Chapter 10
The explosion ripped through the air, followed by two smaller ones. Ethan and Diane ducked down in their seats in the restaurant, looking around, bewildered, like the other patrons, as the windows rattled in their frames and the night sky lit up.
“What on earth?” Diane asked, looking pale. “What’s going on? Are we under attack?”
Ethan put his glass down. “Stay here,” he said as he rose from his seat. His knees were quite weak, but he held onto the table for a moment to steady himself.
What is going on?
Looking across the table, he found that Diane was also on her feet. “I’m not letting you go out there without me.”
He nodded. She had more than proven herself in an emergency, and who knew, maybe there were folks that needed help.
Shouts rang from outside, and there was the pop-pop-pop of gunfire.
“It must be an attack,” Ethan reasoned. “So, you’re going to have to go to the office and get ready to receive casualties.” He paused. “I was having a really good time tonight.”
“Me too,” she said and smiled.
Their gazes locked and, to his surprise, her cheeks turned pink. Was she also thinking about the kiss that had been so awfully interrupted?
“Well, we’d better …” he said lamely, offering her his hand as he made his way around the table.
Diane nodded, taking his hand. “We only had one glass of that excellent merlot.” She looked at the shattered bottle sadly.
“I have others,” Ethan assured her.
The sounds of trouble were coming closer. Ethan wasn’t armed. He hadn’t expected trouble this evening. In fact, he had been planning something else entirely. A frank and open discussion of their hopes and plans for the future to see if their paths aligned.
He couldn’t do much to protect Diane, but her being in the apothecary store, safely tucked away, was as good a plan as any.
Stepping out of the restaurant, they found themselves in a world of chaos and mayhem. People were rushing this way and that, and not far, just on the other side of the creek, flames leaped and danced in the air.
“What’s on fire?” Diane asked. “What building is that? It’s not a house, is it?”
“Wrong side of the creek,” Ethan said, his gut churning. He knew which building that most likely was. “I have to go.”
“Hang on, I’ll come too. Just let me fetch my bag,” Diane said.
“No,” Ethan insisted. “Stay at the office.”
“But folks could need help at the scene,” Diane insisted. “I’ll be fine.”
Ethan could see that there was no fighting with Diane and winning. Not when it came to this. She was determined and logical, and he couldn’t find a good enough reason to force her to stay away.
I love you, and I don’t want you in danger.
It didn’t quite cut it. She wouldn’t listen to that.
So, he waited for her outside her office as she quickly grabbed her medical bag and they set off, running in the direction of the turmoil. They weren’t the only ones. A lot of the residents were rushing to the scene with buckets in their hands.
As they reached the bridge, there was another terrible bang.
It ripped through the air like a lightning strike, knocking folks to the ground with the force of the explosion.
Ethan was certain that people for miles around the town would hear the sound.
Windows shattered in the nearby buildings and showered the ground and those in the way with shards of glass.
Diane ducked down automatically, pulling him with her to the surface of the bridge, which held steady.
A moment later, they and everyone else on the bridge were back on their feet and running.
“What’s going on?”
It was Sarah. She appeared out of the crowd, looking wide-eyed and bewildered. Lumbering behind her was Ben. He had his guns strapped to his hips.
“There were shots earlier, weren’t there? I didn’t imagine it, did I?” he asked.
“We don’t know what’s happening yet,” Diane said.
They hurried over the bridge and up the slight rise in the ground to where the smelter stood. It was a ball of flame.
Chaos.
That was the world Ethan stepped into when he reached the fire. There were people on the ground, buckets beside them, blood oozing from their ears and noses. They had stunned, confused looks on their faces, as though they had no idea what was going on.
Diane grabbed Sarah’s hand and pulled her forward. They began to see to the injured.
Flames leaped into the sky, lighting everything with strange burning hues. It was the chemicals, Ethan knew. When they burned as they were now, they gave off beautiful colors, making the flames truly something to see.
“Ethan!”
It was Thomas, his tall, lanky frame pushing through the crowd.
“Thomas!” Ethan called. “We have to keep everyone back! The chemicals … The smoke could be deadly.”
