“It’s not important,” Gabriela said. “She’s gone, Doctor! Let her go. We have to get out of here—you’re dead if you stay here.”
He turned his head and looked directly at her, his pale blue eyes holding Gabriela’s own. It was funny, the way a person’s eyes said so much more than words ever could. About who someone was, where they were going, and what they wanted now.
Dr. Markel’s eyes told Gabriela he wasn’t leaving his wife’s body here.
“My daughter has Li-Fraumeni,” she said. “Please, you have to get out of here so you can help her!”
A blast of wind rushed up from behind. A deafening thump came behind it. Instinctively, Gabriela screeched and covered her head. Bits of ash and ember shot past, and hands of smoke took hold of her throat.
She coughed and hacked, looking behind her. The partition from the entryway had come down, revealing nothing but smoke as black as a new moon, cut by the deadly orange shimmer of a column of flame, roasting the back of her.
“Dr. Markel, my little girl still needs you!” Gabriela shouted over the fire. “There are people everywhere who still need you—you can’t stay here!”
Gray ash settled over him.
She grabbed Markel’s arm and yanked him away from his wife. He didn’t fight her.
Because he couldn’t have fought her. A splotch of dark red showed through the ash that covered him—and it was growing.
Dr. Markel had an open wound across his belly. He’d be gone within minutes.
“I can’t go with you,” Dr. Markel strained to speak. “I’m sorry.”
Then she’d already lost, hadn’t she? Before she’d come in this house, and risked her life against the fire, she’d lost. Her chance to cure Flor was gone. Gabriela lowered her head until it rested on Dr. Markel’s elbow.
God in Heaven, after all you’ve shown me, why would you take it away like this? Why would you take my little girl?
A hand weakly brushed against her forehead.
She lifted her eyes to see Dr. Markel struggling to say something. His mouth moved, but nothing audible came out. He motioned with his eyes. He wanted her to come closer.
Gabriela brought her ear to his mouth.
“In my office,” he said. “Laptop.”
She pulled away from him. “Laptop?”
He nodded, slowly.
“Where’s your office?” She checked the room around her, but the smoke curtained anything beyond a couple feet.
He turned his head to her right, his eyes focusing on something only he could see.
“Where?” She shook him. “Where is it?”
He moved like a rag doll. He was too weak to answer.
Gabriela peered to her right again and saw only smoke and darkness. Terror stung her like a red-hot pitchfork when she thought about going deeper into the smoke.
His office. It had to be in his office, and whatever was on that laptop, it was worth Dr. Markel using his last bit of strength to tell Gabriela about it.
So, she began to crawl into the smoke.
Moving through the heavier smoke was as bad as every living thing implicitly understood it to be. You didn’t have to train a dog to avoid fire, you didn’t see birds perching on burning trees, or hear about horses running into burning barns. Every human, every animal, knew. Gabriela suddenly had a little understanding of what motivated a firefighter to enter a burning building. Not doing so could mean the loss of innocent life.
When she looked back and realized she couldn’t see Dr. Markel, or the back door, or even her own feet, a deep, primal fear took hold of Gabriela’s heart—something more elemental than what she’d felt outside, where that gunman lurked, something that bit deeper than the first time Flor was diagnosed with cancer.
The fear threatened to chain her to the doctor’s living room floor. The devil called her name. He tempted her to stop and rest, to forget about her troubles, to stop struggling so damned hard.
Gabriela scrambled forward, holding her blouse over her face with one hand. She shut her eyes and held her breath until her head bumped against the wall. Then she backed away, reached out with her left hand, and felt a door frame, then felt an opening to another room.
She went in.
Here, the lights were off, and mercifully, the smoke wasn’t as thick, though not by much—it was thick enough to make her cough and wheeze. Gabriela moved forward, keeping her right hand on the wall, terrified to break contact with it and lose her way in the smoke. Suddenly, the top of her head bumped into something. It felt like another wood thing. Maybe a bookcase, or some kind of table or, she silently hoped, a desk?
