by E V Darcy
‘Fucking prick!’ she huffed, her voice thick with pent up emotion. She had thought that maybe…
You know what, no. Fuck it. She wasn’t going to think of what ifs and maybes. She was going to take something positive from this.
She realised now that she was fed up of her life. There was a gaping hole in it and she wanted more. This was just a good place to start, she told herself. She was going to quit her much-hated job to the snobby little brat she translated for. She finally had plenty saved to get the little cottage with a thatched roof that she’d always wanted—his lordship had paid her handsomely over the years—and until she found the right house, in the right county, she could move back home with her mother.
She took a deep breath and released it slowly as she dragged her hands down her face, frowning at the dampness on her fingertips. Marc wasn’t worth tears, she told herself, but it didn’t stop them from coming.
Bollocks.
‘Are you okay?’ someone asked from the other side of the door. She sniffed and quickly wiped the tears from her eyes, erasing the evidence of how much Marc had hurt her, with the back of her hands.
‘Yup,’ she called back, her voice firm, as she gathered herself together, pulling up her jeans and collecting the discarded paper from the floor. She watched the swirling water carry it away as she pressed the flush.
‘Ugh,’ she sneered at herself as she began to compare a flushing toilet to her feelings. ‘I am so melodramatic when I get shit on.’
‘You’re in a bathroom, Sweetie,’ the stranger called back to her. ‘Are you being metaphorical or literal? ‘Cause I’m gonna call for a manager if you’re being literal.’
Ellie snorted and opened the cubicle door; the stranger, who stood at the door, gave Ellie a little smile and thrust a tissue into her hands.
‘Men are pigs,’ the girl told her when she took the proffered hankie. ‘If you let them shit on you, they will—metaphorically and literally.’
Ellie smiled at the younger girl and washed her hands. The stranger rattled on, ‘Seriously, I’m so done with men. It’s why I came here, at least the TV Stars can’t hurt me, right?’ Ellie internally cringed. ‘I can admire them from afar in complete safety and use them for masturbatory fodder—they’re always perfect in fantasies!’
‘But what about when they fall from their pedestals?’ Ellie asked.
‘You move onto another one.’ The girl winked at her. ‘TV stars are a dime a dozen; use ‘em for a night while you get your rocks off and then move on when they either get old, fat, ugly, or just plain turn you off in some other way.’
Ellie forced a smile. She knew the girl was trying to be kind, but she was hitting too close to home. Her new friend began fluffing her hair in the mirror before she pulled out a tube of lipstick. ‘I mean, I loved Charles Dawn—damn, that guy was hot—but then he became Charnifer when he got with what’s-her-face and had all those kids. Nothing worse than a guy loaded with kids.’
Ellie thought of Marc with Tyler and vehemently disagreed with her unbidden acquaintance. ‘I find a guy with a child quite a turn on.’
‘Really?’ The girl wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, whatever floats your bo-’
The rest of her words were drowned out as a rumble roared down the corridor and the hotel floor shook violently. Ellie grabbed onto the sink to steady herself as the building rocked. Screams sounded down the corridors beyond the door to the ladies’ room and a siren started blaring directly above, making the girls shield their ears.
‘What the bloody hell is that?’ Ellie screamed over the noise.
‘Fire alarm,’ the girl shouted back as she made her way toward the door. ‘And it doesn’t sound like a drill. We have to get out. Now.’ The girl pulled the door open and was greeted by a haze of smoke.
‘Fuck,’ Ellie breathed the expletive as she saw the girl step into the fog, coughing and spluttering as she went. Ellie pulled off her blazer and tugged her t-shirt over her head before shrugging back into the jacket to ensure her arms were protected. ‘This better frigging work,’ she muttered, soaking her shirt in water before holding it to her nose and mouth. She’d seen this in a number of TV programmes but had no idea if it was based on fact or was once the fantasy of some writer that had become an urban myth across all shows.
