Michael said. He lowered her back down. “That was a good first try. If only we had a stick or something to push it open with,” he said, looking around, but Padgett’s lifts didn’t have so much as a stool for the lift operator. “Okay, let’s try it again.”
“Let me try this time,” Merope said, kicking off her shoes. She stepped lightly onto his hands, squeezed herself into the narrow opening, her legs dangling as she heaved herself through it and up onto the floor, and stood up. She slid the doors all the way open from the outside to the instant accompaniment of guns and bombs. Merope looked nervously over her shoulder and then knelt down, her hand extended. “Now you, Polly. Boost her up, Michael.”
He did, and Merope grasped Polly’s free hand and pulled her up over the edge. A bomb exploded somewhere nearby, and Merope flinched and said frightenedly, “How near do you think—?”
“Near. Help me pull Michael out,” Polly said. If we can, she thought. I should have boosted him up. “Take hold of my ankles,” she ordered Merope, lying down flat on the floor and extending her arms down to Michael.
“That won’t work,” Michael shouted up. “I’m too heavy. Listen, you two go on.”
Merope leaped to her feet and ran stocking-footed into the darkness. Polly stared after her, furious. She was obviously frightened, but they couldn’t abandon Michael. “Merope—!”
“You, too,” Michael shouted up to her. “I’ll fix it and meet you downstairs.”
“I’m not going without you.”
“There’s no time to argue,” he said. “You need—” but Merope was back, dragging a chair.
“Sorry,” she said breathlessly. “I had to go all the way to the ladies’ lounge for it. Help me with it.” Together, they lowered the chair down to him, and he stepped awkwardly up onto the seat.
“Wait,” Merope shouted. “My shoes!”
“There isn’t time to—” Polly began, but he’d already stepped off the chair, jammed them in his pockets, and climbed back up.
Merope knelt next to Polly, and they heaved him up and out. “Where’s the nearest stairway?” he asked Merope.
“There,” she said, and they fled across the firelit floor, Michael hobbling behind them.
“I can’t wait to get out of this horrid place and back to Oxford,” Merope said as they ran. “Do you know what the first thing I’m going to do when we get there is?”
If we get there, Polly thought, hurrying them along. The planes were directly above them now. Bombs whistled all around them, and the floor lit up with bright, deafening flashes. They dived into the stairwell and racketed down the stairs.
“I’m going to tell Mr. Dunworthy I am never doing another assignment involving children,” Merope said.
Polly glanced back at Michael. He was keeping up, though he was leaning heavily on the stair railing.
“I thought you’d never find me, Polly,” Merope said. “When I found out you’d gone back, I—”
They reached the ground floor. Polly opened the door, and they plunged along the side of the store through a barrage of flashes and explosions, their hands up to shield their heads, and across the street.
When they came up onto the pavement on the far side, Merope and Michael stopped, panting. “No, we’re still too close,” Polly said, grabbing Merope’s arm and pulling her along the street with Michael limping after, trying to keep away from the windows of the shops and at the same time in the protection of the buildings. They should have stayed on the same side of the street as Padgett’s. The blast would spread out in an arc, and here there were no walls between them and the force of the concussion. And she had no idea how far the blast from the explosion would reach.
“I’m sorry,” Merope gasped after two blocks, “I’ve got to stop a moment.”
Polly nodded and pulled them around the next corner into the shadow of a building to catch their breath. “Thank you,” Merope panted, leaning against the wall.
Michael was bending down, his hands on his knees, breathing hard. “I wish I could… say it was… letting up,” he said, looking up at the sky, “but I think it’s… getting worse.”
“But if we go to a shelter,” Merope objected, “we’ll be trapped there all night. Shouldn’t we go straight to the drop?”
The drop. She’d been so fixed on getting Merope out of Padgett’s, on getting them to safety, she’d forgotten about Michael being the retrieval team. He was here to take her—to take them—back to Oxford, to safety. Home.