She reached up, and her fingers immediately wrapped around a familiar shape—a pen—a whole mess of them. They spilled out and came crashing down on her head, and her heart felt lighter—she’d found the doctor’s desk!
A spill of light appeared against the ceiling, like someone clicking on a weak lamp. She rose up on her knees, until her eyes were level with the top of the desk. She saw a blurry reflection against a picture frame on the wall.
Then her brain put it together—the light came from a computer screen!
Both her hands swiped across the desk. They latched onto something hard and thin, and then they pressed it down until it shut with a click.
She snatched Dr. Markel’s laptop off the desk, sending a dozen things flying in every direction, and yanking the power cord loose. She didn’t care. She had his laptop. She had the key to saving Flor’s life, right here in her hands.
Wait. What did he actually have here? A formula? What was she going to do with a formula? She couldn’t synthesize the drug herself. She didn’t know the first thing about it.
No, no, there had to be a way. The Lord would open a way.
Maybe she could take it to one of Hildon’s competitors. She could sell it to them for money to pay off all the medical bills and work out a way to get enough Anthradone to cure her daughter, or she could ransom the formula back to Hildon. She’d get fired, but what did she care? So long as they gave her the Anthradone to cure Flor.
Flor mattered. Not a paycheck. At least, not one from a pharma company.
She hacked up a deep cough that sent her doubling over and catching herself against the hardwood floor with her elbows. She kept the laptop clutched to her chest.
All of this would be worthless if she didn’t make it out of the house.
Gabriela looked left. Hellish light danced against the wall opposite the door she’d come through, and smoke belched into Dr. Markel’s office. She went toward it awkwardly on one hand and both knees, still holding tight to the laptop, then looked out and saw nothing but a black-gray curtain backed by flame.
Dr. Markel’s body was in there, somewhere. God rest his soul.
She turned around and, as she worked her way toward the desk, she noticed a beacon of hope shining in through the smoke.
Gabriela crawled toward the light. She came to another wall, and felt her way around it, until she realized she was at a window—and it was open. Her free hand pressed against the window screen until it ripped out of the way.
Hoisting herself out, she tumbled through the window and escaped the house, landing on her back in a flower bed.
She lay there for a moment, her lungs sucking in clean air and pushing out the smoke as best they could. Her arms were numbed from the cuts, her eyes stinging, her heart bouncing in her chest.
Her journey out of the fire and flame was a miracle. God’s will was good, and she owed Him more than she could ever repay. She would sing His glory from now until the end of days.
She watched the chimney of smoke crawl up into the night sky, listened to the flames hollow out the house, felt the thud of what must have been a large beam falling to the ground somewhere inside.
The weight of something pressed on her hip. She lifted her head to see what it was and saw the laptop. Did she wreck it in the fall?
The machine was dirty. When she opened the lid, the screen was smudged with blood and soot—l
ikely from when she’d grabbed it off the desk—but she had a login screen.
The laptop still worked.
She snapped it shut, then got to her feet. In front of her, the fountain shone white above the hidden spotlights, the caduceus wings spread. The angel who led her out of the fire.
Thank God Markel had spent so much money on that awful fountain.
She shook her head, then stumbled across the driveway to her car. Once there, she opened the back door, wrapped the laptop in one of Flor’s blankets, and carefully laid it on the floor behind her seat. It had to fit snugly; she couldn’t have it rattling around on the drive home.
Then, she got behind the wheel, started the engine, and slowly backed out.
When she cleared Dr. Markel’s big SUV to her right, she saw what remained of the house in her rearview mirror. The porch and everything on it were lost in the flames. Fire beckoned to her from the open window of Dr. Markel’s office.
The whole house would be gone within moments. She couldn’t have been in there longer than five or ten minutes, and the fire had spread pretty much everywhere.
She coughed again and put the car in drive. She looked up, checking the fires in her mirror one last time.
Then her throat went tight. A man’s figure stood in the driveway directly behind her. Before he had a chance to shoot her, she stomped the gas pedal.
