Into the Fire

by Kyla Stone

  The need seared him, throbbing through him, dark and pulsing and vicious.

  “Logan,” Dakota said, concern in her voice. She reached for his hand. “Are you okay?”

  But he couldn’t accept her comfort.

  It was the last thing he deserved.

  38

  Shay

  Shay finished the last of her protein-and-banana smoothie—not because she was hungry, but she needed the energy boost. It was after midnight, but no one was slowing down.

  Organized chaos around the clock—that was life at the Emergency Operations Center.

  Outside the restaurant, important-looking people hurried back and forth along the terminal, everyone focused on the task at hand. A prick of guilt stabbed her. She should be at the hospital helping, but she needed rest or she’d be useless to anyone.

  Every muscle in her body ached. Her eyes burned from exhaustion, but she didn’t want to catch a few hours of restless sleep before returning to work. She wanted to stay right here in this too-hard seat, the lights turned so low to conserve the generators that she could barely see her food, and Hawthorne squished into the booth across from her.

  Hawthorne’s partner, Kinsey, had met them for a late dinner, then rushed off for some sleep before heading back into the fray. Shay liked Kinsey—she was plucky, brave, and funny—but she treasured these stolen moments with Hawthorne. They were what kept her going, not sleep.

  “Shay, earth to Shay,” Hawthorne quipped.

  She blinked at him, her vision going blurry for a second. She was more exhausted than she’d thought. Maybe she was wrong about that lack of sleep thing. “Yeah, um, sorry. I’m here.”

  He gave her a concerned look. “I’ve never had a date fall asleep on me before. Not that I’m worried about my record or anything, but maybe we should cut this short.”

  She flushed at his mention of ‘date.’ Was that what this was? Is that what she wanted it to be? She twisted one of her corkscrew curls behind her ears and adjusted her glasses to disguise her embarrassment.

  She cleared her throat. “I couldn’t live with myself if I ruined your record. I’ll be fine. Just get some caffeine in me.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “You sure? This late?”

  “Trust me, I’ll sleep like a baby as soon as my head hits the pillow. I could sleep through a train wreck.”

  “Noted.” Hawthorne gestured to get the attention of the waiter. “Let’s get you that coffee.”

  Instead of coming over, the waiters turned up the volume on the TV behind them. They kept the television going 24/7 for news updates, but it was usually the same information repeated ad nauseum. This time, it wasn’t.

  Several people at the bar gasped. Others stopped in their tracks in the middle of the terminal, staring at the screen with alarmed expressions.

  “What’s happening?” Shay asked.

  Hawthorne’s mouth flattened into a grim line. “You haven’t seen this yet?”

  Shay shook her head. “I’ve been working nonstop all day.” She hadn’t even had time to check in with her mom or Julio and the others in the Glades. She turned in her seat to watch.

  Two news reporters and several important-looking experts and officials sat around a U-shaped table as a grainy video of two Middle Eastern men played on a loop behind them.

  The female reporter touched her earpiece and gazed intently at the audience. “The footage released just a few hours ago features two Hezbollah terrorists claiming responsibility for the thirteen nuclear attacks that have claimed the lives of at least a million American lives. They’ve also claimed that the highly enriched uranium used on U.S. soil was procured through high-ranking Iranian government officials.

  “Iranian President Hassan Rouhani quickly and strenuously denounced the charges in a press conference an hour ago. Iran’s top officials claim their uranium enrichment program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. However, Rouhani is refusing to allow UN officials or IAEA inspectors to survey Iran’s nuclear research facilities.”

  The reporter turned to a gray-haired woman in a black suit. “How swiftly should the U.S. retaliate, Dr. Bradley?”