When she opened the door, the haze had become a wall of smoke and she cursed again. She had no idea where she was going—she hadn’t exactly been paying attention to where she was when she’d stormed off earlier.
She hugged the wall as she moved down the corridor, back the way she came, or at least she that’s what she thought. She had a vague recollection there’d been emergency doors near the Green Room area.
She stumbled as her foot slipped on what felt like gravel and stones. The wall her hand was running against suddenly dropped away and a wave of heat engulfed her from the missing section of brick and mortar. She definitely wasn’t going the right way, she was heading towards the fire and the epicentre of whatever had caused this disaster.
The sprinklers chose that moment to splutter to life, dousing her in their cooling spray. She was about to turn and head back in the opposite direction, when a weak cough and splutter preceded a whimper from within the partly-destroyed room. She took the shirt from her face and tried to call out, but ended up inhaling the thick, hot, black plumes; instead of a ‘hello’ she erupted into a coughing fit as the inside of her chest felt like it had been set on fire.
She shoved the shirt back over her face and cursed at the stench of the smoke now attached to the fabric on the breathing side. It was starting to dry out and wouldn’t last her much longer. Another cough, weaker again, reached her ears and she knew she couldn’t walk away from someone in trouble—she’d never be able to live with herself if they later pulled out a body.
She carefully stepped over the fallen masonry and into the little room. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face and smacked her leg against an upturned table.
Another little whimper sounded to her left. She flicked her sopping wet hair from her face and moved toward it, counting her steps. Finally, she felt her foot connect with something soft and squishy, but it didn’t move. She swallowed and bent down to run her free hand over whatever—whomever—it was.
It was a man. She quickly moved her hands up the guy’s chest—that wasn’t moving—and toward his neck where she checked for a pulse.
Nothing.
She swallowed and withdrew her hand, but jumped in fright as tiny fingers grabbed at her. It was a weak movement, barely a flutter of a grasp against her wrist, but someone—a child—was here. They were alive and needed help.
She grabbed back at the hand, pulled at the arm it was attached to and heard a weak cry of pain, but she didn’t care. She needed to get them both out of here as she was starting to feel the effects of the smoke; her chest was burning, feeling like she had run a marathon at full sprint, and her eyes were streaming tears as they tried to cleanse themselves.
She hauled the child up and hugged him against her frame. Ellie had to block out the thoughts that the man under the rubble was more than likely the child’s father.
Bollocks.
The kid had probably held onto Daddy’s hand while he slipped away. Ellie shuddered.
When she’d finally settled the child securely against her, she took as much air as she could through the damp shirt before shoving it in front of the child’s face. The little one tried to fight it at first, but Ellie held it firmly, hoping it would give them a better chance—if her lungs were feeling the effects, the kid’s must be ready to stop working altogether.
She juggled the child slightly and pulled her now soaking wet vest up over her face as best she could, to try and help herself, but it wasn’t as good as the thick scrunched up fabric her t-shirt had been.
Ellie pirouetted 180 degrees and counted her steps back. She turned right and moved as quickly as she safely could towards the opening in the wall again. Knowing she had initially come t
he wrong way, but thankful she had, she stumbled back in the direction of the toilet she’d been in before.
Her lungs felt fit to burst as she coughed and spluttered, slumping her shoulder against the wall of the corridor to use it as a prop to help navigate her pathway.
She couldn’t hear anything over the constant screech of the fire alarm and the rushing of the sprinklers that were slowly drowning them. The raining water made the heat of the corridor furnace more bearable but left the air thick and muggy as the smoke began to sink through it, making it even harder to breathe. She was certain they weren’t made to fight this much smoke, and she wondered what the hell had happened to cause an incident of this scale so damn quickly. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes since the hotel was rocked.
The dark corridor seemed never-ending as she stumbled. Her knees gave way and she collapsed to them, clutching the wet, shivering, barely breathing child to her chest.
She had to get them out.
She had to.
