Chapter 21
CHARLIE
Thursday is chaos! I get to work and I have a mountain of stuff on my desk.
Crowding out my neon Rubik’s cube, array of comical rubber duckies, and a framed photo of my parents is a tower of mail to sort.
A shipment of misprinted T-shirts from race ops that they need me to send back to the printer.
And that’s just the physical items. My email has a barrage of requests. Many of them from Celine.
A famous football star is planning to do one of our triathlons; Celine needs me to help coordinate the entire day and extra-VIP experience for his wife.
Trey and Shauna have an email on travel etiquette they want to send to the entire company that I need to proof before I send it from Oliver’s email account.
Everyone on the marketing team has been subtly hinting that they want an assignment at the Exponential Endurance Championships because, hello, work trip to Fiji sounds amazing.
The Smithsonian wants “something” from FIRE’s first year in operation.
Oh, and my computer is giving me the blue-screen-of-death.
One of Ian’s team said he would be over soon to help.
Which means I’m left to manage everything from my phone.
“Ugh,” I groan as Declan passes by.
“Hello to you too,” he says sarcastically.
“Sorry,” I reply. “It’s not you.” This time.
“Whatever it is, I know you can overcome any obstacle, clear any hurdle.” Declan looks even taller when he stands at my desk while I am sitting.
He towers over me, offering me the same Cheshire-cat smile he did before not changing the numbers on the budget deck.
The dimples in his cheeks are inviting and dangerous.
Then the words he used hit. I sit up out of my stress slump, my back ramrod straight.
“You googled me, didn’t you?”
“Steeplechase is pretty badass, Ross.” Declan throws me another grin before taking a swig of his coffee.
He’s right. The steeplechase is badass. Along with the 10K and 15K, this was my event.
I qualified for all three for the World Games four years ago, but I was most excited to clear the massive hurdles and splash in the water reservoir round the track.
I think again of the quote behind my back: Quitters never earn a line in the history books.
Boy, do I know it.
I don’t know what to say next, but Declan changes the topic. I’m grateful for that. “What’s on the docket today?”
I’m not sure if I trust him yet, but maybe he’s making an effort. I can give him another chance. I tell him about the myriad requests from Celine.
“Isn’t a Smithsonian submission branding or PR?” Declan asks.
“It’s both and neither, hence it falls to me,” I explain. Because anything that doesn’t fit neatly into one department usually makes a stop at my desk before it gets resolved.
Declan mulls this over. “I can take you over to storage to find something. Should be easy.”
“You would do that?”
“Yeah, I’m one of four people who have the key. You can’t get in without me, and anyone without clearance needs to be supervised,” he tells me as he starts walking to the exit. Begrudging assistance, but I’ll take it, I think as I grab my purse and phone.
The storage unit for FIRE isn’t fancy. It’s a double unit at a local facility.
Declan has the key, and I wonder if I should have one too.
Thankfully, the A/C is running, but as with most things in Florida in the summer, it is almost too cold.
I regret not bringing a sweater, but we shouldn’t be in here for too long.
“The further back we go, the older the memorabilia gets,” Declan states as we snake our way through a makeshift aisle built between towers of boxes.
I marvel at decades’ worth of stuff. That’s the fable capitalism has sold us time and time again.
This tycoon started from nothing with nothing.
Humble beginnings evidenced by a company started in a garage.
There are many companies that have the same origin and so few find the path to eternal consumer staples, vertical defining brands.
FIRE did start out of a garage, though. Finish lines and orange cones piled into a golf cart.
The timing equipment was rented until Oliver decided to buy it.
The shirts and medals would overflow into the kitchen on race week and then a gaping hole would be left until the next event and the next.
Until he needed volunteers, paid helpers. And more space.
I sneeze. The dust in here is thick.
Now the artifacts of Oliver’s life’s work reside in this storage facility.
The memorabilia and legacy items are in one container, the old sponsor signage forgotten in another, the plastic boards doomed to never deteriorate or fade.
The sponsor team is secretly hoping the old companies sign back on and we don’t have to recreate the posters, I’m sure.
“Hey, these shouldn’t be here,” I say aloud as I spot the finisher T-shirts from the cancelled Kalispell races. The same ones Raj and the King Cool team need us to deliver so he can donate them on his next philanthropy trip to C?te d’Ivoire.
Declan turns back to see what I’m referring to. But it is dark in here, even with the lights on. Many of the boxes tower high enough to block out the bulbs.
“Can you shine a light over here for me?” I ask him.
I take a photo of the shipping label with my phone and try to send it over to Ahmed.
He’s in the office this week, before he heads back out to set up several of our events in Central America.
I hope he can get them sorted out in time.
There’s a boat leaving next week for our races in Africa, so we can still get the shirts to Raj in time if we have it in that shipment.
“No service in here,” I mutter as the email fails to send. I’ll have to remember to send it later.
“Yeah, concrete does that,” Declan quips.
OK, so he is being helpful, but he still retains most of his snark.
He leads us further into the unit until we hit the back wall. “Here are the most ‘historical’ items.”
“Let’s see if we can find any of the original finish-line banners, shirts, or medals. That could be good for a display.” I start working on the boxes to our left, Declan the right. There is one light bulb shining enough that we don’t have to use our phones.
We find exactly what we’re searching for: a box with leftover shirts from the very first race and a roster, handwritten, for the first FIRE triathlon.
“Alright, let’s get out of here,” I say as I put the items carefully in my purse, grateful for its obnoxious size.
“What’s that?” Declan asks, his attention on something else.
Then I hear it too. It sounds like something scratching at cardboard.
“Do you think it’s bugs? Or a rat?” I ask, because, honestly, a storage unit would be a likely place for them to hide.
“It sounds bigger,” Declan says, not taking his eyes off the passageway we came down.
He moves in front of me, with his hand held back, as if to block me from going round him.
This protective stance tells me he does not think it is any kind of vermin but rather something that could actually harm us.
“Are we in danger?” I whisper. I look behind me, even though we are at the back of the unit and the only thing next to us is a concrete wall. This narrow opening in the precariously heaped boxes looks smaller and smaller with each second. Is this what claustrophobia feels like?
“Shh,” Declan hisses at me.
I want to snap at him for dismissing my very plausible question, but I don’t get the chance. I inch forwards and – without meaning to – walk into his hand. His palm touches my stomach and stays there for a second. Two. Three.
“Sorry,” he whispers. “Stay behind me.” But he still hasn’t moved his hand. The tips of his fingers are pinpricks of heat against my shirt, matches about to ignite my body.
It’s just the closed space, his cologne, I tell myself.
His hand is gone and I take a half-step back. He’s been trained how to protect people; it’s not like he wanted to touch me.
My ears search for any sound to indicate what could be in here with us, what or who might be coming toward us.
All I hear is Declan’s breath. My own. His shoes scuff the concrete floor as he shuffles forwards.
That’s when the lights go out and I hear the roar of the front gate to the unit roll closed and clang shut.