CHAPTER 11 #2
He shouts and loosens his grip.
The pencil snaps.
For one irrational second, the sound hurts more than my hand.
Then I climb.
The broken window catches my coat. I tear free and fall onto wet gravel beside June.
The loading yard is enclosed by the same fence as the front. Smoke pushes from a roof vent above us.
June presses both hands against her leg.
The cut is deep.
I remove my scarf and wrap it above the wound, tightening until she curses.
“Good,” I say. “Keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Being angry.”
The side door opens.
One attacker emerges coughing, white extinguisher powder coating his jacket.
I look toward the fence.
Too high.
Locked gate twenty yards away.
June cannot run.
I find the loading controls mounted beside the dock. Old system. Manual override, hydraulic alarm, emergency release.
The building once stored freight records and small equipment. The loading platform still has a steel dock plate designed to bridge the space between warehouse and truck.
I hit the release.
The plate drops with a violent crash between us and the attacker.
He jumps back.
The sound carries across the abandoned yard.
I hit the exterior alarm switch again.
This one works.
A horn begins pulsing from the roof.
The attacker looks toward the street.
Sirens answer in the distance.
Not close enough.
A black SUV turns into the lot at speed, strikes the chain-link gate, and forces it inward.
Kellan’s vehicle.
He is out before it stops moving.
His coat is open, no tie, gun already in his hand. Tomas exits from the other side.
The attacker raises his weapon.
Kellan fires once.
The shot strikes the man’s shoulder and spins him backward against the dock.
Tomas moves past him toward the building.
Kellan reaches us. His eyes go first to June’s leg, then my hands, face, coat, the smoke, the broken window.
He takes in everything.
“What hurts?”
The same question as the garage.
This time, I know enough to answer.
“My shoulder. Hand. June’s leg is worse.”
He crouches beside her.
“Tomas,” he calls.
“Building’s clearing,” Tomas answers from the doorway. “Second man ran toward the front.”
Kellan checks the scarf around June’s leg.
“You did this?”
“I watched a video once,” I say.
“It’s good.”
June leans her head against the wall. “Please praise her later.”
Kellan removes a medical kit from inside his coat.
Of course he carries one.
He reinforces the pressure around June’s wound, movements careful and fast.
“Ambulance is four minutes out,” he says.
His voice has become simpler.
Danger strips words from him.
I look toward the broken gate.
“How did you know?”
“Your message.”
“It said archived records.”
“It didn’t say where.”
“That told you?”
“No. The tracker on June’s vehicle stopped here.”
June opens one eye. “I approve of this invasion of my privacy.”
Kellan looks at me.
The fear comes after the assessment.
I see it in the way he uses my full name.
“Celeste Elaine Armand.”
June closes her eye again. “This should be private.”
Kellan stands.
“What did you think you were doing?”
The anger is controlled enough to be worse than shouting.
I rise too quickly. The yard tilts. His hand moves toward me, then stops before touching.
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“You’re going to fall.”
“I am standing.”
“Badly.”
The sirens are louder now.
Behind him, Tomas drags the wounded attacker away from the loading dock and secures his hands. Smoke pours from the roof, but the sprinkler system has activated inside.
Kellan looks at the folder clutched beneath my arm.
“You found evidence.”
“Yes.”
“And decided that justified coming here without security.”
“We had limited time.”
“You had my number.”
“You had an order you refused to show me.”
Guilt flashes across his face.
The words land exactly where I intended.
Immediately, I hate that I used them.
June is bleeding beside us because I wanted to prove I could act without Kellan controlling the result.
He looks toward her.
So do I.
The scarf around her leg is dark.
My certainty collapses into something smaller and uglier.
“This is my fault,” I say.
June opens her eyes.
“Later.”
“I brought you.”
“You did.”
No rescue from responsibility.
That is one reason I trust her.
The ambulance enters through the broken gate. Paramedics cross the yard with equipment.
Kellan steps aside to let them reach June. One paramedic begins cutting away the trouser fabric. The wound is long, bright, and deep enough that my stomach turns.
June grips my wrist.
“You saved the folder?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Then I’m billing the company for the pants.”
Her attempt at humor is thin.
Fear remains underneath.
They lift her onto the stretcher. I walk beside her until a paramedic blocks the ambulance door.
“Family only.”
“She’s with me,” June says.
The paramedic looks at Kellan.
“She goes,” he says.
He is answering the person who controls the door rather than giving me an order.
I climb into the ambulance.
Before it closes, I look back.
Kellan stands in the yard beneath drifting smoke, his gun lowered beside his leg. There is blood on one cuff that does not belong to him. Tomas speaks to him, but Kellan watches me.
I broke our agreement.
June paid the first price.
The evidence beneath my arm feels heavier than any secret I kept from him.
As the ambulance begins moving, my phone vibrates.
A message sent by Kellan before he reached the archive finally arrives.
Do not enter the building. I’m ten minutes away.
I read the timestamp. He sent it three minutes before the lights went out.
I had no signal.
That fact does not excuse the choice that brought us there.
I place the phone facedown on my knee and keep pressure on June’s hand while the siren carries us toward the hospital.