“Trouble,” I shouted over the wind and clapped DJ’s shoulder. Then, I pointed in the direction of the fire. It was plain to see now, even without night vision.
As we cleared the last outcrop of rock, we both realized that the fire burned directly above the jetty.
DJ shoved the throttle. Reel Fun’s engines screamed like a wild cat. I ran to the flybridge ladder, then quickly down to the cockpit, and burst into the salon. DJ wasn’t a diver, but I was. He let me keep some equipment on board.
I yanked up the cushion on the starboard settee, found my stuff, and dug out my mask, fins and booties, swimsuit, and a small, single-strap plastic shoulder pack lying on the floor. Quickly, I changed out of my clothes and into my swimsuit and booties, then put the pack on so that the strap lay across my back and the bag fit on my chest. Finally, I opened the pack, took out a neon green glow stick on the end of a lanyard, snapped it, and put the lanyard around my neck.
A set of handheld, waterproof VHF radios waited on a charging cradle in the master stateroom. I snatched one up, turned it on to make sure the battery was charged, then turned it off and stuffed it in my pack.
On my way to the aft deck, I scooped up my mask and fins.
Reel Fun slowed to a halt just as I finished putting my fins around the heels of my booties.
“Channel 3, DJ!” I called up to the flybridge as I got to the swim platform. “I’ll make contact when I’m on the jetty.”
“Roger that,” DJ answered.
I adjusted my mask over my eyes, then held it tight with my fingertips as I took a big stride off Reel Fun’s swim platform. I scissored my fins instantly, my face barely going below the water.
When I surfaced, I pointed myself in the direction of the jetty. The lights made it easy to spot, and if I somehow didn’t see them, the fire burning up the hill from shore was plenty to guide me. I estimated two hundred yards to the end of the jetty from my position. If the current cooperated with me, I’d be there in under three minutes.
As I swam, I noticed at least four different boats moored to a dock farther along the jetty, nearer the shore. A yacht about the size of Reel Fun, a much smaller boat about fifteen feet long on the opposite side of the dock, a fifteen-foot trawler and a Cigarette boat painted some kind of dark, high-gloss finish that reflected the firelight. After I pulled myself up the ladder hanging off the end of the jetty, I took off my mask and unsnapped the heel straps from my fins, my eyes on the fire all the while. It must’ve doubled in size in the time it took me to swim from Reel Fun. I hoped to God Marc Herrera hadn’t got some idea about luring me out here to get rid of the pesky guy asking too many questions.
Out of habit, I checked my surroundings. Other than the fire, the boats ahead of me, and Reel Fun behind me with her running lights on, I couldn’t see much with the jetty lights shining in my eyes.
I unzipped the pack on my chest, then took out the handheld.
“I’m on the jetty.”
“I see ya,” DJ answered.
“Moving up to the fire now. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Roger that.”
Leaving my mask and fins behind on the end of the dock, I moved forward. With each step I took on the wooden jetty toward the shore, my pulse pounded harder in my ears.
I batted back the creeping fear that I was walking into someone else’s kill zone. My eyes kept close tabs on each boat’s deck. My mind was eager to grasp onto the shadows playing across bows and decks and turn them into human-shaped figures.
As I passed between the boats—the Cigarette boat and the yacht on my left, and the smaller boats on my right, I saw no lights and doubted anyone was inside them. I stepped off the dock and onto the rocky shore, the sense of foreboding growing stronger.
A path meandered up the shallow cliffs ahead of me. It was made of sand poured behind railroad ties to create steps, with lights on posts marking either side of the trail. It went about ten yards ahead of me, rising up ten feet to the top of the rocks before it cut suddenly right, still climbing upward.
“I’m heading up to the house,” I said into the radio.
“Copy that,” DJ answered. “Just don’t get roasted alive. I’d hate to have to tell your wife you cooked up worse than a toddler’s campfire marshmallow.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want you to have to go through that, would we?”
