Chapter 8
GHOST
Dark smoke rolled from the corridor leading to the records room. Tamsin barely made it two strides before I caught her around the waist and hauled her back against me, locking one arm across her stomach as she twisted hard enough to drive her soft ass into my thighs.
“Let me go,” she snapped, fighting my hold as she pointed toward the smoke. “You heard him. Someone could still be in there.”
“Who?” I turned her in my arms until she faced me, keeping both hands firm around her waist when she tried to look past my shoulder. “Name and last position, Tamsin.”
“Kendra. She works in accounting.” She caught the front of my shirt and leaned around me, her words coming fast without losing clarity.
“Her desk is in the office attached to the records room, and that corridor keeps going toward the east controlled-storage section. The exterior emergency shutoff is outside on the south wall.”
I keyed my comm while keeping one arm locked around her.
Brothers were already moving toward the rear of the building, and I redirected two of them to the side corridor Tamsin described while another team cleared the remaining employees through the loading doors.
Two more headed for the south wall and the shutoff, while the men nearest controlled storage began pushing everyone away from that entire section.
“Accounting office off the records corridor,” I rasped over the channel. “Missing employee is Kendra. Approach from the east side and stay fucking clear of the controlled-storage door until Tamsin confirms the route.”
The acknowledgments came immediately. Tamsin listened with her face tipped toward my earpiece, her body still taut inside my hold, then tried to follow when I released her and started toward the smoke.
I caught her wrist and pointed toward the growing group of Bellamy employees near the loading area.
“Count your people.”
“You need me inside.” Her brows drew together as she tried to pull her hand free, and frustration tightened every delicate line of her face. “I know that building better than any of your brothers.”
“I know.” I took the spare handheld from my belt, switched it to the team channel, and pressed it into her palm. “That’s why you’re gonna direct them from here.”
“I can do it faster if I’m inside.”
“Need you where I know you’re breathing.” I closed her fingers around the radio and held her gaze until she stopped testing my grip. “Account for every employee, tell us which routes put controlled material between Kendra and us, and warn me immediately if anyone else is missing.”
Tamsin’s lips flattened, but she looked toward the thickening smoke and made the smarter choice. She turned toward the employees, called for department leads, and began taking names before I had reached the rear corridor.
Heat rolled over me the moment I entered the corridor with three brothers at my back.
Smoke pressed against the ceiling in dark layers while the alarm strobed red through the haze, turning every doorway and shelf into a shifting shadow.
We pulled emergency smoke hoods from the wall station, and I listened to Tamsin’s voice through the comm clipped near my shoulder as she confirmed the shortest route to the accounting office.
“Records room is the second door on your left,” she directed. “Accounting opens off the far side. The steel door past it leads toward controlled storage, and it should already be closed.”
“It is,” I confirmed, spotting the intact door through the haze. “Stay with me.”
“I’m not the one who walked into a fire.”
“You fucking tried.”
A sharp breath came through the radio, followed by the kind of silence that told me she had an answer and was saving it for when I was within reach.
The fire was confined to the old paper shelving rather than spreading from one of the ordinary ignition sources inside the warehouse.
Sprinklers hammered water through most of the corridor, but the heads above the records alcove remained dry, and flames were chewing through the oldest files far too quickly.
Two brothers pushed toward the accounting office while I checked the steel door leading to controlled storage.
It remained latched and cool enough that the fire had not breached the protected section, but heat was creeping up the corridor wall and would reach it if we let the records room burn unchecked.
The rest of us pulled the portable suppression units from the nearby station and attacked the fire before it spread beyond the paper shelving.
“We found her,” one of the brothers reported through the comm less than a minute later. “Conscious. Disoriented. Bringing her out east side.”
Tamsin’s voice cut in immediately. “Is she burned?”
“Don’t know yet,” I answered as I directed another brother toward the upper shelving where flames were curling along the wall. “Just know she’s conscious and coming out.”