  “Hezbollah, the Iran-sponsored militant terrorist group, remains the most hostile of any of the global threats to America,” the woman said. “That being said, whether Iran even has the nuclear capabilities is—”

  “We have our proof,” the second expert interrupted. “Bomb Iran to kingdom come! America needs to prove her strength now more than ever. China and Russia already smell blood in the water. I don’t care how many tons of humanitarian aid Russia keeps delivering. They’ll tear us apart if we don’t act, and act now…”

  Shay and Hawthorne continued watching for several minutes, along with everyone else in the bar, but the newscasters had no new information to report. They were just talking heads, arguing over the validity of the footage and who to bomb first.

  Shay twisted around in her seat and faced Hawthorne. She was wide awake now, even without coffee. “Do you think Hezbollah did it? And Iran’s behind it?”

  Hawthorne gave a tight shrug. “ISIS claimed responsibility the day of the attacks, remember? North Korea basically said they wished they’d done it first. I know everyone wants someone to blame, but we can’t nuke an entire country based on the word of two insane terrorists.”

  “Do you think Iran has nuclear weapons? They’re not supposed to, right?”

  “I’m not sure on that point, but they definitely have enriched nuclear material. It’s easier to create an improvised nuclear device, or IND, than most people think.” Hawthorne sat up straighter, an eager gleam in his brown eyes whenever he got a chance to talk about something that interested him. “I mean, I don’t want to bore you or anything.”

  “I’m not bored,” Shay said, her cheeks warming. She liked that about him: his enthusiasm, his intelligence. “I want to hear it. Tell me everything you know.”

  “Between plutonium and highly enriched uranium, or HEU, HEU is much easier to turn into a weapon of mass destruction. It only takes fifty-five pounds of uranium to make a crude nuclear bomb. Forget Iran for a minute. The global stockpile is over 3.5 million pounds. That’s twenty-three thousand nuclear weapons in existence. The U.S., China, Russia, the U.K., France, Israel, India, and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons. North Korea, Syria, and of course, Iran: maybe.”

  Shay nibbled on her thumbnail, her gut twisting. “Twenty-three thousand nuclear bombs? That’s insane to think about.”

  “There are literally hundreds of locations holding nuclear weapons or nuclear material. And there’s no binding global standards for how well these weapons and materials should be secured. For example, over one hundred research reactors utilize HEU. And some of them are in developing countries, where security and safeguards are questionable.”

  “How do you know all this?” Shay asked.

  “We were just debriefed by an official from the International Atomic Energy Agency, so everything’s fresh in my mind.” Hawthorne toyed with his fork, a frown creasing his forehead. “Over the last few decades, hundreds of incidents of theft or ‘loss’ of radioactive materials have been reported. In 2010, anti-nuclear activists broke into a Belgian military base that stored several U.S. nuclear weapons and walked around for an hour, just to prove how easy it was to break in. And four Russian submarines with nuclear warheads sank, but the warheads were never recovered.”

  Shay raised her eyebrows. “Or at least, that’s what the Russian government reported.”

  “Exactly. But it’s not just foreign governments. At least eleven U.S. nuclear weapons have been lost, too.”

  Shay’s jaw dropped. “What? How can someone lose a nuclear weapon?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine. Every country’s government claims that one hundred percent of known lost or stolen nuclear material is recovered, but the IAEA rep said it’s very possible that these countries may have only recovered some of the material, not all of it, and lied to cover it up.”

&
nbsp; “Like the way that the Soviets lied about Chernobyl,” Shay said. “Some countries fear shame and embarrassment so much they’d cover it up at any cost before admitting it on the world stage.”

  “That’s exactly it,” Hawthorne said.

  “Okay, so say these terrorists got ahold of some of this ‘lost’ uranium, either by stealing it or through their government—how did they get nuclear material through port security here in the U.S.? Shouldn’t that be impossible?”

  “I wish it was. U.S. Coast Guard personnel and Customs agents can only thoroughly inspect about five percent of the nine million shipping containers that arrive at U.S. ports every year. They have radiation detection scanners, of course, but they can fail—or be fooled.