But even though the temperature was cooling as she shuffled slowly along, the corridor was getting darker and darker as her lungs refused to continue to work. Her head felt woozy and she shook it as she paused for a moment, willing the kid in her arms to cling to her as she rested her free hand on the floor to prop herself up. If she could just make it back to the toilet, they could shove their clothes beneath the door, stop the smoke getting in…
However, in her heart, she knew she wasn’t going to make it. She wasn’t going to get them out. Someone was going to find them here, she thought bitterly, as her arm gave way; they curled around each other covered in soot and smoke, but otherwise unscathed.
Bollocks, was the start of her final thought as she looked down and finally caught a glimpse of the wet, dark head in her arms—
It couldn’t be…
But that meant… Marc…!
~ ~ ~ ~
‘Have you seen my son?’ Marc shoved his phone with a picture of Tyler under another person’s face as they milled around the front of the hotel. The fire crews had arrived promptly, closed the building down and refused to allow him back into the scorched hotel. ‘Please,’ his voice caught on a sob, as he waved the phone slightly making the person glance at it. They shook their head.
‘What about her?’ he asked as he switched to the picture of Ellie leaving his hotel room in his shirt. Again the person shook their head and muttered an apology before they walked off, just like everyone else had so far.
He wiped his eyes free of the tears of frustration, worry, and pain.
‘Marc!’ he heard BB’s voice call. He spun around and saw her own tear-stained face. ‘Marc, Casey’s Meet and Greet room… The floors above collapsed in on it, they can’t get to them.’
‘Have you seen Tyler?’ he asked, desperately. He couldn’t think about his missing colleagues right now, regardless of how much the loss of his friends would hurt; if he’d lost Tyler then he didn’t want to live. He purposefully didn’t think of the possibility of losing Ellie.
‘Oh God,’ BB said, her hand flying over her mouth. ‘Was he in the Green Room?’
‘That’s where I left him with Frank.’
‘Marc,’ her voice dropped to barely a whisper. ‘That part of the hotel’s under rubble—it’s not far from Casey’s room.’
‘No. No, no,’ he shook his head as he tried to keep the idea of Tyler, his little body broken and buried under a pile of rocks, from his mind. ‘Frank’s with him,’ he said to convince himself his son was alive and outside somewhere, looking for him too. ‘Frank will have gotten him out. He’ll be fine, I just have to find him.’
He turned on his heel and walked away from his co-star to seek someone in charge, someone who might have directed the children somewhere else, somewhere safer…
‘Marc!’ a familiar British voice demanded his attention. ‘Where’s Ellie?’ Marie plonked herself firmly in front of him, her hands on her hips in her familiar I’m-not-taking-your-shit pose that she seemed to have adopted specifically for him over the weekend.
‘She isn’t out?’ he asked as he blinked at the girl.
He looked over at the building and saw the flames spluttering to an end as the firefighters trained their hoses on the crater in the side of the hotel. He wondered briefly if that’s where Casey was, buried under it all somewhere.
What if Ellie was buried—
Fuck, no. He grabbed his hair and pulled it trying to dismiss the images with the sensation of pain. No, no. Ellie had to have gotten out, she couldn’t be in there still. She was out somewhere safe, just like Tyler was. He just had to find them. Maybe they were together. With Frank.
Yes, he told himself, that’s what had happened. They’d gotten out and were sitting waiting for him somewhere. The two would be fine, they were around here someplace…
‘She left us last night after Trent got on the case, got changed and said she was staying the night with you. She didn’t show up for breakfast,’ Marie snapped, but he knew it was just with worry over her friend. ‘And no one remembers seeing her this morning—’
‘No, she has to be out, she has to be. She left before I did—’
‘Marc,’ Sonya, marred with soot from her dash down a smoke-filled stairwell, came running over. ‘They’ve found Tyler and That Lady!’
‘Ellie!’ Marie shouted. ‘Where?’ Sonya motioned for them to follow, but Marc felt his knees turn weak. What if they weren’t alive? What if they’d been crushed by the building’s collapse or burnt in the fire? Fuck, what if he didn’t recognise them?
