Out of Time (Fall of the Morelli Crime Family #3)

20. Chapter 20

twenty

Bianca

I t started with a pause when the door didn’t open when it should have after we arrived on the fifth floor, like how animals quiet down and hide in the minutes before a storm hits. Everything was silent, static, for a brief moment.

One second doesn’t seem like much, but getting on and off elevators becomes second nature after doing it your entire life, and we notice when something doesn’t happen—the doors opening after the full stop—at the time we expect it to.

It took one second for me to realize something was wrong, that the elevator struggled to make it even to our current floor.

But even as I registered the wrongness , I didn’t have a chance to feel confused before the elevator dropped from under me. It was sudden enough that the scream remained trapped in my throat. I became abruptly weightless, my toes barely touching the tile beneath me as I fell a millisecond after the elevator car.

We dropped maybe half a floor before the elevator jerked to a stop again. The scream in my throat caught up with my body, petering out to a pathetic little wail as Mark and I stood stock still. His arm around my back gripped harder than ever, the other hand holding tight to the railing.

My knees shook under me as I registered the loud noise from above three seconds too late, a small explosion that caused our elevator to plummet before the emergency brakes caught hold of us.

I remembered that stupid OUT OF ORDER sign that had been on the elevator for the last couple of days. Either someone messed up fixing the damn thing, or this was some sort of sabotage.

But rigging the elevator would have been a stupid plan. There were ten units in Mark’s building. How could someone be sure that it would be Mark using the faulty lift?

A second explosion sounded far below us, echoing up the elevator shaft and taking out the pistons at the bottom of the shaft meant to act as one of the ways to cushion a fall. I locked eyes with Mark.

This was intentional.

Someone sabotaged the elevator, knowing he would be inside it, that he would probably be with me, the innocent, unknown girlfriend. Someone who didn’t care about hurting a supposed pregnant woman.

Someone like my uncle.

Mark’s phone rang in his pocket, but he didn’t budge to answer the call.

“Don’t move,” he urged me. There wasn’t much that could be done in the event someone sabotages the elevator you were riding in; trying not to throw it out of precarious balance was the only thing that made sense, but if we were going to die here, together, now, I wanted to hold Mark while it happened.

I pulled his arm tighter around me, and together we sunk to the floor, so close I felt like we were one person. Romeo and Juliet were idiots; dying together was not romantic or beautiful, it was just heartbreaking.

A third explosion rattled the car around all four corners—the emergency brakes?—and our car fell again. My ribs ached from Mark’s crushing hug, but who needed to breathe when you were going to die anyway?

I couldn’t scream, but I could think, and all that went through my mind was the knowledge that I would die, and Mark would die, and we’d never have a family together.

The weight of Mark’s body pushed me close to the floor as the elevator dropped and I dug my nails into his back, waiting for the inevitable end.

We hit the basement floor hard.

Our skulls crashed together, then the back of my head smashed into the floor. Three of the walls around us split apart at the seams, crunching down and bowing out, the solid doors the only side that remained upright. A couple of tiles from the ceiling fell down, landing on Mark’s back.

How were we still alive?

Another feature to buffer an elevator’s descent is simple physics.

I remembered the words I’d googled after seeing the OUT OF ORDER sign the first time. I’d always loved figuring out how things worked, challenged myself to take apart broken pieces and put them back together again.

As the elevator descends, the air at the bottom of the shaft condenses, slowing the car and acting as a sort of airbag. All of these safety features make it incredibly unlikely for passengers to die in an elevator crash.

Someone could blow out the cables, both sets of brakes, and even the pistons at the base of the shaft, but they couldn’t destroy the air itself.

Angelo would be so angry at whoever planned this and failed.

Mark groaned and rolled off of me, rubbing his left wrist. Man, that was a gnarly angle, definitely broken in the fall.

My head throbbed in about seventeen different places, but my vision was solid, nothing fuzzy or blurry. I actually felt more alert than I had before the elevator collapse.

I didn’t notice the ringing in my ears until Mark waved his uninjured hand in front of me, trying to get my attention. He was mouthing something at me.

Could I not hear? Was the ringing in my head?

I focused on his lips. Are you alright?

I nodded. “I can’t hear, but I’m okay. You?”

He nodded, but it was clearly a lie. His wrist was broken. His eyes were unfocused. He was missing a shoe? And there were burns on his exposed foot. It must have been close to one of the corners when the E-brakes were taken out.

He ignored my doubtful look. “We gotta get out of here!”

I could hear the words this time, though they sounded far off. The hearing issue must not be too serious if it was already improving.

I reached for the railing to pull myself up, but it was no use. The walls were bent outward, out of reach, so I settled for pushing myself into a sitting position. Ow.

Mark sat up, too, feeling around in his pockets. I raised an eyebrow when he pulled out his handcuffs triumphantly. How would that help?

He popped them open and used the thin metal edge to slip between the elevator doors, prying them open so he had room to slip his fingers inside to grip the doors, forcing them apart.

I could see the muscles strain in his neck as he held the door open, so I hurried forward as quickly as I could. I didn’t know how he was managing it with his broken wrist, but I didn’t want him to do more irreparable damage to himself.

I collapsed through the opening, tripping over debris on the floor and landing hard on my hip, but Mark made it through just a couple seconds after me, his body landing with a thump beside mine.