  “And lots of items have radiation signatures. Bananas, for example. So does granite, bricks, kitty litter, even potatoes. They all contain low levels of minerals that naturally decay. Individually, their radioactivity won’t set off Geiger counters or harm anyone. A container or truckload of bananas or kitty litter, though, would set off the sensors.”

  “So, a shipping container filled with kitty litter boxes that was also hiding small amounts of nuclear material could potentially slip through?”

  “Possibly. Any container with detectible radiation is supposed to be individually inspected. Doesn’t mean it happens, or as thoroughly as it should.”

  “Human error,” Shay said.

  “Right now, Homeland is busy sifting through irregularity reports from every U.S. port of entry from the last three years. If they don’t find anything, they’ll go back further. There’s also the likelihood that whoever did this has people in this country helping them, including port personnel.”

  “I surely hope not.” The thought of Americans colluding to destroy their own country was beyond the pale. But they couldn’t discount any possibility.

  “Consider the fact that less than fifteen percent of heroin and thirty percent of cocaine is intercepted by authorities worldwide,” Hawthorne said. “Seventy to eighty-five percent of illegal narcotics get through. No one wants to admit it. But it’s the truth.”

  The waiter switched the channel from the talking heads, now nearly shouting at each other over which political party was more at fault for not preventing the catastrophic attacks, to the weather.

  He turned up the volume. The forecast should’ve been the last thing anyone was worried about, but this was Florida—the weather was never benign.

  Shay twisted around again as they both watched. On the screen, a meteorologist was discussing Hurricane Helen, still looming out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She pointed out possible landfall patterns on a digital map of the east coast from the Dominican Republic up through South Carolina.

  “Looks like if it’s going to make landfall, it’ll hit Cuba or maybe the Bahamas,” Hawthorne said. “Not great for them, but good news for Miami.”

  Shay was determined to cling to every bit of hope she could find. “We need good news. Finding the good in all the horror is what keeps us sane. It’s what gives us hope.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I do, with all of my heart.”

  Hawthorne opened his mouth, closed it, then frowned.

  “What is it?”

  He mumbled something so softly that she wasn’t sure what he’d just said.

  Her pulse quickened. “What?”

  He cleared his throat, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “I like you, Shay. There, I said it.” He ran his hand nervously over his bald head and gave her an awkward but sweet smile. “I’ve faced down armed killers without blinking, but I gotta say this is a bit nerve-wracking.”

  Shay’s weariness vanished. Her stomach fluttered, filling her with a happy, giddy warmth. Maybe she should feel guilty for experiencing a bit of joy in the midst of suffering and death, but she didn’t. She embraced it with every fiber of her being.

  This was life. This was hope. This was the light you held onto in the middle of the darkest night.

  She found herself grinning. “I like you, too.”

  “I mean, um, I like you, like you.”

  “Yeah, I got that part.”

  “Oh, good. I, um, wasn’t sure—”

  She stood and held out her hand. “You wanna get out of here for a while?”

  Trey Hawthorne shoved his chair back so fast, it toppled over.

  39

  Dakota

  Dakota shoveled dirt into yet another sandbag. She swiped damp strands of hair out of her eyes with the back of her arm. Julio worked hard beside her, sweating and dirty, grunting with the effort.

  The temperature had to be over ninety-five degrees, the muggy air like a furnace. The sun bore down on them, sweltering and unrelenting. Sweat dripped down her spine, pooled beneath her armpits, and soaked her shirt.

  She’d layered on the sunscreen, wore one of Ezra’s old baseball caps to shield her eyes, and draped her neck in a damp, cool strip of cloth dunked in ice water, but it still felt like being fried alive.

  She kept waiting for the summer afternoon thunderstorms, but so far, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The radio antenna set several yards from the cabin offered only a few thin strips of shade.

  Normally in South Florida, outdoor labor was reserved for the cooler early mornings and late evenings, but they didn’t have the luxury of time.

  If anyone had doubts, the events of yesterday had hammered it home for everyone—they weren’t safe. Not from the desperate refugees pouring out of Miami, and not from the Shepherds.

