by CJ Lyons
She stumbled forward but stopped again. The sounds of children screaming and fists pounding undercut the piercing wail of the fire alarm. She turned toward it. Through the windows of the doors to the intake room she saw faces pressed against the glass.
“We’re trapped,” Deidre shouted. “Find the keys. Let us out!”
To hell with keys. Morgan knelt to begin work with her lock picks. The sounds of the kids coughing and crying urged her to hurry, but she ignored them. She knew what she was doing; rushing it would only lead to mistakes and wasted time. Calmly, she felt the last tumbler fall into place, and the doors unlocked.
She held one door open, releasing a mass of humanity as the kids raced out. “Go down the hall, to the left,” she told them. A few of the Red Shirts pushed their way to the front and took off running, abandoning the others. But most of them helped each other, fighting their way through the blinding smoke, coughing, and choking.
“Where’s Deidre?” she asked as the last made their way out. Somehow she’d lost track of the other girl. The kids shook their heads, turning toward freedom.
Morgan should have followed, but she also hadn’t seen Micah. She entered the intake room in time to see Deidre go through the doors on the opposite side, the ones leading to the commons room. Morgan ran after her.
The smoke was thicker in the commons room, pouring through all the air vents as well as between the light fixtures. Morgan pulled what was left of her top off and wrapped it around her face. She caught up to Deidre on the other side of the room. The older girl had slumped against the door, gasping for air.
Morgan helped her through the door into the classroom corridor. Not as much smoke here, but now the lights were flickering ominously. “Where’s Micah?”
Deidre coughed, pointed toward the Isolation rooms.
“Why didn’t he leave?” Morgan asked as she hauled Deidre with her. As they reached an area with less smoke, Deidre’s breathing steadied and she was able to walk on her own.
“Nelson.”
Shit. The state Nelson was in, he’d rather stay behind to beat the crap out of Micah than run for his life. She remembered Benjamin’s orders to Chapman about getting rid of Micah—had Chapman sent Nelson to deal with Micah while he started the blaze? The chaos of the fire would make a damned good diversion, and the panicked mob of kids would easily cover up a murder.
They rounded the corner to the hall where the Iso rooms were. At the far end, past the janitor’s closet where Morgan had been imprisoned, Micah and Nelson were grappling, shoving each other against the walls, throwing wild punches, perilously close to the flames. Morgan glanced around, searching for a weapon. The only thing handy was the long padlock dangling from the janitor’s closet. Brass knuckles?
“Stop it,” Deidre shouted, trying to get between the two combatants. “We need to get out of here.”
“Is it true?” Nelson said, whirling on her. Blood streamed from his nose and a split lip. “Your brother said Micah raped you.”
Micah took the opportunity to rush Nelson, plowing into him, both of them slamming against the wall. “I never touched her!”
Nelson responded with a knee to Micah’s groin and an elbow to the side of his head. Micah stumbled back, groaning, doubled over in pain. Nelson swept his feet out from under him, and Micah went down.
Morgan tied her shirt around the lock. Just as Nelson leaned back, ready to deliver the final blow with a kick to Micah’s head, she struck him with her improvised mace. She swung it hard enough that when it landed against Nelson’s chest wall there was an audible crack.
He fell, off balance, landing on his butt. Before he could recover, she pounced on him from behind, placing him into a choke hold, just like her father had taught her. A few seconds later and he slumped, unconscious.
“What did you do to him?” Deidre cried, racing to his side.
“He’ll wake up in a second or two.” Morgan turned to Micah. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, climbed to his feet with her help. One of his eyes was already swelling shut and the other cheek was cut and bruised, but he seemed to be moving okay. She retrieved her top, untied the padlock, sliding it over her knuckles, ready to use it again if Nelson didn’t behave himself. She slung the top, now more a rag than clothing, around her neck.
“You’re hurt,” Micah said. “What happened? Who did this?”
