Chapter 1
SHADE
They won’t let us into the club.
I pace the dark roadside across from Wrath, everything in me telling me to get inside and find Daisy. I’m covered in dust and dirt. My pants are ripped and one of my elbows is grazed. I don’t even know when I got hurt. All my thoughts are of Daisy.
Emergency services are here, firefighters are in and out of the building, but the cops won’t allow us anywhere near it.
When the explosion happened, the three of us ran inside the club from the alley as fast as we could, trying desperately to get to her.
Blake said she had been in the lab when he came upstairs.
But there was so much smoke, thick and choking.
We couldn’t see anything. Mav and I couldn’t even get past the bar.
Blake made it to the cellar door, and that’s where the firefighters found him, unconscious.
He woke up for a minute and fought with the ambulance crew, trying to get back inside, but passed out again while he was struggling to get off the gurney.
We don’t know how bad it is. The firefighters are still in there. The ambulance with Blake goes past a second later, taking him to the hospital. The siren turns on and I cringe at the sound, hoping my friend is going to be okay.
‘I can’t find anybody else in there,’ I hear one of the guys say to another as they come out. He takes off his helmet, and I see the wizened, dirty face of a seasoned firefighter underneath. ‘We searched everywhere we could.’
‘She’s in there,’ I yell adamantly from the sidelines. ‘I know she is! In the basement!’
They glance at each other, their faces grim.
‘Look,’ the other one says almost gently, ‘we can’t get down there. The steps are destroyed. Half the ceiling is caved in. I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous.’
‘Jesus,’ I mutter, my mind scarcely able to comprehend that an hour ago everything was normal, that we just had the best Christmas I’ve ever had.
I pull my hand through my grit-covered hair.
‘This can’t be happening.’
‘The tunnels,’ Mav mutters quietly from behind me, the first words he’s spoken. He sounds as out of it as I am. ‘We might be able to get in that way. She might have…’
I turn back to look at the shellshocked face of my friend.
‘Stay here,’ I tell him.
He starts to protest.
‘In case they find her,’ I say, my heart twisting horribly. ‘One of us should be here.’
He gives me a reluctant, jerky nod and goes back to staring at the smoking shell of the club with a vacant look in his eye.
The truck is still in the alley, hemmed in by fire trucks, so I take off on foot down the darkening street.
I run down the next road and then along the river, into the Docklands where there are barely any streetlamps that work. I don’t know how much time goes by. Minutes, I guess, but it seems like hours. Even running as fast as I can, each moment is like an eternity. I just need her to be okay.
I get to the first opening I know of that leads into the passages, taking the dingy cement steps down into a dilapidated warehouse and putting on my phone’s flashlight as I go deep into the black. Fuck, it wasn’t long ago that we were showing Daisy these tunnels.
They’d be fresh in her mind. She could have gotten out before the roof caved in. She has to have.
I listen but only hear the far-away sounds of water.
‘Daisy?’ I yell.
Nothing.
I start up the old brick tunnel, seeing rats scurrying away as I traverse the subterranean corridors as quickly as I can. Mud squelches under my soles and wet seeps into my shoes.
I ignore it, focusing on the brick tunnels winding before me. At the fork, I take the one that leads toward the club, hoping the river isn’t flowing high because it runs very close in places.
As I get nearer, I find newly fallen bricks and rubble and my stomach rolls. What if there’s been a cave-in down here, too? She could be trapped.
‘Daisy?’
The sound of my own voice echoing back to me is all I hear, that and my own harsh breathing, the thudding of my heart.
‘Don’t be dead,’ I whisper. ‘Please, don’t be dead.’
I keep going, hoping to God that I’ll be able to pass through as I see more and more detritus from the force of the blast the closer I get to ground zero.
‘Daisy!’ I yell and listen hard.
The silence around me is like an unyielding weight pressing down on my shoulders.
But then I hear something. Faint.
Did I imagine it?
I cock my head to the side and strain as hard as I can to listen, holding my breath and willing myself to hear.
Was it just a rat? Another brick falling?
But there it is again.
A whimper. Weak and far away, but not water or debris.
Please be her.
‘Daisy?’
I hear it again. Louder.
I lurch down the tunnel, shining the light as far as I can in front of me, and I see a glimmer in the dark. Light skin, a pale face, eyes shining as they squint in my direction.
It’s her! She’s slumped by the wall, blinking slowly in the light from my phone.