  It had been five days since they’d killed the Shepherds to protect the cabin. Five days without a hint of threat or danger. But that didn’t matter.

  The stress and tension were taking their toll on all of them. But that didn’t matter, either. They couldn’t let their guard down for a second. And they had to be prepared at all times.

  The worst was still to come.

  She took a swig of water from her insulated bottle and glanced at Julio. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was moving.

  “You’re praying? Now? Out here in the heat?”

  “You caught me.” He opened his eyes. He looked forlorn for a moment before his expression cleared. “This time, I was actually having a pretend conversation with Yoselyn. Must be the heat getting to me.”

  Guilt pricked her. “You miss your wife.”

  “Every second of every day. And my nieces.” He paused, breathing deeply, staring off into the middle distance. “I’ve always been there, you know? And now, when I most need to be, I’m not there.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t say that. It’s not your fault. None of this is.”

  “But—”

  “Listen, Dakota. Please. I’m so blessed and grateful that I know she’s safe. I’m able to talk to her with the satphone, even though we’re separated by considerable distance, even though the cell towers are still down. My sister-in-law is a strong, prepared woman. They stored away plenty of food and water. They’ll be okay until I can get to them and take them out of the city.”

  She could read the concern in his face, even if he tried to hide it. Palm Beach had escaped the devastation of the blast, but grocery stores and gas stations were empty. The government was in shambles. Law and order were disintegrating. And people were starting to get very, very hungry.

  She knew how hard it was to be separated from the person you loved most, to know they were in danger, but there wasn’t a damn thing you could do about it.

  Julio pursed his lips. “Don’t worry about me. Okay? Or her. We have our faith, no matter what. Besides, Yoselyn knows her way around a gun. She’s way tougher than I am.”

  There was no tremor in his voice, no fear or regret. He was steady as a rock.

  Just because Julio was gentle, soft-spoken, and had a good heart, that didn’t mean he wasn’t also strong. A spine of solid steel lurked behind that kind smile.

  And who
was she to judge what gave him that strength? For Dakota, it was her relentless love for her sister that powered her through the worst times. For Julio, it was his faith.

  Maybe his God really was different than the hateful, vengeful deity she’d grown up with.

  “I’m going to help you get your wife,” she said, “when this is over.”

  He met her gaze. “I’m counting on it.”

  She waved her gloved hand around, spraying dirt everywhere. “You sure you’re okay with all this? With handling a gun?”

  “I’ve handled a gun before. Just a few days ago, if you recall.”

  “I mean, like, isn’t it against your faith?”

  Julio shot her a wry grin. “I happen to believe that God is a proponent of self-defense. In Esther, God’s people were allowed to defend themselves against those who would murder them. The Israelites certainly defended themselves against all would-be attackers. Don’t worry about my soul.”

  “That’s good.”

  Julio finished filling a burlap bag and tied it with twine. He hefted it into the nearby wheelbarrow. “Mother Mary and Joseph, that’s heavy.”

  They’d spent the morning training on the range and going over their weapons and ammo again, making sure everything was pristine and in good working order. Then they’d practiced intruder drills.

  Ezra had insisted every training exercise be repeated at least three times, so it actually sank in. If you only do it once, you might as well not practice at all.

  Now, as the afternoon dragged on, they filled dozens of sandbags to shore up the walls beneath the windows of the cabin to create protected shooter positions. Eden was working with Ezra on the other side of the cabin, Logan was working in the garden, and Park was keeping watch.

  Everyone was tense, nervous, on edge. But especially Logan. She was worried about him. She hadn’t spoken to him since yesterday, since he’d shot the blonde woman, Brenda, and almost killed the dark-haired lady and her daughter.

  She wanted to give him his space, waiting for him to be ready to talk on his own terms, but she wasn’t sure if he ever would be. Just when she felt like there was something there, a connection between them, he’d withdrawn, pulled away from her and gone somewhere deep inside himself.