Chapter 1 #2
So she’d blabbered on about her favorite sports team (the New York Knicks, even though she lived in New Jersey) and just how much it sucked to live in a dorm room at thirty, though she got it free for working at the university.
She told him about her dissertation and her plan to work at her father’s aerospace engineering company when she graduated, then she thanked him sincerely for his service, hit send, and promptly forgot all about him.
But he wrote her back the next day with a detailed explanation of how each player on the Celtics could whoop the ass of every other player on the Knicks, and how living in a dorm room at thirty sounded better than the apartment he’d had in Southie before joining the navy.
It had a window that overlooked a bus stop between a porn shop and a church, and how he didn’t need cable because the bus stop was more than enough entertainment, especially after the porn shop closed at four in the morning and the first mass started at six.
She closed her eyes. God, he’d made her laugh.
An emergency siren sounded on the testing floor, slamming her attention back to the present. She whipped around, instantly on high alert. A quick glance at the panel in front of her told her Jacques had sounded the alarm, and indeed a red light flashed near the giant fan where he worked.
She launched into emergency mode, racing from the room and hanging on tightly to the metal handrail to keep from falling as she hurried down the steps and jogged through machinery, coming up short when she nearly collided with a blond-haired man running in the opposite direction.
She gaped. “You!” It was Steven Galbraith, an engineer she’d fired months before. “What the hell are you doing here?” He pushed her against a twenty-foot stainless-steel tank and kept on running, knocking the wind out of her and banging her head.
She had to get to Jacques, suddenly sure Galbraith’s presence was the reason for the alarm.
Had he interfered somehow in the alloy testing?
“No, no, no…” she chanted, weaving through equipment, her ankle twisting painfully from those damn high heels.
She gasped, reaching down reflexively to touch the angry tendons.
A deafening explosion filled the space with light and sound, the blast wave knocking her to the ground.
Debris hit her, tiny bits of metal and glass, smoke and acrid chemicals filling the air.
She coughed, choking on the noxious mix as she stood.
Multiple alarms blared, smoke and dust making it difficult to see.
What the hell is happening?
“Jacques!” She had to get to him. He was like family, her father’s best friend, her own godfather. She’d known him her whole life. She squinted against the smoke as she called his name, her hearing compromised from the explosion.
She couldn’t get enough air. The smoke was too much. She dropped to the ground and continued on her hands and knees, crawling on debris. Her lungs burned so badly she considered turning around, but she couldn’t do that, couldn’t leave him here to die alone.
When he came into view lying on the ground, she feared the worst and rushed to his side. There was blood on his head and to the side of his torso, spreading onto the concrete in a sickening pool. She sobbed, feeling for a pulse in his neck and finding nothing.
He was already gone, and she feared she would be next.
Her focus shifted from helping Jacques to surviving this scene.
It was so hot, what was left of the alloy radiating heat.
She pushed herself through the dense haze, desperate to get her bearings in the space that had been devastated by the blast. The smoke blocked the emergency lighting, no sight line to her office or the hallway beyond.
Her need for fresh air was the only thing that mattered.
I have to get out, or I’ll die.
She found a wall and followed it, knowing it would eventually lead to an exit. But the going was slow and sharp pieces littered the ground, her shoes long since lost in the chaos. Finally, a metal threshold. A door. She pushed it open, taking a great gasp of frigid air.
She pulled out her cell phone from her pocket, her hands shaking violently as she called 911. “Send help! There’s been an explosion!” She gave them the address. “I don’t know if there’s anyone else in the building.”
“Help is on its way. Stay on the phone, ma’am.”
She looked down at her legs, bloodied knees leading to bare feet sunk in several inches of snow. It should have hurt but it didn’t. She was in shock.
“Jacques is dead,” she told the operator. “He’s the chief engineer.”
“The emergency personnel will be there momentarily.”
Thank God my father got out in time.
The testing of Alloy 531 was ruined and she feared the extent of the damage to the building, but none of that compared to her grief. Galbraith had done this deliberately. Killed Jacques. Ruined her dreams and hammered the final nail in the coffin of her family’s company.
Fat snowflakes blew on the howling wind and she realized she was shaking, the irony that she’d almost been cooked just minutes before not escaping her. The wind kicked up and she squinted against it, wiping away tears that fell from her eyes before they could freeze on her cheeks. “I’m cold.”
“I know, sweetie. They’re on their way. Do you have any shelter?”
She looked around. Her car was parked on the other side of the building, only deliveries coming in this way. Much too far to walk without shoes. “No.”
“Keep moving. Try to keep warm.”
She heard an engine in the distance and looked frantically around. A white van rounded the building and headed toward her. “There’s someone coming.” She waved her arms over her head. “Help!”
Relief flooded through her when the van came her way, but it wasn’t slowing down as it got close. Confusion turned to fear in a flash, and she dove behind a dumpster to avoid being hit, dropping her phone in the process.
The van crashed into the side of the building and she moved to the driver’s window. “Are you okay?”
Steven Galbraith turned to face her.
She screamed. The van’s engine roared to life and it backed up, tires nearly running over her feet. She ran, her feet slipping in the snow. She heard sobbing, only vaguely aware the sounds came from her mouth. She nearly reached the dumpster as the van caught up to her.
I am a witness. I saw him inside moments before the explosion, and he wants me dead.
She lurched sideways, hurtling her body in a desperate attempt to survive, and the world went black.