Chapter 27
Arlene extended her foot to push open the door, while Don clung helplessly to her neck. He was groggy and in pain, but he couldn’t suppress the relief that surged through him at the thought that she had come for him. Though the joy was quickly superseded by dread. Because now she knew the truth about Frankie. Or at least some of it. How else would Eleanor have explained why their manager had kidnapped him? He’d wanted to protect her. To keep her far from anything to do with Frankie. He’d spent ten years away from her, keeping his heart under lock and key to prevent anyone from getting too close. Lest Frankie use it against him. And now, his worst fears had come true. The person he cared for most in this world had become mixed up in this mess of his own making.
But he still couldn’t help but feel grateful that Arlene was here. She’d understood his clues and figured out where he was. The stray thought that maybe her penny was lucky after all crossed his mind. Whatever had brought her here, it meant more than he could put into words. Considering the fuzzy state of his brain, that was probably for the best.
As the door gave way under pressure from Arlene, they emerged into a dark and narrow passageway. “Any idea where this goes?” he mumbled.
She hitched up his legs, resettled him on her back, and started to walk down the hallway. “I have an idea, and you’re not gonna like it. But forward is better than backwards.”
The passage was much shorter than expected, barely ten feet from one end to the other, with another door on the opposite side. She pushed at it with her foot once more, but it wouldn’t give way. “I can’t get it.” She grimaced, leaning into the door with her hands and her foot.
“Put me down.”
“No, you’re hurt, you’re tired—”
“Arlene, I can make it the rest of the way. Put me down. Or we’ll both be stuck here.”
She released her grip on his legs and sighed in exasperation. “Fine.” He let go and gingerly lowered to his feet. His jaw still hurt like hell, and his legs were as shaky as if he’d just stepped off a months-long sea voyage. But he could do this. He pressed both his hands against the door, next to hers, and looked at her.
She gave him a look of deep concern, but then she nodded. “Okay, on the count of three. One, two, three.” They both pushed all their body weight against the door and it gave way. They fell forward with it, landing on a concrete floor much like the one in the warehouse they’d just left. The room was hot, and it smelled like smoke.
“Shit,” she swore.
He followed the direction of her voice and looked up from his position on the ground to see the orange flickers of fire at the far end of the warehouse. The room was hazy, a thin layer of smoke filling it from end to end. They had quite literally jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire.
“Let’s turn back,” he grunted.
Arlene looked panicked, her eyes darting from the fire back to the door they’d come from. “No, you’re too weak. You can’t fight them off. Let Dash and Flynn handle it.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Flynn? Flynn Banks is part of this rescue mission?”
“It’s a long story. One we don’t have time for right now.” While she spoke, her eyes searched the room and she landed on something glinting in the firelight on the catwalk above them. “There, that’s the only way out.”
He squinted and struggled to make out what she saw.
“That’s the chute for collecting the fish from the docks,” she explained.
He groaned. “I hate to break this to you, Lena, but I’m a lot bigger than a sardine.”
But she was already climbing the ladder to the catwalk, extending her hand to him. “Think you can manage?”
He gritted his teeth. He didn’t really have much of a choice, did he? He pushed himself up and reached for her hand as she strained to help him lift his legs the few feet off the ground required to get purchase on the bottom rung of the ladder. He squeezed her hand so tightly that he could see her wince. “Sorry,” he ground out. But she merely bit her lip and held on. This woman. Was there anything she couldn’t do? If they got out of this alive, he’d spend every day reminding her what an extraordinary creature she was if she’d let him.
With a monumental effort, he swung his other hand to grasp at the metal bars, already warm from the flames across the room. He grunted, sweating with the effort as he wrapped his hand so tightly around the rung that his fingernails dug into his palm. He fumbled at the ladder with his feet, finally balancing on the points of his toes. He leaned his head against the bar and struggled to catch his breath, coughing as the smoke grew thicker. The fire on the other side of the warehouse crackled menacingly and leapt farther up the wall.
“We’ve got to go,” Arlene hissed.