I started up the trail, reaching the dogleg, where the fire’s heat strongly suggested I go back to the water. But I continued on.
Five yards farther, I followed a switchback in the trail. A few more paces, and I came to the top.
Half the house was engulfed in flame and the darkest smoke I’d ever seen. A hint of a wooden deck became visible, which made me think I’d come around the backside of the place, but I couldn’t be sure. What I thought was the deck could’ve been the interior floor exposed after a wall caved in.
The heat was relentless. It made my eyes pucker, and the bare skin on my stomach, arms, and legs tingled with goosebumps. As I stood there in awe, part of the roof caved in. It hit the ground with a heavy sound that reverberated up the soles of my feet and into my gut. Embers twisted into the sky, and an intense wash of heat passed over me.
Another urge to run the way I’d come from hit me. It was the natural human thing to do when confronted with danger, but I was trained as a pararescue operator. Years of instruction and drilling had molded me into the kind of guy who had to go check for survivors. Only fools and heroes ran into a burning building. I was neither; it was my job.
So, I went left—around the quarter of the house that hadn’t been swallowed by the fire. Here, a strip of grass a few feet wide had been cleared between the house and the brush to my left.
I passed by a closed window and tried to peer inside. I couldn’t see a thing. The inside of the house was probably so choked with smoke, I wouldn’t have seen my own hand in front of my face.
“Dr. Markel!” I shouted at the window, hoping he was somehow on the other side and able to answer me. There was no response. I continued around the front of the house.
A big, white fountain was the first thing that caught my eye. The two-tiered water feature housed a sculpture carved to resemble a caduceus staff.
A pair of taillights suddenly came on, grabbing my attention. A navy blue SUV—a Kia—and I couldn’t hear the engine running over the roaring fire, but it slowly backed out of a spot on the driveway.
It curved around the back of the other car, and thanks to the lights on Dr. Markel’s fountain, I got a look at the driver—it wasn’t Marc Herrera.
A woman sat behind the wheel. She had dark, frizzy hai
r and a round face. She looked petite, harmless, and scared to hell and back.
“Hey!” I waved my arms.
She didn’t see me. But she knew something, and I didn’t want her running off. I ran toward her.
Just as I passed the fountain, she looked at me in the mirror. I guess I spooked her, because the Kia’s engine revved, the tires yelped, and she took off.
Then, the Kia came to a sudden, violent stop.
A stone archway stood on the far edge of the driveway. The arch was grounded a foot on either side of the exit and the car had crashed into it.
“DJ, get to the dock, ASAP! I’ve got someone in need of medical attention.”
My instincts took over. I ran to the car and peered inside. The woman was slumped against the airbag from the wheel.
“Ma’am,” I said, yanking the door open, “can you talk to me?”
She muttered. I couldn’t hear her over the fire, and she was covered in soot and ash, but if she were talking, she was alive and conscious. Her hands and arms were bloody, but I didn’t see any other obvious injuries.
“You were in an accident,” I said, “I’m a trained medic—I’m going to take you out of the car.”
I reached across her, intending to get my hands under her armpits to pull her out, but instead, my finger brushed across her neck, and she flipped out.
She screamed like a banshee and slapped at my arms, then tried to push me away. But she had as much strength as a newborn puppy.
“Come on, lady,” I said, as I took a firm hold of her and pulled her out of her seat. “Just relax!”
“No!” she screamed hoarsely, then coughed while I lowered her to the ground, and leaned her up against the rear wheel of her car. When the coughing quit, her first words were, “Where’s the laptop?”
“Ma’am, if you had a computer in that house, it’s a puddle now. I’m sorry.”
“No…” she moaned. She was out of her mind. But when she came back around, I wanted to make sure she was with DJ and me.
I took my green glow stick in hand and used its light on her face. Her hair was singed in places, a trickle of blood ran from her nose, a bump on her forehead would be the size of a baseball in ten minutes, and she had black marks around her mouth like runny mascara.
Wayward Sons Page 16
