but this was for our freedom, I kept telling myself. The rest of the house undoubtedly had its own smoke detectors. Everyone else should be able to get out safely.

"Candles!" I said. "Do you have candles?" I thought I remembered seeing some decorative ones in our bathrooms but I never actually used them. I visited all three bathrooms and grabbed all the candles I could find. And toilet paper, rolls and rolls of toilet paper, which I tucked into the cabinets and drawers with the rest of the paper. I set the candles "decoratively" on the kitchen counter, close to the stove.

Harry and I stood back and inspected our work. "I think that's everything," I said but then I remembered the fire extinguisher in the pantry. I took it off the hook and brought it to Harry's bedroom, shoving it far back in his closet and covering it with his clothes.

On the way out, I noticed his baby book on his dresser. I looked around for any other kind of duffel bag or backpack since Theodore had stolen both of ours. "Harry?" I called and he came running in.

"Do you have another bag or something we can carry a few things in?" I asked. I handed him the baby book. "Take this with you. Is there anything else you want to save?" He looked through his room and hardly found anything worth keeping. He pulled an old canvas bag out of one of his drawers, one that had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it, and he said, "This is all I have."

"Okay, that works," I said, but then I also remembered my carry-on bag stored in my own closet with my luggage. Harry followed me into my room and froze at the sight of massive amounts of blood everywhere.

He fell to his knees next to my backpack. "You could have died," he whispered.

I knelt down next to him and said, "You could have been killed, too. That's why we have to get the hell out of here." I stood up and took his hand, then pulled him into a warm and lingering hug.

"Put your bag by the window," I instructed him. I put a few things into my bag and then suggested, "Why don't you put a few clothes in here? I have some more space."

"Do you think all my stuff will get burned?" He asked.

"I don't know, but that's why I want you to take whatever is really important to you. Some things can be replaced, and some can't." He looked at me with tears in the corner of his eyes. I knew he was afraid and I was, too. But we couldn't back down now. "You can do this, Baby. We have to do this," I said with absolute confidence, although my courage was definitely being tested. "We're getting out of here. Tonight."

* * * * *

So, yeah...do you think it will work???

Thanks so much for all the reads & votes - please don't forget to leave me some COMMENT LOVE - I adore hearing from all of you <3