Chapter 36
Nick checked the indicator lights on the side of the pump house, squinting against the smoke. He waved it from his face as he moved quickly to the roof ledge, frowning down at the tiny outbuilding below. He pulled out his phone and thumbed in a number.
“What’s happening?” I asked, coughing into my sleeve.
“This building is used to train firefighters,” Nick said, as he waited for someone to answer.
“The whole tower is one giant simulator. It’s designed to withstand an actual blaze.
It’s all run by computers from a control room in that outbuilding down there.
The power surge must have triggered the training simulators when the electricity came back on. ”
My eyes watered as I swatted at a band of smoke. “Why isn’t anyone shutting them off?”
“It’s four in the morning. The whole campus is asleep.” Nick tried another number as black clouds billowed from the windows below us.
Wade rushed up the fire escape, his clothes and face stained with soot. “The fourth floor is already engulfed. Stairs are too hot,” he called out to us.
Joey paced the ledge, looking for another exit. “Unless somebody’s got rappelling gear, that fire escape is the only way down.”
“Roddy and Ty aren’t answering their phones.” Nick hurried to the pump house and tried the door but it wouldn’t budge. He checked the glowing numbers on the indicator panel. “The fifth floor is already at six hundred degrees,” he called to Wade. “Help me get this door open and turn on the pumps.”
Wade knelt and rolled up his jeans, unstrapping a disturbingly large knife from a sheath around his calf. He wedged it under the doorknob of the pump house and began prying at the lock.
“Finlay, call your sister,” Nick called out to me. “Joey, call Sam. I’ll try Charlie. Someone has to pick up.”
The urgency in Nick’s voice was making me nervous. Nothing about this felt like a simulation anymore. I dialed my sister’s cell phone. It rang straight to voice mail.
“Finn, look!” Vero dragged me to the ledge and pointed across the drill field to the dormitory. A light was on in one of the third-floor windows. “I think that’s Mrs. Haggerty’s room.”
I pulled up my contacts list and dialed Mrs. Haggerty’s cell phone. “It’s ringing,” I said, blinking at her window through the smoke. I nearly cried out with relief when she picked up on the third ring. “Mrs. Haggerty?”
“If this is about my car’s extended warranty, I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t hang up! It’s Finlay Donovan. Thank god, you’re awake!”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m on a new medication for my cholesterol and it makes it hard to—”
“I’m sure it does, Mrs. Haggerty, but this is an emergency! I need you to look out your window.”
Vero gripped my arm, our eyes watering from the smoke as we waited. After what felt like four hundred years, Mrs. Haggerty’s window got brighter, as if she’d opened her blind.
“I can’t see anything. I don’t have my glasses on. Hold on a minute. I’m sure they’re here somewhere.”
“We don’t have time for you to find your glasses!”
“It’s not polite to shout.”
“I’m sorry. Just… forget about the glasses,” I said, fighting back a cough. “I need you to go to my sister’s room down the hall. Room three nineteen. I need you to knock very loudly on her door and tell her to call me. Tell her it’s an emergency.”
“Well, okay then. I’ll just get dressed and—”
“No, Mrs. Haggerty, please! There’s no time to get dressed. Just hurry. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Well in that case—” The call disconnected.
“What happened?” Vero asked as I stared at my phone.
“I don’t know! She cut me off.”
There was a loud smash as Wade kicked the doorknob loose and disappeared inside the pump house. His phone light glowed through a thick haze of smoke as he studied the pumps.
Nick watched the numbers rise on the indicator panel, his phone pressed to his ear.
My cell phone rang. “It’s Georgia!” I said as I connected the call. “Georgia—”
“Do you have any idea what time it is?” she mumbled. “And why is Mrs. Haggerty in her nightgown in my room?”
“I need you to have someone turn off the simulator in the fire tower!”
“The what?”
“The fire tower!” I shouted, swatting at the smoke. “We need someone to turn it off!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Look out your damn window!”
There was a prolonged bout of grumbling, then the screech of her blinds. Georgia swore. “Who the hell’s running a simulation in the middle of the night?”
“I don’t have time to explain.”
“Where the heck are you?”
“On top of the fucking fire tower, Georgia! Turn it off!”
“I’m on my way!” The line disconnected. I covered my mouth with my sleeve.
Wade burst out of the pump room. “Nine hundred degrees!” he called out to Nick. “The emergency shutoff isn’t working and the pumps won’t start.”
A dull roar came from the floor below us. Nick swore at his phone.
“Georgia’s coming!” My lungs burned as I leaned over the roof ledge looking for her. Vero appeared beside me, carrying the fire hose over her shoulder. She dragged it to the half wall, unwinding it from its spool. “What are you doing?” I shouted. “The pumps aren’t working.”
She tossed the hose over the side. “I’m getting us off this roof. We’re climbing down. Just like we did from our dorm room.”
“We’re five stories up, Vero! And we didn’t climb down, we fell!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll go first,” she said eagerly, slinging a leg over the ledge.
A tiny flashlight beam bounced over the drill field, catching my attention. Others followed close behind it. Red and blue lights swirled in the distance.
“Eleven hundred degrees!” Wade shouted. “Everybody down!”
Nick appeared like a ghost through the haze.
He grabbed Vero by her hood, dragging her off the ledge as he tackled me to the ground.
Glass shattered as the windows in the floor below us blew out.
A hatch in the floor shot open, ripped from its hinges.
Fireballs spewed through it, coloring everything orange and black.
I lost sight of Wade and Joey as Nick sprawled on top of Vero and me, sheltering us under his body, his coat spread over us to protect our faces from the smoke.
