Chapter 38
Matt
Jay and I both reached for the front passenger door of my SUV. Letting my emotions get the best of me and refusing to be relegated to the back, I growled. Not a low, back of the throat growl, but a pack-alpha growl that would terrify most humans.
Not Jay. He held his hands up and said, “Down, boy.”
“Let’s go,” I ordered Nathan, whose rushed movements were no faster than a snail’s pace in my mind.
“Robinson, I get it. You’re freaking out. But Madi needs you to get your shit together,” Nathan reminded me with a shoulder clap.
“How are you so calm?” I asked Jay.
“He’s not,” Cate offered when Jay refused to answer. “He’s just hiding it better.”
“Because I know we’ll find her,” Jay answered, his voice wavering with fear and doubt.
We would. We had to.
“Failure isn’t an option,” I finished my thought out loud.
Jay’s “Ooh Rah!” blended with Nathan’s “Hooyah.”.
This mission sucked, but I was glad I had these two warriors standing beside me.
The thirty-minute drive felt like it took five hours, but in reality, it only took twenty-two minutes.
The same number of minutes between Madi’s birth and Jamie’s.
This wasn’t the first time stress and fear played weird games with my head. And I wasn’t alone; operators often had non-relevant intrusive thoughts pop into their heads during missions.
As we rounded the corner, black smoke billowed in the air but no flames were visible.
“Fuck.”
Nathan turned a corner and the burning building came into view.
Flames and smoke billowed out of the second-floor windows. Fewer flames escaped the ground-floor windows, but the thick smoke told us it was only a matter of time before the entire building turned to ash.
My hand was on the door handle before Nathan hit the brakes.
My feet were on the ground before the truck stopped moving.
“Robinson!”
I unslung my rifle and leaned down to drop in on the ground, then ripped off my vest as I sprinted toward the building.
The extra weight would only slow me down, and I didn’t want to be wearing hundreds of tiny explosives on my chest while running through a burning building.
“Wait for us!”
I couldn’t.
Ten feet from the door, movement to the left caught my eye.
“You’re too late,” she cackled as I approached.
“Where is she?”
Pamela’s maniacal laughter sent a chill down my spine. “You’ll never reach her in time.
The hell I won’t.
Jay and Nathan had closed the gap. “Get answers out of her.” I didn’t bother waiting for a reply before running to the door. I could see fire through the glass door but it wasn’t dangerously close, so I kicked the door in.
Hot air and smoke blasted my face, forcing me to raise an arm to protect my eyes as I moved further into the building.
“We’ll be right behind you.”
Before they could, a loud crash sounded behind me.
FUCK! “Find another way in,” I yelled, filling my lungs with hot smoke.
I was on my own. My heart raced as I moved as quickly as I could through the building.
“Madi!”
I coughed as more smoke-filled air burned my throat and filled my lungs.
I lifted my shirt over my nose and mouth, and tried again.
“Madi!”
If she answered, the roaring fire above drowned out the sound.
Smoke burned my eyes as I maneuvered around the small fires that turned the office into a maze.
I kept searching.
“Madi’s in the center of the warehouse, south end of the ground floor.” Cate’s voice crackled over my comms. “Pamela set fire to the perimeter, so we can’t get in until the fire department contains the blaze.”
Pamela yelled in the background, “That bitch got what she deserved!”
I coughed out a rough, “Copy that.”
Madi’s life was in my hands. When I’d promised to scorch the world to protect her, I hadn’t expected I’d literally have to brave the flames to save her.
I’d entered through the north door, at the front of the former office space. Which meant I had to work my way through the office and its hundreds of obstacles, many of them burning.
Relying on my training, I worked my way towards Madi. Burning piles of collapsed ceiling debris created more challenges along my path.
Up ahead, red double doors marked the entrance to the warehouse.
I didn’t have a direct path, so I searched for the safest route. The fire burned brighter to my left, so I turned to my right.
Fire cracked above.
I looked up.
The ceiling’s deep groan warned me I was in trouble.
I moved, but not fast enough.
A burning desk crashed through.
My left arm was directly in its path.
In slow motion, the desk collided with my forearm.
Skin sizzled.
Bones broke.
A vomit-inducing stench filled my nose.
I screamed.
My good hand slapped at the flames on my arm to smother them while I instinctively moved away from the too-close-for-comfort burning pile.
Someone screamed.