My mother-in-law shoved me down the stairs while I was eight months pregnant—then told my husband I had thrown myself down to frame her.

The smell got thicker.

My eyes started to burn. My throat closed up. I coughed, doubling over.

Ethan pulled his shirt up over his nose and mouth, grabbed my hand, and ran for the back of the warehouse.

“The fire escape!” he yelled over the roar of my coughing. “It’s in the back office!”

We ran through the dark, tripping over old pallets and broken glass. The gas was coming faster now, thick white clouds rolling across the floor. I could barely see. My head was spinning. My legs felt like lead.

Ethan kicked the office door open.

The fire escape was rusted, hanging off the side of the building. Three stories down.

He pushed me toward it. “Go! I’m right behind you!”

I climbed over the windowsill, my hands shaking so bad I could barely hold the rail. I was halfway down when I heard a crash from inside the office.

I looked up.

A man in a black mask was standing in the window. He had a gun in his hand.

He fired.

The bullet hit the rail an inch from my hand.

I screamed, losing my grip. I slid down two rungs, catching myself at the last second, my palms scraped raw.

Ethan ran at the man. He tackled him into a desk. They fought, knocking over chairs, smashing the lamp on the desk. The gun went off again. The bullet went through the ceiling.

Ethan got the upper hand. He slammed the man’s head into the corner of the desk. The man went limp.

Ethan grabbed the gun, ran to the window, and yelled down at me. “GO! GET TO THE COPS!”

I climbed the rest of the way down as fast as I could. My feet hit the pavement. I turned and ran for the street, screaming for the marshals.

They were there in seconds. Guns drawn. Vests on.

“Up there!” I gasped, pointing. “Third floor. There’s a man with a gun. Ethan is still up there. The building is full of gas!”

Ten marshals ran into the building.

Five minutes later, they carried Ethan out. He was coughing, his face black with soot, but he was alive.

They carried the masked man out behind him in cuffs. He was still unconscious.

An ambulance pulled up. Paramedics put oxygen masks on me and Ethan, loaded us into the back.

Elena ran up to the ambulance doors, holding Ethan’s phone and the laptop and the papers from the duffel bag.

“We got it all,” she said, grinning for the first time since I’d met her. “The phone call with Margaret was recorded on the wire. We traced her car. She’s ten minutes outside the city. State troopers are pulling her over right now. It’s over, Lila. You won.”

I closed my eyes. The oxygen was cold in my lungs. For the first time in months, I didn’t feel scared. I felt light. Like a weight I’d been carrying for years had finally been lifted off my chest.

Margaret was arrested three hours later at a rest stop on the highway. She was trying to drive to Canada. She had a fake passport, fifty thousand dollars in cash, and Clara’s birth certificate in her purse.

She didn’t say a word when they cuffed her. She just stared straight ahead, her face cold and hard as stone.

The masked man was her cousin. A convicted felon she’d paid fifty thousand dollars to kill us both and make it look like a murder-suicide. He rolled over on her immediately. Told the cops everything.

All the pieces fell into place.

The raw video proved Ethan had nodded. Proved Margaret had edited the version she’d released.

The bank records proved she’d stolen seven million dollars from the retired workers.

The text messages proved she’d paid the three former employees to lie about me. Proved she’d paid the dealer for the heroin. Proved she’d paid the man to break into my apartment and plant it.

The PI’s notebook proved she’d tracked me to the cabin.