Tears have tracked their way down her dirty cheeks. Her hand reaches for me as I fall to my knees in front of her. Her other one is clutching the flat bullet on the chain around her neck that Blake gave her for Christmas, I notice.
‘Daisy. Are you okay? Can you hear me?’
She stares at me.
‘Is this a dream?’ she slurs, her voice croaky.
‘No. I’m here,’ I promise her, taking her hand and squeezing it.
She lets out a shuddering sob. ‘I can’t hear you,’ she whimpers, touching her ear.
‘I don’t know what happened. I was in the lab. There was a bang and the room shook. I ran and there was smoke, and then the walls were falling around me. Ran for the door. I got it closed. But I think…’
She touches her head. ‘I think I’m hurt.’
That’s when I see that her hair is matted with something dark and wet.
Shit.
‘Is it just your head?’ I ask.
She looks at me blankly and then thrusts a plastic grocery bag into my hand.
I push it away, but she picks it up and gives it to me again with a frown.
‘I’m going to get you out of here,’ I say, taking the bag and looping it around my wrist absently.
I draw her away from the wall and up against me gently, watching her closely in case there are other injuries, but her eyes flutter and roll back in her head as she slumps forward limply.
She’s unconscious.
I pick her up, cradling her carefully and bringing the bag that she’s so adamant should come with us.
I go back the way I came as fast as I can, hearing the tunnel settling around me and hoping against hope that it doesn’t collapse with us still in it.
I’m slower than I’d like, but in the dark and with all the debris around, I can’t move any faster. I slip in the mud underfoot without warning and bang into the bricks, swearing low as I twist to protect the woman in my arms but smacking my shoulder hard.
But I don’t dare slow or stop because, as the tunnel descends deeper, I’m sloshing through ankle-deep water that I’m pretty sure is rising.
It wasn’t like this a few minutes ago. I’ve never been down here when it’s this wet, but I know that the river, so close to the Atlantic, is tidal. It must be on its way in.
I’m not sure how high it floods down here, but the walls on either side of us in the light of my phone show a myriad of different water lines.
I guess it depends on the time of year. The highest marks are over my head.
Not sure I’ll be able to swim in the freezing water with Daisy, I gather her more tightly in my arms and try to pick up the pace.
When I finally reach the fork, higher and in safer territory, I let my body unclench slightly. The water is lower and the further we get from the bombsite, the less likely we’ll be trapped down here.
When I finally slog up the cement stairs I came down earlier, my body feels like I’ve climbed a mountain.
I call 911 as soon as I have the bars after I lay Daisy down on the sidewalk outside the warehouse with my jacket under her head.
I can see now in the light of one of the only working streetlamps, that her dark hair is covered in blood.
She’s dirty and scratched up, her hand grazed. But she doesn’t look like she was caught in the fire.
I tell the dispatcher everything I can as I try to rouse her, but she doesn’t wake up.
Sitting down hard next to her, tears cloud my vision, and I force them back. I can’t be what she needs if I give in to them now.
I hear sirens in the distance within five minutes and, as they get louder, I rise to my feet, ready to run after them if they go the wrong way.
But I see them turn down the street in front of me and I wave my arms to get their attention.
The paramedics are out as soon as the vehicle stops, firing questions at me that I try to answer as succinctly as possible.
They bustle around her and load her onto a gurney. I don’t take in much except for the fact that she’s alive and in bad shape. I get in the back with her, watching from the side while they bandage her up and hook her up to machines, my mind detaching from the scene in front of me.
I look down. I’m still holding the plastic bag she gave me. Blinking, I look inside and let out a harsh breath.
There’s bag after bag of little green pills.
All at once, I want to throw them away.
This is my fault. I should never have let her get involved in all this. I should have made sure she was sent back to England, away from danger, not down there in that fucking tomb making drugs for me and my friends.
Jesus, what kind of a man am I?
What kind of a brother? my guilty mind supplies savagely.
I shove the thoughts away as I stare at her, lying on the narrow bed. Pale. Bloody. Broken.
One of the paramedics is saying something to me.
I try to focus.
She’s asking me if I’m hurt.
I shake my head. ‘Just help her.’
The driver says we’re three minutes out.
‘Is she going to be okay?’ I hear myself whispering.
But they don’t answer.
MAV
The waiting.
For the fire engines to put out the fire.
For the authorities to search the club.