Page 84 of Entangled

“Yes, Gian. I am going to take my leave.”

“You make it hard to believe, that’s all. You work harder than I do, amore. And that says something because I never stop.”

“I promise I’m going to take my leave. But tonight, I’m going to stay later. We have a new woman on the floor—domestic abuse, and it’s a risky situation right now. I feel like she just needs someone to talk to a bit more, and maybe she’ll feel less anxious about the shelter and what we’re trying to do to help her.”

Gian grunted something under his breath that Cara didn’t understand before adding louder, “Your soul is too good for this world, love. You better take your leave, and enjoy every minute of it. You deserve that, Cara. So fine, we’ll do something tomorrow, but something tonight, too.”

“I’m going to be too tired for anything tonight, Gian.”

“I’ll surprise you.”

“With what?”

“I’m actually not too far away with my brother, having dinner. How about—”

Gian’s sentence cut off, and a nothingness sounded in Cara’s ear. She looked down at the office phone, only to see the call had been cut off, but there was no dial tone. She hit the receiver button, but each time, the same nothingness came through the speaker.

“What the fuck?” Cara asked out loud to herself.

Then, the lights went out.

Instantly, backup emergency lights lit up over Cara’s head in one corner of her office. There was absolutely no reason for the phones to cut out, nor for the power to shut off. Cara might have overlooked the power thing, as sometimes that happened in the city when a car accident took out a transformer, but she hesitated on thinking that was the issue.

Why?

Because even without power, the phone lines would work. The phone lines would have needed to be cut, deliberately, for them not to work.

Instinct made Cara grab her cell phone from her purse as she headed out of her office. The shelter was a complex-style building, comprised of different areas from housing wings, to the kitchen, the offices wing, and the downstairs section, where things like the daycare, reception, a small library, and more was set up for the women to use.

Cara went for the stairs first, deciding on heading down that way to see what in the hell was going on. She had just stepped foot on the lower floor when the first gun shots rang out. Screams followed.

“Holy shit,” someone murmured from the front.

Cara stayed behind the safety of the wall that separated her from being seen by the people at the front entrance of the shelter.

“Allen,” she heard Jenny say, “please put the—”

“Shut the fuck up. Where’s my wife?”

Cara heard the patter of fast footsteps heading her way, and the second gunshot split through the air. The body of one of the volunteers landed so close to Cara’s spot that she heard the woman take her last breath.

Oh, my God.

“Let’s not do that again,” Allen—Melinda’s husband—said, his tone cold and bored. “Lock the place down. I’m not leaving until I get my fucking wife.”

Cara took a breath, and then another. Her slight touch of PTSD from Lea’s murder made things like gunfire into a huge monster she didn’t want to battle. She certainly couldn’t afford to battle it right then.

She didn’t realize it but she had squeezed her hands so tightly, her fingernails cut into her palms. It was only the slight movement of her baby that brought Cara but of her daze, back into the present, and reminded her what she had in her hand.

A cell phone.

One that worked.

And there was still a whole floor of people that needed to stay where they were and go into lockdown mode. It was likely that because of the cut phone and power lines, the staff in the upper floors were not aware of what was happening downstairs. A proper alert couldn’t be sent over the speakers to lockdown and hide-in due to a dangerous situation.

Thankfully, given the time of day, the bottom floor was mostly empty. A lot of the staff and women would be in the kitchen on the second floor, readying for meal time. A lot of the woman might even still be in the housing wing, readying to head to the kitchen.

Cara hit the stairs running, though she tried to keep her steps as quiet as possible. Already, she had her phone turned on and was dialing nine-one-one.