Morgan glanced over her shoulder and down at her belly. The barbs hadn’t done serious damage; she doubted she’d need any stitches, and the bleeding had already stopped. But she had to admit, the welts and abrasions along with the blood made for a nasty sight. “Looks worse than it is.”
Deidre knelt beside Nelson and soothed his forehead. Nelson jerked awake, startled. No choking or gagging, Morgan noted, pleased with herself. There was always a risk of crushing the larynx with that hold if you did it incorrectly. He gasped and held his side—a cracked rib or two from where the heavy padlock hit him, but he was breathing okay.
“Get him up. We need to move,” Morgan ordered.
The smoke had found them, billowing in through the overhead ventilation grills. And it’d turned black, which couldn’t be a good sign. It also smelled worse, if that was possible. More acrid, it burned Morgan’s throat.
Deidre and Micah hauled Nelson to his feet. He pushed Micah away. “It’s okay,” Deidre told him. “Micah never hurt me. My brother lied.”
“But—why?” Nelson turned to the room where the fire was coming from. “I thought he’d hurt you. I wanted to kill him.”
“So you started a fire?” Micah’s adrenaline could be heard in his roar of anger. “With all these kids trapped inside?”
“I knew they’d get out. Everyone would get out. Except you.”
“I didn’t do anything!” The two boys glared at each other, both with their elbows back and fists ready to strike.
“Stop it!” Morgan said. She didn’t shout. Instead she used a tone borrowed from her father. One low and venomous, promising lethal consequences if you didn’t obey. “Now. Where’s the nearest room with a window?”
“The music room.” Deidre pointed to a room a few feet down the corridor.
Morgan led the way, tying her shirt back around her face and crouching low to avoid the smoke overhead. Just as she reached the door to the music room the lights went out.
CHAPTER 45
Jenna hated driving these Pennsylvania farm roads at night. At least in LA they understood the concept of streetlights. Or there’d be plenty of other traffic to help guide you through sudden curves that always seemed to appear while negotiating steep mountainsides.
“The sheriff’s deputy is still twelve minutes out,” Andre said as he hung up the phone. “We’re her only backup.”
“I’m going thirty miles an hour over the speed limit.” While praying she didn’t hit a deer—at seventy miles an hour that would not be a pretty sight for either of them. “Besides, Morgan can take care of herself.”
Andre leaned forward, his back rigid. More than adrenaline, anger. Shit. She didn’t need this, not now while their client might be on a homicidal rampage and she had to decide how to best protect both him and their firm.
“My point is.” His words flew out clipped, as if he was taking aim. “She shouldn’t have to. You need to decide, Jenna. Right now. Is Morgan part of the team, or not?”
Right. Damn marine code. Leave no man behind and all that jazz. Why couldn’t he understand that there were some people in this world who simply weren’t cut out to be on any team? A mercenary. That was what Morgan was. Someone you used for their particular talents when you needed to and then you cut them loose.
Except cutting Morgan loose might be more dangerous than keeping her close. “She is,” Jenna finally allowed. “Which is why I’m risking our lives to—” They crested a hill and saw the lights ringing the ReNew compound. The building
itself was dark. “We’re here.”
“You drilled for active shooter response while with the Postal Service?” Andre asked. Jenna could almost hear his mind calculating lines of sight and approaches.
She didn’t have to ask about Andre’s preparation—his unit had seen some of the worst door-to-door urban combat fighting of the war in Afghanistan. She steered the Tahoe into the ReNew drive, surprised to see the entrance gate open.
“Jenna, watch out!”
A group of kids ran in front of the car, skirting the edge of the headlights. Jenna slammed the brakes, and they scattered. She swore under her breath, fear sending her pulse into a gallop. The SUV screeched to a stop.
Andre rolled down his window. “What happened?” he called out to the kids who’d dived to his side of the narrow drive. “Why are you running?”
“Fire,” a boy gasped. “The building is on fire!”