The roof was hot through my clothes, the air hard to breathe.
Sirens wailed beneath the roaring wind. I heard my sister holler five stories below us. Heard her pounding against the control room door. A gun fired. Glass smashed. “I’m in!” she shouted.
The pumps kicked on with a loud rumble. The flames drew back through the hatch with a whoosh . Fans hummed somewhere below. Beyond Nick’s shoulder, the wall of smog began to thin.
His body was heavy on top of us. He waited a moment before lifting his head.
“Detective,” Vero said, her voice husky from the smoke. She waggled her eyebrows at him. “I think we’re having a moment.” I shoved my elbow into her ribs and pushed Nick off of us, starving for air.
He rolled over onto his back, black rivulets of sweat trailing down his neck. “Joey! Wade!” he called out through a raspy throat. “Everyone okay?”
Joey groaned. Wade coughed. I rolled onto an elbow and spotted them lying a few feet away, the duffel bag still smoking beside them. Charred paper towels tumbled in the wind.
Wade shook a cigarette from his pack and slid the filter between his lips. His Zippo scraped as he lit it. Joey reached out blindly for the pack and Wade passed the lighter to him.
“Finn!” Footsteps boomed up the fire escape.
Georgia burst onto the roof deck, her eyes wild as they swung over the smoking landscape.
She rushed to me through the blackened puddles.
“Thank god you’re okay. Mom would have killed me.
” She clasped my hand and hauled me upright. Her hand was slick with blood.
“What happened to you?” I asked her.
She glanced down at herself, surprised by the cuts. “The control room was locked. Didn’t have a key. I had to shoot out the window and bust in. Must have cut myself,” she said, wiping it on her flannel pajamas.
A fire truck rounded the corner and two ambulances screamed through the gate. More footsteps pounded up the steps. Roddy, Ty, and Samara rushed onto the deck, carrying first aid kits, blankets, and extinguishers. A winded Charlie dragged himself up the last few steps behind them.
“We thought you all were cooked!” Sam said, kneeling beside Wade. He batted her hand away as she yanked the cigarette from his mouth and snuffed it out. He dropped his head back onto the deck, muttering to himself as she flipped open her first aid kit.
Ty wrapped a blanket around Vero and helped her to her feet.
“I’m sorry, Ty,” she said, her face a mask of smoke-smudged sincerity.
“It’s been fun, but I’m afraid you and I have no future together.
I’m pretty sure Detective Anthony and I just made a baby.
” She patted him on the shoulder. “If it makes you feel better, you can keep my underwear as a token of our fleeting relationship.”
Ty backed away from her, darting odd glances between her and Nick as he handed Nick a blanket. “I’d better go see if anyone else needs any assistance,” he muttered.
Nick shook his head as he wiped a smear of sweat from his brow. He draped the blanket over my shoulders and leaned back against the ledge, opening an arm to me. My blanket pooled around my ankles as I waddled to his side with a shiver. He pulled me in close.
“Where’s Stu?” he asked Roddy.
“Cuffed in one of the classrooms,” Roddy said. “I saw the flames through the window and we came back as soon as we could. What the heck happened up here?”
“No idea,” Nick said. “The power came back on and the simulators started a second later.”
“The control room was locked.” Georgia winced as Sam plucked a piece of glass from her arm. “No one was inside it and I didn’t see anyone on the ground when I got here. It’s a mystery.”
“About as mysterious as that power outage,” Sam said as she reached for some gauze.
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“I called the power company a few hours ago for an update. When I asked them how much longer they thought it would be out, they had no idea. They said this entire section of the grid was down and it wasn’t from the weather. They said it was a network problem.”
“Like a computer network?” I asked. Sam nodded.
Vero locked eyes with me. “Can the simulator be controlled remotely, from a computer somewhere else?” she asked Sam.
“Sure, if it’s accessible through a network and runs on a program.”
“Then it can be hacked.” I stepped out from Nick’s arm.
This entire night had been planned. The power outage, the fire…
there was no way this had all been a coincidence.
These events must have been coordinated by someone who knew what was happening on this tower tonight.
Cam had alerted Joey that EasyClean would be here, but I was certain Feliks was pulling the strings.
“You think Feliks was behind this?” Sam asked them.
“Not unless he hacked us from the air,” Nick said.
“That phone call I got earlier tonight… the one I didn’t answer,” he said, casting me a brief but meaningful look, “it was our task force contact at the FBI. She says Zhirov boarded a private jet just before midnight. The feds think he’s headed to Brazil. ”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sam said. “If he has the capability to access those networks remotely, he could have done it from anywhere.”
“Or someone could have done it for him,” Joey said. Nick and Joey exchanged a long look, probably coming to the same conclusion Vero and I had. With the right resources, Cameron could have shut down the power and started the fire himself.
“But who was the target?” Wade asked. “Joey? Or Stu?”
Every eye on the roof turned to Joey. Feliks had broken out of jail for one reason only—to eliminate EasyClean . Once Feliks learned EasyClean was alive and would be here tonight, he must have realized his mistake and come up with a plan to handle the problem once and for all.
But had the fire been the weapon, or had it been the perfect distraction?
If all the police were at the tower trying to put out the fire, and if the security barriers were cleared for emergency vehicles to enter and leave, it would have been easy for Feliks’s men to slip in and out unnoticed.
Roddy frowned. “I should go check on Stu,” he said, turning for the stairs.
“Don’t bother,” Joey said, crushing out his cigarette. “If Feliks had anything to do with that fire, Stuart Kirby is already dead.”