It had been less than a minute since the first explosion destroyed the cables.

“Honey, where are you hurt?” His voice almost sounded normal again, but the ringing wasn’t stopping. I shook my head to make it go away, but that just hurt more.

Where did I hurt? Everywhere, really. “My ribs, mostly, I think. My head. My hip,” I added, though that last one was my fault for throwing myself out of the elevator so haphazardly. “You?”

“Eh, I’m alright.” I could hear his words with hardly any ringing, which meant I could hear the lie that much easier. “Nothing a good beer and some rest won’t fix.”

I ignored him; Mark’s priorities were me and my safety , so he wouldn’t admit to anything until we got me squared away. I kicked some of the bigger pieces of debris out of the way and sat up, pulling Mark up with me. But before I could muster the courage to stand, I heard a commotion and yelling in the distance. I couldn’t pinpoint any specifics with the faint ringing in my head until the voice was closer.

“Mark! Mark, Bianca, are you alive?!” His voice was distorted through the distance, but it was Lucas, trying to find us.

“Down here!” Mark shouted back, patting my hand in sympathy when I winced at his volume. “We’re alive down here!”

Lucas rounded a corner and stopped in front of us, eyes wide. I followed his gaze to the crushed elevator car behind us, the sides split open, half the floor missing, the thick steel cables shredded at the top. His disbelief was clear in his eyes.

“How the hell are you two in one piece?”

I doubted he wanted to hear the physics of compressed air and the slowing car, so I shrugged, regretting it when everything began to hurt again. But it wasn’t as bad as I expected, so I had to assume that adrenaline was keeping me conscious. I didn’t know if it would last, so I took advantage of it while I could.

I wobbled to my feet, Mark shuffling up behind me. “Did you call an ambulance yet?” I asked, limping in the direction Lucas came. The stairs had to be over there.

“Yes, they might even be out front already. I was waiting for the doctor when I heard—felt—the explosions. I can’t believe they blew the fucking elevator!”

I could. My father and uncle didn’t care who they put at risk as long as they got what they wanted. Anyone was expendable.

I made it to the stairs, not bothering to look behind me. I knew Lucas would help Mark and could hear them make their way out as well, albeit slower, so I focused only on getting outside to fresh air. I had to keep moving while the adrenaline still pumped through me; I knew it would start to fade, and my strength along with it too quickly, and I had things I needed to do.

Walking was getting easier, not harder, as I climbed the stairs, and by the time I made it up to the lobby I couldn’t feel any pain at all. I made it out the front doors, ignoring the crowd gathered around. Whether they were bystanders, evacuees, or first responders, I couldn’t say. They were just people in my way.

“Bee!” I turned at my name, seeing Athena fighting through the crowd to me. Darn. I stopped so she could catch up. “Bee, this is Dr. Alex. She’s going to look you over.”

I took in the woman at her side, masking my surprise. Dr. Alex was younger than I expected, maybe late twenties, around my age. She had gorgeous thick black hair and a flawless olive complexion. “Alex Rodriguez,” she said, offering me a hand. An ambulance pulled up, another one just a few seconds behind it.

“There they are,” Mark said, surprising me with his voice right behind me. “Come on, honey.”

He wrapped his arm around my back to guide me over to the ambulances. I couldn’t ignore the slight limp in his gait or the wince he tried to hide when he moved both hands to my hips to help lift me up through the open doors of the closest ambulance.

Mark was in pain, and it would continue to get worse until the mission was complete. It was time for Plan B.

“Come on, Mark,” I said, patting the stretcher next to me. Mark climbed up with the help of Lucas and an EMT.

Before anything else, I gave Mark a long, lingering hug. I wrapped my arms tightly around him, relishing the feel of being in his arms before I let my hands slip down to his lap. I could feel the pieces in his pocket, could grab them easily.

I hesitated for a moment, feeling an inkling of doubt over my plan. But I loved this man. I needed him to be safe.

“Her first,” he said as I directed “Him first.” I glanced over at him, seeing a smile at the corner of his mouth mirroring my own.

The EMTs from the second ambulance hurried over, and I scooted just a couple inches away from Mark. “He’s got a broken wrist and a pretty bad burn on his foot,” I volunteered.

“Yeah, but she’s been beat to hell and probably has a concussion and broken ribs,” he tattled back.

“We’ll take care of both of you,” one of the guys said. Now was my chance.

“It’s pretty crowded in here. Should I go to the other ambulance?”

“Probably a good idea,” someone said, so I nodded and hopped back down to the street.

“Lucas, can you stay with him?” I asked while Mark shouted, “Athena! You and Dr. Alex stay with her, alright?” We really did think alike.

I walked to the second ambulance with my head held high. I could do this.

Before we could pile inside, I leaned close to my EMT escort, whispering, “They’re nice women but I don’t know them that well. Do they have to ride with us?”

He patted me gently on the back and gave me an arm up into the vehicle. “Sorry, ladies, there’s not enough room for passengers. But we’re going straight to the hospital, so you can meet us there.” And my kind, wonderful EMT closed the ambulance door on Athena’s protests. Thank god.

The second EMT put the bus in drive once I was settled down and we were driving away. Now one more sentence and I could get what I needed.