He nodded. “I’ve got it. You go ahead.” She gave him a look of uncertainty, but then she let go, scurrying up the ladder like a monkey up a tree. It reminded him of their backyard days, scaling trees and imagining they could see other worlds from the branches. He had to move. Lena had assembled her friends, faced off against Frankie’s goons, and carried him across a warehouse—all to save his hide.
He grunted again, biting into the side of his cheek that was injured and bracing against the pain as he reached for the next rung of the ladder. Each movement upward seemed to take an eternity, the combination of his pain and semiconsciousness making his limbs feel as if they were moving through molasses while being slowly roasted over hot coals. When he reached the top, Lena was standing there waiting for him, her eyes darting between the cloud of smoke growing beneath them and the circular metal contraption on the other side of the catwalk. He was sweating in earnest now, and he used the last of his strength to pull himself onto the catwalk, heaving his body onto the wooden planks with what he feared could be his last breath.
He lay on his back, gasping for air, and before he knew what was happening, Lena was pushing him upward and wrapping her hands around his waist. “Whaddya—”
“Shh, it’s harder when you talk.” He didn’t have the strength to argue, so he let her pull him to his feet, wrap his arm around her shoulders, and shove her own hand under his armpit. She struggled to take a step forward, practically dragging him as she made her way nearer their goal. He chuckled in his delirium. This was the most pathetic three-legged race anyone had ever run. But somehow, miraculously, through great determination, they made it.
The clouds of smoke were thick now, and Arlene began to cough, the effort of carrying them both getting to her. He leaned against the wall, pushing his body weight into it so that he could put his feet down and remain upright. He didn’t have the energy to talk, so he gave her a thumbs-up. She studied the chute that was their only exit. It had a heavy door, and she pushed the handle down, practically sitting on it to get it to move. It shrieked with the distinctive sound of metal grinding against metal, and she pulled it open. She wiped at her brow, while he leaned against the wall. “Thank God,” she muttered.
“What?” he choked out.
“Some of these have blades for sorting the fish as they come in for cleaning and filleting, but this one is open.”
He gave her a wan smile. “Small miracles, right?”
She stuck her head into the opening, disappearing into the darkness. “It looks like it empties onto the dock.” Her voice echoed off the metal tunnel. She pulled her head back out and waved her hand in front of her face. “And it reeks!”
“I thought I was going to die surrounded by that smell,” he whispered.
“Don’t count your chickens. You still might.” She peered down the chute once more. “Should I go first and catch you? Or help you into the chute and go after you?”
“The latter,” he grunted, pushing himself off the wall with both his hands. He reached for her, nearly falling into her arms, and let her take control as she tried to lift him to the opening in the wall. He pulled himself up while she pushed on his butt, going to her knees as she hoisted him upward. He couldn’t help himself. He giggled.
“How could anything on earth possibly be funny at this moment?”
“I was thinking… If you wanted to touch my ass so badly, you could’ve just asked.”
She gave him a look of pure exasperation and continued pushing. “Just get out alive, and then we’ll talk about when and where I can touch you,” she grumbled. The catwalk five feet from them suddenly roared to life, the flames having licked their way to the ceiling in a matter of minutes. “Go!” she urged.
He turned to slide down the chute, but he caught himself as she pushed on his back and he turned back to her. “Lena, wait—”
“There’s no time,” she hissed. But he didn’t listen to her. He pressed a fierce kiss to her mouth. It was quick, but he hoped it conveyed everything he wanted to say. His gratitude. How much he wanted her. What it meant to know that she had come for him. She pushed him off her, looking regretful as she did it. “You have to go.”
He nodded. “Just one more thing.” She rolled her eyes. “I love you.” Her eyes turned to glossy platters, and with that, he braced his hands against the inner workings of the chute and pushed himself forward, sliding down toward the circle of light that he knew was the end of the line.