Andre glanced at Jenna. “Guess that’s Morgan’s call for help. Just like you told her to do.”
“I didn’t mean for her to panic a bunch of kids.”
“Why aren’t the fire guys here?” He pulled out his phone.
“Don’t bother them for a false alarm. We know it’s Morgan.” She eased the Tahoe down the road to the parking lot. More kids were running from the building, but what caught her attention was the white Lexus SUV pinning a middle-aged man against a Jaguar sedan.
The headlights were so bright they made the man’s skin appear a ghastly blue white. He held his hands up against the Lexus’s grill as if he thought he could stop the SUV, the movement revealing a white clerical collar visible against his dark shirt.
The good Reverend Doctor Amos Benjamin. Although the blubbering fear that twisted his face made him look nothing like the charismatic man she’d met earlier today.
Robert Greene leaned out the driver’s side window to shout at the trapped man. “Tell me why, Benjamin. Why did you kill my daughter?”
Morgan led her ragtag group into the music room. Nelson had his arm wrapped around Deidre’s shoulders. It was a protective gesture, but it was also clear that he was limping and breathing heavily. Maybe she’d done more damage with her improvised mace than intended.
Once inside the room, she closed the door, but that didn’t help—the smoke was weaseling its way down through the ceiling tiles and light fixtures.
“You started the fire in the crawl space?” Micah asked as they stumbled over to the piano.
“Figured it would be the best place. That way I didn’t have to worry about the sprinklers putting it out right away.”
“If they worked in the first place.”
Morgan ignored their chitchat, climbing onto the radiator in front of the windows. “There are no latches. We’ll have to break one out.”
She reattached her padlock to her shirt once again. Turning her head away and shielding her eyes, she swung it as hard as she could against the lower corner of the window. It bounced back, almost hit her. She leaned forward and felt the window. Barely a faint crack.
The smoke was drifting down, a thick blanket choking and smothering them. Deidre and Nelson leaned against the piano, coughing.
“Let me try,” Micah said. He took the makeshift weapon from her and twisted his body to put his full weight against it and swung. This time there was a definite thud and a crack. He swung again, and the padlock went through the glass, producing a hole.
The night air rushed in. Morgan filled her lungs, relishing it. A crackling sounded overhead. Ceiling tiles began dropping around them, coated with flames. More flames roared in through the gaps they left, searching for the oxygen.
“Hurry,” she urged.
Micah swung again, grunting with the effort. He broke through the glass a few inches away from the first hole. Quickly he wound up and hit it again and again until a thunderous crack pierced through the wail of the fire alarm. The glass crashed down, shattering against the windowsill, flying in all directions.
Morgan grabbed Micah, pulling him back and spinning them both away from the glass. A gust of wind swept in, feeding the fire. The room now was choked with smoke and flame.
She took her shirt and the padlock back from Micah and wrapped the cloth around her nose and mouth. “You go first,” she told Micah, her voice hoarse from the smoke and the need to shout. “That way you can help Nelson down.”
Micah nodded and climbed onto the radiator. He swept as much glass off with his legs as he could, but there were still plenty of shards poised to cut them. As he twisted around to lower himself through the window, Morgan took his arms to help brace him. She had no idea how far down it was.
“My feet aren’t touching,” he confirmed her suspicions. “Let go, I’ll have to drop.”
She did and he vanished into the night. Too late she remembered that none of them wore shoes. She leaned out the window, trying to stay away from the sharp edges at the rim. “Are you okay?”
There was enough light between the fire and the moonlight that she could see him push up from the ground to his feet. His head was about two feet below the window. “I’m fine. A bit sliced up, nothing serious. Go ahead and pass Nelson through.”
The fire seemed frustrated by the lack of fuel in the empty classroom, crawling along the remaining ceiling tiles and the walls. But the air was heating up to the point where it was hard to take in a breath, and the smoke was blinding.
