Chapter 2 #2
It was only that morning that he’d decided to explore his interest in the shy contractor, but hearing there was some sort of biological threat in the mail room changed things drastically.
Until he saw for himself that Jane was all right, he knew the feeling of concern and unease within him wouldn’t abate.
Jogging down the hall, Storm headed for the stairwell. He ran down two flights and instead of exiting outside, continued down to the basement level. He passed a few people coming up the stairs, but no one dared ask him where he was going or what he was doing. His rank sometimes had its benefits.
Someone had pulled the fire alarm, and the annoying sound of the bells ringing gave him an instant headache, but he ignored it as best he could and headed for the door to the mail room. He’d only been down here a handful of times, but he knew exactly where to go.
He pulled on the door—and frowned when it didn’t open. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, remembering that protocol demanded all doors be locked in case of an incident.
Standing there for a second, Storm debated what to do.
It was likely Jane was standing outside right that moment with her employees, talking to the authorities and telling them what had happened.
It was also likely the code black was a false alarm; there hadn’t been an anthrax or sarin incident in years.
But a little part of him, deep down, thought differently.
“Jane?” he yelled, his voice barely registering above the blaring fire alarm. “Are you in there?”
He put his ear against the door and waited, straining to hear something. Anything.
“Sir?” a voice yelled from his right. “You need to exit the building.”
Storm turned to see a young man standing behind him, his face as white as a sheet, wearing a pair of coveralls that indicated he worked in the mail room.
“You work in there, right?” Storm asked, ignoring his demand that he leave.
“Yes, but there’s a code black. You have to go.”
“What happened?” Storm barked.
The young man looked around nervously, his gaze resting on the door to the stairwell longingly. Storm did his best to calm his tone. The man was obviously scared out of his mind. “Tell me what happened. Then I’ll stay until the authorities get here.”
“I’m supposed to direct them here,” the man said.
Impatient now, Storm said, “Talk to me.”
“We were sorting the mail like usual. Jane was at the table and when a bunch of mail was pushed forward, a box fell off. She grabbed it and it exploded. She told us to initiate code black and to get out.”
“Where is she?”
“Inside,” the man said, and Storm could hear the tremor in his voice.
“I didn’t want to leave but knew she’d be pissed if I didn’t.
We’ve had drill after drill, and she always said that if anything ever happened, the last thing we should do is help the person who’s infected.
That the decon team will come in and do that. Do you think they’re here yet?”
Fuck.
Storm had to get inside to Jane. Fuck waiting for a decontamination team. She could be dying—which was unacceptable on his watch.
Intellectually, he understood the need for isolating an infected person, but he literally couldn’t stand there knowing she might be on the other side of the door suffering.
“Do you have the key?” he shouted.
The man nodded, and Storm held out his hand, wiggling his fingers in a “bring it here” motion.
Surprisingly, the man did as Storm ordered, quickly closing the gap between them and stepping up to the door. It was obvious he really hadn’t wanted to leave Jane inside, and was clearly relieved someone was going to help her.
When the door was unlocked, Storm gestured to the stairs. “Go wait for the decon team outside and tell them where she is.”
“Help her,” the man said, his face drawn with concern. “She’s not only a good boss, but she’s a good person too. She doesn’t deserve this…whatever was inside that package.”
Storm nodded and pushed open the door, confident the young kid was going to get help down here as soon as he could.
But he knew more than most that it would take time.
No one was going to enter the building without completely suiting up to protect themselves.
He didn’t blame them, but as a SEAL, he wasn’t one to wait around or be overly cautious.
The second he opened the door, Storm was pretty sure he knew what the bomb had contained.
It wasn’t an explosive, per se. It wasn’t anthrax.
Wasn’t sarin. It smelled like CS gas. Chlorobenzylidene malononitrile.
Tear gas. Pepper spray. It burned like hell when it got on you, but it wasn’t lethal.
Storm had been through enough training exercises with the stuff to know it felt as if you were dying.
It burned your eyes and nose, making those orifices leak. And it made a lot of people very sick.
But it didn’t kill. Thank God.
He slammed the door shut behind him, thankfully dimming the wailing of the fire alarm enough so he could hear himself think once more.
Coughing because of the residue in the air, Storm called out, “Jane? Where are you?”
He didn’t hear her answer, but he did hear her coughing and gagging. He made his way around a large table—and his insides froze. Jane was on her hands and knees on the floor. A small pile of vomit was in front of her, and her eyes were squeezed shut.
Hurrying over, he hated the way she flinched violently when he grabbed her shoulders.
“It’s me, Storm North,” he reassured her. “Let me help you.”
She shook her head and tried to wrench herself away from him. “Poison,” she gasped before coughing once again.
Storm’s heart lurched in his chest. She was trying to protect him.
Him. Someone she didn’t know. A SEAL who’d looked death in the face more than once and survived.
Pushing down his feelings for another time, he leaned close and said urgently into her ear, “I’m pretty sure it’s CS gas,” he told her. “Not poison. I know it burns like hell. Did it get into your eyes?”
She nodded, and he grimaced in commiseration. In training, he’d always worn a gas mask until being told to remove it. He’d never taken a spray right in the face, and certainly never with his eyes open.
He’d been relieved when he’d opened the door to the mail room, but now he knew this was more serious than he’d first thought.
“Come on, we need to get you to the decon station.”
Jane nodded and allowed him to help her to her feet, but she stayed hunched over and didn’t touch him in any way, shape or form. Storm realized that was because her hands were covered with the orange-red spray, as was her upper body.
Whoever had rigged that mail bomb knew what they were doing.