His stomach turned and finally rebelled as it had been threatening to since Jake and Adam had dragged him from the building. BB reached out for him as he doubled over and threw up all over the grassy verge where they stood.
‘Hey, it’s okay, let it out,’ BB softly cooed, rubbing his back while he coughed and emptied his stomach. ‘It’s okay, they’ll be okay.’
‘What if they’re not?’ he managed, weakly, between coughs. ‘What if my boy is gone?’
‘What if they’re fine and you’re over here worrying for nothing.’ He looked at her imploringly and knew he must have looked a state with vomit down his shirt and smeared across his chin, but he didn’t care; nothing mattered if Tyler—or Ellie—was gone.
‘Come on,’ she said as she slung an arm around him and guided him towards where Sonya was waving at them in front of two sets of paramedics. ‘We’ll only know when we get there.’
His eyes didn’t stray from the emergency workers as he approached the two bodies they were working on. Both were covered in soot from the smoke, but their faces had big white patches over their nose and mouth as if something had been covering them. Their clothes were dirty, but not charred and gave Marc some hope everything would be okay.
‘—the woman was curled around the kid; she’d put a wet shirt over his face.’ He heard someone talking nearby and turned to see a fireman, minus breathing apparatus, talking with an official. His partner was taking a long drink of water at his side. ‘From the marks on the wall, it looks like she went in both directions, maybe she found the kid?’
‘Unless one of them wakes up, we’ll never know,’ the official responded.
‘Shame. Right.’ He pulled his helmet off and began to readjust his mask, slipping it back over his head. ‘Gotta go in for a second sweep.’
A small cough caught his attention and Tyler’s body shuddered.
‘He’s breathing!’ one of the paramedic’s exclaimed.
‘Tyler!’ Marc called out as he felt his knees go from under him. His boy was alive, he realised as he sank to the hard concrete floor. He was alive and breathing and it was only because Ellie had found him.
‘That’s my son.’ His voice broke and a fresh wave of tears fell down his cheeks as guilt sat heavily in his chest; he’d been granted his son’s life by the woman he had so coldly dismissed. A woman he had destroyed not once, but twice this weekend…
Fuck. He wanted to be sick again.
>
How she had wanted him after everything he’d done, he had no idea, but he vowed that if she made it through this he’d treat her like a fucking queen for as long as she’d have him—if she would have him at all.
‘Hey!’ The official who had spoken to the firefighters hurried over. ‘Are you okay?’
‘My son,’ he said weakly as he pointed at Tyler.
‘Okay, okay. He’ll be taken to the University Hospital,’ she informed him as they watched Tyler’s team preparing him for the ambulance. ‘Do you know the woman?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘She’s— she’s—’ He stumbled for the word. He couldn’t say everything he’d ever wanted in someone, or the love of his life, or the woman he was going to spend the rest of his life with if she came back to him…
He choked on another sob.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said, understanding what he couldn’t say. ‘They’ll do their best for the both of them.’
‘We got her!’ he heard one of the women working on Ellie shout out. ‘But it’s weak. Tell them potential to crash.’
The two teams began to gather the pair onto stretchers; Marc sat on his knees helplessly as Marie and Mallory watched at his side. He felt a hand on his shoulder and his own crept over it, giving a squeeze of thanks.
When Tyler and Ellie were finally loaded into ambulances, Marc was offered the chance to ride with Tyler. Marie got in alongside Ellie.
‘Look after her,’ he said as the woman climbed into the vehicle. She gave him a nod before she stepped inside.
He watched as the doors closed and prayed it wasn’t the last time he’d see Ellie alive.
CHAPTER TWENTY
There was a beeping sound in her ear, a steady beep-beep-beep she knew would get annoying very quickly if it carried on. She could hear a voice she didn’t recognise, but it didn’t sound like it was nearby, instead it sounded like it was coming in from a telephone, or an intercom, or… something.