Thomas understood in a moment. He opened his arms wide and began to usher folks back. “It’s too dangerous, folks. We have to back up.”
“But the fire,” a voice called from the gathering crowd. Ethan couldn’t make out who it was. “Won’t it spread?”
“It’s too late for the smelter,” Ethan called, knowing it was sadly true. “And no, it shouldn’t spread. That’s why we built the smelter on its own. Just in case. So back up!”
The citizens of Unity were nothing if not determined.
They resisted him a bit, not wanting to watch one of their town’s buildings burning.
It didn’t take long, though, for even the most determined to see that there was no way they could get close to the smelter.
No way at all. The fire burned too hot. Any water thrown at it seemed to turn to steam a few yards from the actual flames.
“It’s burning very hot, isn’t it?” Andrew asked, walking over to Ethan.
“I think it has to be the chemicals, but …” Ethan’s mind was racing.
“What are you thinking?” Andrew asked.
Ethan took him by the arm and walked him a little way from the inferno and the crowd that now stood watching it burn.
“There’s something off about this,” Ethan said.
“I thought maybe we had left one of the furnaces burning, and it could start the fire, which would eventually ignite the chemicals and so on. But I personally checked each of the machines, and their fires were out. We make sure to start fresh once we’ve finished a shipment, which we did today. ”
“Where are the bars?” Andrew asked, fear in his eyes.
Ethan smiled. “They’re in the administration building, in the vault.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Andrew said, letting out a sigh of relief. “I was afraid?—”
He was cut off by the bustling form of Mr. Rossi pushing his way through the crowd toward them. He wore a stern expression.
“Ah, there you are,” he said, looking at Ethan and then at Andrew. “What is going on here? You know this is going to be a major setback.”
“You don’t say,” Andrew muttered.
“Excuse me?” Mr. Rossi asked.
“Look,” Andrew said, anger burning in his cheeks. “I’ve had it with you. You’re a bureaucrat. You sit in a little office judging folks who actually do something with their time, and we’re supposed to take you seriously?—”
Ethan put a hand on Andrew’s arm. Sure, they all felt that way about the man the investment firm that had put up the money for the mine had sent to them, but saying it out loud to his face … Surely that was courting more trouble than they could manage. “Andrew,” Ethan said and stopped.
Over Mr. Rossi’s shoulder, he saw something that chilled his blood. Jeff and the new deputy, Jason, had a man slung between them. They were dragging him, not to where Diane and Sarah had set up a first aid area, but away from the crowd. Was that what the shooting had been about?
“Ethan?” Andrew asked impatiently.
He could either deal with Andrew and Mr. Rossi, or he could rush off and poke his nose into something he didn’t understand. It was a split-second decision, and Ethan decided he was needed right where he was.
“Sorry,” he said. “Look, we aren’t sure what happened. I personally shut everything down this evening. I made sure there wasn’t a fire in the building. It’s a mystery to me how this started.”
“It’s plain and simple, Mr. Lewis; you must have missed something,” Mr. Rossi said pointedly in a superior tone.
“If Ethan says he shut the whole place down, then that’s exactly what he did,” Andrew said.
“I was there,” Thomas interjected. “Sorry, I was eavesdropping. We always make sure that the furnaces and kilns are cooling down before we leave. We close everything up. There’s no way this fire started without help.”
“Oh, come now!” Mr. Rossi said with a supercilious chuckle. “Who would ever do such a thing?”
“There are about a hundred bandits to pick from,” Ethan retorted testily.
There was a moment’s silence between them, punctuated by the roar and pop of the fire and the cries of the injured.
Just then there was a shriek, followed by raised voices.
“He’s been shot!”
“Are you sure?”
“But who is he? I don’t recognize him.”
Andrew looked at Ethan, and they strode off in the direction of the voices. They were close by, behind a stack of crates that had been knocked to the ground and now lay strewn about.
“Hey, we’re not finished!” Mr. Rossi yelled.
“I think we are,” Andrew said testily.
