You don’t mean that and you know it.
She leaves me on read.
I can’t be sliding into thetotal jerkzone again when I just gotout of it. I have to fix this.
Grabbing my blazer, I bolt out the door.
Exactly ten minutes away from Summer’s place, my phone rings, and there’s a wave of disappointment when it’s not her name that pops up on the screen.
“There’s a problem at Warehouse 4. I’m watching the surveillance footage,” Link says when I pick up.
That fucker Jacob! I knew he was going to hit today.
“I’m going there now. You and Connor, with me. Dean and Carter can handle the event until we get there.”
I make a swift turn, already pushing thoughts of Summer aside, wondering what my cousin figured out this time to mess with me.
I’m at the warehouse in under four minutes, immediately spotting smoke coming out of the place. Why the fuck hasn’t the gas suppression system turned on?
Rushing inside the lobby, it’s swallowed by a choking fog, making my eyes sting. I pull my sleeve over my mouth and push further in, searching for the two guards who were on shift. Five steps in, I stumble over Mitchell, the older guard. He coughs. Alive.
I haul him up, and Connor is there in a second, helping me out. Once Mitchell is on his feet, Connor takes the guard’s full weight, jerking his head to the left.
“There’s someone there. Get ’im!”
I nod, coughing.
Reaching the body on the ground, I expect Kyle, the younger guard, but it isn’t him. The guy’s unconscious and bleeding from the head, but there’s a wrench still clenched in his hand. Hauling him up, I sling his arm over my shoulder and drag him outside to leave him on the sidewalk. Link is already there, calling 911 while checking on Mitchell’s condition.
Connor and I head to check the security’s small backroom, which we’d used a few times, but no sign of Kyle there. Grabbing a water bottle from the table, I stop Connor on his way out and teara strip from my suit. I wet it, pass it to him to tie over his nose and mouth, then do the same for myself.
We head for the storage rooms, and I can instantly pinpoint where the flames are coming from. The room where we used to keep most of our paintings—the ones up for sale. A metal rod blocks the door from being opened. I shout Kyle’s name in case he’s in one of the other smaller storage rooms, but there’s no response.
Heat radiates from the room before me as a warning. Yet, in a desperate attempt to get that rod out of the way and open the door, I grab it with my bare hands. It burns instantly. I pull away, hissing, while another deep cough reminds me the smoke is getting to us, and I don’t know how much more time we have. Connor’s coughing harder than I am.
“Get outside! I’ll take care of this!” I shout, but he shakes his head, and I already know he won’t comply.
“No way I’m leaving you here!”
“Give me your jacket,” I demand, but instead, Connor takes it off and uses it to pull the rod from the door.
When he opens it, the intense heat licks my skin. But that’s not nearly as unbearable as the stench assaulting all my senses. It’s familiar and unmistakable. The nidor of burning flesh, hair, and blood settles into your brain and never leaves.
And that’s exactly what the open door reveals—Kyle’s lifeless body, burned almost beyond recognition, slumped against the wall a few steps from the door.
He was a twenty-five-year-old troublemaker whom I offered a job a year ago, when no one else would take him. Kyle turned his life upside down for good so fast that two weeks ago, he told us he and his girlfriend were expecting.
What the fuck have I done? He wasn’t even supposed to be here tonight. I doubled the security for nothing and got him killed.
My guilt suffocates me worse than the smoke does, clouding my mind enough for me to barely realize Connor is dragging meoutside.
Mitchell is unconscious, and the ambulance and the firefighters are still not here, but I can place the picture of what happened in my head clearly enough to know the guy we dragged outside is not going to wait for help to come.
“Take him to Hollow Bend!” I turn to Connor.
We bought a small house a while back—middle of nowhere, the kind of place where the road doesn’t even show up on maps. Looks like it’s finally going to earn its keep tonight.
Connor takes the piece of shit from the ground and starts dragging him to his trunk. He can’t throw him in there when there are a few people around. I shake my head at him when he opens the trunk, and thankfully, he gets my warning and proceeds to drag the nameless man to the backseat right when the firefighters and the ambulance arrive.