Morgan didn’t waste energy on talking. Instead she tapped Deidre’s arm and grabbed Nelson by the shoulders. Together they helped Nelson, who was breathing shallow and fast, up onto the windowsill, then held his arms to lower him as Micah guided him from below. He cried out in pain, but there was nothing else they could do.
Deidre was overcome with a coughing spell and let go abruptly, leaving Morgan holding all of Nelson’s weight. He slipped through her grasp and fell with a loud scream.
“Shit,” Micah said. “He landed on a piece of glass, sliced up his leg.”
Morgan didn’t have time to do anything—Deidre had collapsed, and the smoke was so thick, Morgan had lost sight of her. She dropped to her knees and felt around with her arms spread wide, listening for Deidre’s coughing. Finally she found her.
Grabbing Deidre by the arm, Morgan hauled her up and onto the radiator. The flames were so close their roar was louder than the fire alarm. She pushed Deidre out the window, hoping she wouldn’t land on top of Micah and Nelson, then she jumped as well, trying to spin her weight to one side to avoid hitting the others.
She landed hard, but remembered to bend her knees to absorb the shock and rolled with her momentum. Pieces of glass bit into her knees and palms, but nothing too large or deep. Gasping for air and relishing how cold and fresh it was, she climbed to her feet and turned to the others.
Flames shot out of the window above them. Deidre was still coughing, but not as badly. She sat beside Nelson, picking glass from his hair. Micah had taken off his shirt and tied it around Nelson’s right thigh. “I can’t get the bleeding to stop. We need to get him help.”
“Can you carry him?” Morgan asked. They were at the back of the building, near the forest. Out of sight of the road.
“Yeah, help me get a good hold on him.” Micah squatted and she maneuvered Nelson into position for a piggyback. Then she let Micah lean against her as he straightened. His weight landed on the welts on her shoulders and hurt like hell, but it was only for a moment.
“We’ll be right behind you,” she said.
Micah took off into the night, and Morgan turned to help Deidre who sat stunned on the ground. Her flowing dress had been singed and torn so it fluttered around her like ribbons. She looked up at Morgan, nose dripping with mucus; the fire reflected from her eyes making her appear like a madwoman.
The fire burst through one of the other windows, showering them with glass. Deidre didn’t move. Morgan grabbed her hand and haul
ed her to her feet. Both of them were slicked with sweat yet also shivering in the cold night air. They stumbled away from the building, feet crunching through the glass. Deidre slipped and fell to the ground. Morgan let her catch her breath—they were far enough from the building that they were safe for now.
She was too sore and exhausted to risk sitting down herself, afraid she might not find the strength to get back up again. She unwound her ruined top and rewrapped it around her arm where glass shards had left some bloody cuts, squeezing the padlock in her hand. Damn thing had saved her more than once tonight; she wasn’t about to let it go now.
“You okay?” she asked Deidre after a few minutes. “We need to get moving before we get hypothermia.”
The girl stared at her without comprehension. She ignored the hand Morgan reached down to her.
“Deidre, c’mon. We have to go now.”
Deidre shook her head. Small, quick shakes as if trying to deny reality. Morgan wondered if the girl had finally had a mental breakdown. Not like she was all that stable to start with. But then she realized Deidre wasn’t staring at her—she was looking at something behind Morgan.
She whirled, the padlock gripped in her fist her only weapon. No match for the large semiautomatic pistol Sean Chapman had aimed at her heart.
CHAPTER 46
Jenna positioned the Tahoe to maximize the amount of cover it provided. She got out on the driver’s side and drew her Sig Sauer. Andre slid across the front seat and climbed out beside her, his own weapon, a Beretta 9-millimeter, in his hand.
“How do you want to handle this?” she asked him. When it came to tactics, there was no one she trusted more than Andre.
“Can’t risk a shot. If we kill him and his foot slips off the brake—”
“Then the Reverend is toast.” She glanced over the Tahoe’s hood. Greene was screaming obscenities at the Reverend, and he was also now aiming a pistol at the man.