Grace, Hector, and Chrissie stood over a prone form. They turned when Andrew and Ethan reached them, and all started talking at once.
Andrew held up a hand to stop them. “Hang on. One at a time!”
“This man’s been shot,” Grace said, pointing to the figure.
“We don’t know him,” Chrissie added.
“I don’t think he’d been living here,” Hector said. “But I don’t know if he’s a bandit either. I’ve never seen him before.”
Hector had been in El Aguila’s employ until he met Grace, who showed him he could choose his own fate. He had been a great asset to the town ever since despite his not knowing who El Aguila was or where to find him.
Ethan went down on his haunches and looked at the man’s face. He had never seen him before either. “He’s a stranger … But how?”
Looking up, Ethan could see that Andrew had the same question burning in his mind too. How had this man gotten into Unity? How was this possible?
“And Robert’s only due to return on the weekend,” Andrew said softly.
“Maybe we can move him to one of the storerooms in the office building; it’s very cold down there. The body will keep,” Ethan suggested.
Andrew nodded. “I’m not so worried about that. I’m more concerned if he had friends.”
The idea hadn’t even entered Ethan’s mind.
Friends? Could this man not have been working alone?
It would make sense to send more than one.
But how? The town was locked up tight. No one got in if the men at the gate didn’t know them.
And this was Unity; everyone who lived there was at least familiar with everyone else.
There were no strangers. Everyone knew someone else, and that meant it was difficult for complete strangers to get in.
Except …
Ethan’s mind went back to the day Diane had arrived. “Perhaps they walked in earlier,” he said.
“What? That’s not possible,” Andrew said.
“It is,” Hector agreed. “Sometimes the farmers come in with new people on their carts. I know from the shifts I do on the gate. And the new nurse arrived. Diane. I was the one who let her in when she showed me a letter from you.” He smiled at Ethan.
Ethan smiled back. Hector was a kind man. It baffled Ethan’s mind how he had ever been in league with El Aguila and his men.
“So, our great defenses are less than great,” Andrew said with a disheartened sigh. “That means we could have a wealth of these people in our midst. What else could they be planning?”
An image pushed its way to the fore of Ethan’s mind, a body being dragged by two men.
“Let’s just keep this man a secret,” Ethan said. “Can you get a sheet or something and cover him up?”
“Yes, then take him to the mine administration building,” Andrew said. “Stash him around the back. I’ll get him taken care of.”
They set off.
Ethan took Andrew by the arm and pulled him to the side, where he hoped no one would hear. He quickly told Andrew what he had seen and how there might be another man who could shed some light on the situation.
The expression that came to Andrew’s face was unreadable. He nodded to Ethan. “I’ll take care of this. Where did they go?”
Ethan pointed. “That way.”
Andrew patted his shoulder. “Can you handle things here?”
“Of course.”
Andrew set off.
Watching his friend and boss make his way through the seething crowd, Ethan hoped that everything would be all right. If their wall could be penetrated so easily, then what was the point of having it? What was the point of any of it?
Safety was an illusion, a convenient lie they all told themselves.
There was no such thing. There would always be those who wished them harm because of their success.
Some people couldn’t stand it; they couldn’t understand that it was born from a mutual desire to be successful and the understanding that, in order to truly succeed, one needed to help others reach their goals too.
It was a funny thing, but that was always how it worked in Ethan’s experience.
If he wanted to do something wonderful, it was always better when he shared it with those around him.
Small-minded people couldn’t grasp that.
It had to be why El Aguila was so intent on ripping success from their fingers.
Well, the bandit was in for a surprise. Ethan didn’t know if it was their nemesis’s work that had taken his smelter from him, but it wasn’t a great leap of the imagination to get there.
Most things that went wrong in Unity were that man’s doing.
Ethan could only hope that Robert was making some headway in tracking the bandit down.
“Ethan?” Thomas asked, dragging him from his thoughts. “What should we do now?”
Ethan turned and looked back at the burning building. There was nothing to do but wait. “That fire will burn itself out soon enough when it runs out of fuel. When it’s done, we’ll see what there is to see.”