In compliance with federal regulations, there was a small shower-like decontamination station in the corner of the basement mail room. As far as Storm knew, it had never been utilized…until now.
He turned on the water, and at first it came out a rusty brown color, but it quickly began to run clear. Jane whimpered at hearing the water.
Without hesitation, Storm wrapped an arm around Jane’s waist and stepped under the water with her. They were both soaked in seconds, but at the moment, he didn’t worry about that. He needed to wash the caustic spray off Jane’s face and hands.
The water was cold, and he felt her shiver under his hands, but she didn’t pull away. Snot ran down her face and she’d gotten some vomit on her clothes, both washed away in the spray, but Storm had seen far worse in battle.
Tilting her face up to the water, Jane did her best to not drown herself as she tried to wash off the spray and cough at the same time.
Storm wasn’t unaffected by the toxic atmosphere, although he hadn’t gotten a direct hit in the face. He felt his eyes watering and his own mucus membranes doing their best to repel the nasty chemical. But he ignored his own suffering and concentrated on doing what he could for Jane.
Her medium length brown hair was covered in the CS gas, and he tried to help her wash it out. Everywhere he looked, he saw the telltale signs of the orange spray. “You’re going to have to take off your shirt and pants,” he told her as gently as he could. “I can see it dripping down your body.”
For just a moment she seemed to panic, but then she wiped her face of all emotion. She hadn’t opened her eyes longer than it took to try to rinse them out, but he felt her body tense under his hands.
Finally, she nodded and brought her hands up to the first button on her shirt.
“I’ve got it,” Storm told her.
It suddenly felt as if they were the only two people in the world, the situation more intimate than it should have been, given the circumstances.
Storm quickly undid the buttons on her shirt one by one, helping her shrug out of it when he was done.
She was left standing in front of him in a soaking white cotton bra that did nothing to hide her assets.
She was full figured and rounded in all the right places.
Her nipples were taut from the cold water, and he saw goose bumps on her arms.
“Hang on, almost done,” he soothed, reaching for the belt around her waist. He quickly undid it and unbuttoned her khakis. He circled her and kneeled, pulling the wet material down. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of her pants.
Storm stood and pushed her clothes off to the side.
He moved until he was standing in front of her again, but not in the way of the shower.
He put his hands on either side of her face and gently tilted it up into the water.
“You’re going to have to try to keep your eyes open as long as you can, Jane.
I know it hurts, but you have to wash that shit out. ”
She nodded, coughed, then squinted, doing her best to follow his directions. Storm could see how much it hurt, and he couldn’t help but admire her bravery. “That’s it. Good. Just like that.”
He had no idea how long they’d stood in the cramped decontamination shower, but eventually she was able to keep her eyes open for longer than half a second at a time.
They were bloodshot and red rimmed when she finally opened them long enough to look at him, and when she did, he hated what he saw there.
Shame. Embarrassment.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then coughed violently once more.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he told her vehemently. “Nothing. From where I’m standing, you did everything right.”
“I couldn’t get to the decon station,” she admitted. “Everything hurt too bad. I fucked up.”
Storm was shaking his head before she’d finished speaking. “No, you did what you were trained to do. You got your employees out, did what you could to keep the particulates from escaping.”
“I threw up,” she whispered.
Storm hated the embarrassment she so obviously felt.
“That’s your body’s way of getting rid of whatever is contaminating it.
It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Jane. You should see the cadets in boot camp.
They act like they’re dying, and they don’t get nearly as big a dose of CS gas in their faces as you did. ”
“You’re sure it was CS gas?” she asked.
“Ninety-nine percent, yeah,” Storm told her. “I recognized the smell the second I walked into the room.”
She frowned. “How’d you get in here?”
“One of your employees in the hall let me in.”
“He was supposed to—”
Whatever she was going to say got cut off midsentence when the door to the mail room opened, and three men wearing full decontamination suits were standing there. The clear shower curtain was the only thing separating her and Storm from the rest of the room.
“Oh shit,” she said, then coughed even as she hunched her shoulders inward, trying to hide herself from them.
Without thought, Storm pulled her into his body, something inside him softening when he felt her melt against him, as if she were invisible to the newcomers simply by standing in his arms.
One of the men had a device in his hand that would measure the air for contaminates. It would tell him what materials they were dealing with, and the percentages. The other two held what looked like long-handled brushes.
Storm stiffened and turned sideways, trying to shield Jane from their eyes.
“Step away from her, Sir,” one of the men said, his voice muffled from the head-to-toe protection suit he was wearing.
“Not a chance,” Storm retorted fiercely, ruining his command with a hard, hacking cough.
“Sir, you both need to be decontaminated before we can get you to medical.”
Storm knew the protocol. Hell, he’d help write the damn manual once upon a time, but back then it had seemed very clinical.
Scrubbing down a contaminated person so they didn’t spread particulates to innocents in a hospital setting was the right thing to do.
But holding a shivering and traumatized Jane in his arms made it very clear that being hosed down and scrubbed as if she were a dirty piece of flesh wasn’t exactly ethical or humane.
Fuck.
He tightened his arms around her just before she took a deep breath and pulled away from him. “It’s all right,” she said quietly. She was squinting, and it was obviously still painful for her to open her eyes. “It’s protocol.”
She was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to let her go.
He watched as Jane bravely stepped out of the decon shower and held her arms out from her sides. Her white underwear was completely soaked and see-through from the back. Storm could only imagine what she looked like from the front.
His teeth clenched, and he wanted to pound the seaman holding the scrubber.
But instead, he did the only thing he could to make Jane feel less awkward in that moment. He stripped off his own clothes until he stood next to her wearing nothing but his own pair of white underwear.