“I have everyone else accounted for,” Tamsin confirmed, paper rustling near her radio as she checked the list again. “Kendra is the last one.”
The brothers carried Kendra from the adjoining office with an arm beneath each shoulder. She was coughing hard and barely steady on her feet, but she was conscious, speaking, and able to tell Reaper where she hurt once he met them outside.
The fire department arrived while we were still holding the flames away from controlled storage.
Their crews took over the main suppression effort, forcing the fire back through the records section while we provided the building layout and the locations of every material they needed to avoid.
Water, foam, and smoke turned the corridor into a blackened mess, but the steel storage door held, and the fire never reached the company’s controlled inventory.
Several shelves of older records had burned almost to ash by the time the last flame was knocked down.
Other boxes were scorched, soaked, or split open across the floor, their contents stuck together beneath dirty water and debris.
Enough survived to keep the audit alive, but someone had tried very hard to erase the exact part of the company’s history Tamsin had begun examining.
I stepped through the rear exit with soot ground into my shirt, heat still clinging to my skin, and barely cleared the doorway before Tamsin reached me. Her gaze swept from my face to my chest and arms, searching for burns or blood while both hands landed against my ribs.
I caught both her wrists before she could push my shirt up in front of half the warehouse. “I’m fine.”
“You went into a burning building.” Tamsin frowned up at me, breathing too fast as she tried to tug her hands free. Relief softened the force of her glare, but it did nothing to hide the anger burning beneath it. “I need to make sure you’re not hurt.”
A streak of soot crossed one cheek beneath the freckles scattered over her fair skin, probably transferred when she wiped her face while coordinating the evacuation.
I released her wrists and brushed my thumb across the mark, letting the contact linger because the blush that followed was worth every second.
Tamsin’s eyes dropped to my mouth before rising again, and the quick movement sent a brutal pulse through my cock. Given another minute without an audience, I would have put her against the warehouse wall and kissed the taste of smoke and worry from her mouth until she forgot anyone else existed.
“You missed some,” she murmured, her attention moving over the soot on my jaw.
“You volunteering?”
Her lips parted, and color rushed higher into her cheeks before she remembered where we were. She stepped back, although not far enough to break the warmth between us.
The fire crews continued ventilating the building while I went back through the records section with two brothers.
The burn pattern led to the lowest shelves along the rear wall, where the remains of a compact incendiary device had been wedged behind boxes of older reconciliation reports.
Its casing had warped beneath the heat, but enough remained to show that the fire had started there.
Whoever planted it had targeted paper instead of controlled material.
They wanted the records gone without risking an immediate blast large enough to destroy the building before the files burned.
The timing made the intent even clearer.
The device ignited only after Tamsin had started lining up years of altered reports and exposing a pattern someone had expected to stay buried.
Cipher met me near the rear access panel with a tablet in one hand.
He had already pulled the electronic log and isolated the last credential used before our lockdown.
The rear door had opened earlier that morning under a shared supervisory access group, broad enough to cover several people and useless for identifying one individual without more work.
“Valid credential,” he clarified, angling the screen toward me. “Operations group. No unique assignment.”
“Kill all active access.”
Cipher nodded and started working. The operations manager heard me from several feet away and crossed the damaged loading area with a disbelieving frown, his dress shirt wrinkled from the long day and smoke still hanging in the air behind him.
Tamsin’s father followed more slowly, exhaustion carved deep around his mouth as he looked toward the destroyed records.
“You cannot suspend every company credential,” Len ranted. “We have jobs scheduled, materials that need to move, and employees who require access to do their work. We’re already at risk of losing clients after last night.”
“The warehouse stays closed until every fucking credential is reissued to one verified person,” I replied, watching his expression harden. “Nobody gets through a door because six damn people share the same access.”
“That could take days.” He gestured toward the blackened rear corridor. “The company may not survive a complete shutdown.”