He hadn’t been planning to say it. It had just come out. Suddenly, he was rushing headlong through the dark, his stomach twisting and turning as he plummeted to earth. He didn’t know if it was his wooziness from being beat up repeatedly in the last twenty-four hours, the effect of the stench and the metal tube designed for thousands of fish to pass through it, or the stunned feeling of realizing the crystalline truth of the words he’d uttered. He loved Lena. Maybe, in fact, he always had. He’d been too wrapped up in himself and his dreams and his resentment of his father and what home had meant to him to realize it. He loved her, and if they did get out of this alive, he was going to spend his days making up for a decade of lost time.
Before he knew it, he was plunging into the sunlight, the early morning rays practically blinding in their intensity. A sight that was not aided by the persistent orange glow from the fire raging farther down the pier. It had jumped the dock and set the cannery ablaze. It gave him a sick kind of pleasure to know the place that had brought his parents together and trapped them in their miserable marriage was turning to ash around him.
The light of the sun and the fire was nothing compared to the pain of his entire body slamming into the wooden planks of the dock. It knocked the wind from him and he choked on the air, struggling to catch his breath. Just as his lungs eased, he looked up to see Arlene hurtling toward him, a look of shock and fear on her face, her titian hair streaming behind her, a gleaming bronze in the firelight. He had only a moment to admire it and the way it made her eyes sparkle as she landed atop him. “Oof.”
She frantically ran her hands over him. “Oh my God, Don, are you okay? Did I hurt you?”
He laughed, and it made him wince. “I just wanted to prove to you that I could be a soft place to land.” He grimaced, the cut inside his cheek bleeding again. He must’ve bitten it reflexively when he’d hit the ground. She practically tackled him, showering his face with kisses, and he groaned.
“Don’t. Ever. Do. That. Again,” she huffed out between each kiss.
“What? Get kidnapped? Wasn’t exactly my idea.” She shut him up with a kiss that made the cut on his lip sting. She was very possibly going to love him to death, but compared to the previous options, this was infinitely preferable. They were interrupted by the sound of rubber squealing to a stop. He looked up to see Joan Davis driving Pauline Morgan’s trusty old Buick, Joan’s hair flying wildly in the wind and the firelight turning her brunette curls to burnished copper.
“Stop necking and get in the car,” Joan yelled. Lena giggled, and Don could hear a note of hysteria in her voice. He reached for her hand, and she pulled him to his feet. They sprinted to the car, adrenaline fueling him to push through the pain in this last gasp of their escape.
Flynn Banks flung open the door to the back seat. “Get in, you blighters, we haven’t got all day!”
Arlene and Don slid onto the bench seats, a tight squeeze next to Flynn and Eleanor already in the back seat. He’d barely had time to clock the bizarre ensemble Flynn was sporting before Joan peeled away. Don hadn’t even gotten the door shut when the tires screeched once more. As Don pulled it closed behind him, he saw Dash in the front seat next to Joan, gesticulating wildly. “Left, left! Don’t you know how to drive?” The last word was cut off as she swerved to narrowly avoid a parked shipping truck, and they all ducked out of misguided self-preservation.
Don surveyed the scene. The fire raged behind them as he looked out the back window. The flames were nearly at the sardine chute now, proof positive that if he and Lena had taken even a minute longer to make their escape, they’d have been toast. As Joan sped forward, he noticed a pile of Frankie’s men laid out in front of the warehouse. His jaw dropped, and Flynn shrugged as if to say “All in a day’s work.”
In the distance, he heard sirens. “About time. Guess they could see the smoke,” Joan muttered.
“From the fire you started!” Dash growled.
“A minor detail,” Joan retorted. She made a hairpin turn, and Don was certain he could feel the back left tire rise off the ground beneath him. The path took them back onto the rickety bridge that would lead them off Terminal Island. Joan gunned it, and Don prayed the car didn’t launch into the harbor as she raced over the boards that groaned under their weight. She neared its end and a firetruck, lights flashing and siren blaring, careened toward them, threatening to flatten them. The fireman driving laid on the horn, but Joan powered ahead, swerving at the last moment to avoid a collision. Eleanor yelped, Flynn swore, and Arlene dug her fingers into Don’s knee as the car went airborne for a moment. It crashed back to earth, rattling Don’s spine and sending a wave of pain through him so intense that stars dotted his vision. Everything turned to black.