It was getting hotter. The warmth that would have been welcome only minutes ago was now her enemy. Hannah wiped the moisture from her forehead with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. How hot was it? How long would it take her to lose consciousness? Was it true that your life passed before your eyes when you were about to die? She didn’t want to know. Not now. Not ever.

It hadn’t been long, or at least she didn’t think that much time had passed, but she felt dizzy, disoriented, light-headed. Her skin felt hot and it reminded her of sausages on the grill. They split open if you didn’t score them with a knife. Would her skin split open before anyone found her?

Heat rose. The moment she thought of it, she dropped to the floor. Could she dig her way down to safety? But the floor was tile and under the tile would be a concrete slab. Out of luck. She was trapped. There was no help to be had below her.

The ceiling. She hadn’t checked that out yet. But the ceiling was perfectly smooth…except for something that made her draw in her breath sharply. Hope bloomed as she stared up at the round white disk with the holes ringing its circumference.

The conversation with Herb about the alarm systems in the sauna came back to Hannah with startling clarity. It was a smoke alarm, not a heat alarm. If it was set off, it went straight to the Lake Eden Fire Department. Hannah glanced down at the rose she’d placed on the bench of the sauna. Some plastic smoked when it melted. The rose Andrea had given her could be her lifesaver!

It was her only chance. Hannah took a deep breath of the stifling hot air and did her best to pull herself together. Then she forced her body to move. She was so hot, so enervated, but she couldn’t give in to the lethargy that threatened to leave her gasping. She’d be a lifeless puddle on the floor if she didn’t act now.

Fire. Plastic. Smoke. The words flashed in her fading mind. She had to hold the rose close enough to the heating coils to ignite it. And then she had to climb up on the bench, stand up as tall as she could, and hold the rose up to the smoke alarm.

Hannah crawled. She couldn’t stand upright. She was simply too weak. She crawled to the source of the heat, the coils that were so mercilessly draining her life away, and held the rose directly over them. Her vision was wavy, but she saw the rose send up a wisp of smoke and start to melt, the red petals of the flower sinking into the green of the leaves. And a horrible smell began to rise from the smoldering, smoking, melting plastic.