Hi, Dani . . . the preview read, and was doubtless followed by something like: Just need final confirmation re: topics for discussion panel with Inez and co.!
The discussion panel was a public speaking event Dani had foolishly agreed to take part in when she was presumably high on (then undiscovered) asbestos fumes the previous year.
Well, the decision hadn’t been entirely foolish—or even mostly foolish. It would give her more academic exposure, increase her experience and her profile, and help cement her as a trusted voice in her topic of interest. Taking part would be an honor, and certainly fit with her careful plans to gain a professorship by forty-two. (Forty-five, if she couldn’t squeeze everything in within the next fifteen years.)
Really, the only reason she was close to shitting herself was that she’d be speaking on the panel alongside Inez fucking Holly. You know: one of fewer than thirty black female professors in the United Kingdom, the woman who made feminist literary theory her bitch, Dani’s eternal Beyoncé-level idol, et cetera, et cetera. The one woman she would rather die—literally, she would rather actually die—than embarrass herself in front of.
Not that Dani tended to embarrass herself at work. Her profession was straightforward and easily controlled and required qualities she naturally possessed, such as laser-like focus and an enthusiasm for close reading and analysis, instead of qualities she didn’t, such as the ability to process and express irrelevant rubbish like her own emotions. So, no, embarrassment at work wasn’t likely. But still. Stranger things had happened.
She pressed a hand to her chest and touched the moonstone hanging beneath her dress, letting calm sweep through her in waves. Then she exhaled, typed out a painstaking reply, and snapped the laptop shut.
“Everything is under control,” she told herself. “This is your work. This is your thing. This is the kind of pressure you can handle.”
She was still repeating that mantra a few minutes later, when she sailed out of the lab and came face-to-face with her ex–friend with benefits.
Well, shit.
“Dani,” Jo blurted, stopping just short of what would have been a mortifying collision.
“Jo,” Dani managed, inclining her head, hoping she looked incredibly cool and generally unaffected by this awkward situation. A quick inventory of her own body revealed she had a death grip on the trio of crystal pendants hanging beneath her dress, which rather suggested the opposite. She let go.
She still felt them, though, skin-warm against her chest: moonstone for destiny, garnet for success, rose quartz for determination.
Rose quartz was supposed to help with romance, too, but Dani had decided a long time ago that hers was broken.
“How are you?” Jo asked stiffly, patting her dark, silky bob with one hand.
Dani blinked, caught by surprise. “How am I? Are you really asking me that?”
Jo’s tight smile disappeared. “It’s called being polite.”
“Polite? The last time we spoke you told me I was emotionally stunted and ruled by fear.” Both of which were patently ridiculous accusations and, more to the point, quite rude. “Honestly, it’s indecent of you to expect conversation after bruising my heart.” Well, that might be overstating the matter. “After exacerbating my spleen,” Dani corrected.
Jo stared. “Your spleen?”
“Yes. It’s a lesser emotional center.”
“No, it’s not. It’s an immuno— Oh, for heaven’s sake, never mind.” Jo’s bob looked a bit less smooth now, her cheeks flushed, her scowl ferocious. “Stop acting all wounded and brooding,” she whispered sharply, as if they might be overheard by the bloody walls. “According to you, we weren’t even in a relationship.”
“According to both of us,” Dani snapped. “We agreed from the start. You’re the one who changed your mind.” Who started demanding dates and affection and commitment, things Dani had learned not to bother with because she always got them wrong. Not that she cared. Her system was more efficient, anyway.
If she’d tried to give Jo what she’d asked for, Dani’s efficiency would’ve been the first complaint. Are you seriously scheduling me in? What, am I just another job to you?
She knew the drill. And avoided said drill like the plague, or the dentist, or both.
“Look,” Dani began, meeting Jo’s steel-gray eyes and trying to find the easy friendship that used to warm them. The friendship that never should’ve disappeared. “You know I don’t do that sort of thing—and trust me, you don’t want me to try. It’d be a waste of everyone’s time.”
Jo’s frustrated expression flickered, then faded, replaced by something that looked disturbingly like pity. “You really believe that, don’t you?”
Dani swallowed. “Can’t we just be all right again? I . . .” I miss being your friend, she wanted to say. Except that would be mortifying.
But Jo waited until Dani’s pause grew into a chasm. And then she shook her head slowly. “No. I don’t think we can.”
Well. Well. “Fine.” And that was that.
Dani gathered her dignity and swept down the hallway with as much dramatic disdain as she could muster. Which, she fancied, was rather a lot. Since Jo had been headed toward the stairs, escaping her presence took Dani to the lifts, where she frantically pressed the button and refused to look back. She pinned her eyes to the slightly dented chrome doors as she waited, Jo’s words circling in her mind like a children’s merry-go-round. Perhaps the motion was why they made Dani feel slightly nauseous.
The battered old lift arrived with a groan, and she slipped gratefully inside, releasing a heavy exhalation as the doors closed. What a bloody mess. At this rate, she might have to top off her cupcake with some Skittles, just to soothe her nerves.
“Actually,” she muttered, flicking a wry glance up at the ceiling, “you know what would really soothe my nerves? Sex. So, you know. Not to rush you, darling, but chop-chop. Still waiting on that hint.”
The fluorescent lights cut out and an ear-rending shriek filled the lift.
“Oh, bloody hell,” Dani shouted, slapping her hands over her ears. “Fine! I don’t see how any reasonable higher power could expect me to go this long without oral sex, but if it means so much to you, I’ll be patient.”
Apparently, those weren’t the magic words, because darkness still reigned, the siren continued to scream, and Dani remained eager for a snack without any obvious path toward a nice packet of sweets. All in all, a terrible state of affairs.
“All right,” she murmured to herself. “No lights, completely obnoxious and unnecessarily shrill alarm, the lift has stopped working, and . . .” She pulled out her phone, which had no signal, used the flashlight to find the lift’s buttons, and pressed the one marked EMERGENCY. Nothing happened. “The lift has stopped working,” she repeated calmly, “and so has the emergency call. I suppose I’m in a bit of trouble.” What did an alarm mean in Echo, again? Could be fire, could be gas. Neither sounded particularly positive.
Dani stood for a moment, biting her lip, trying not to think about tragic deaths, because Nana had always taught her that one’s thoughts influenced fate. And Dani was far too fabulous for her fate to involve dying from toxic inhalation in a bloody elevator.
So, after a few minutes spent weighing her options, she initiated a highly sophisticated two-step plan. Step one involved sliding her fingertips into the slight gap between the closed lift doors and attempting to pull, hard. Step two involved engaging her diaphragm, taking a deep breath, and bellowing at the top of her lungs: “Help!”
* * *
The scream of the gas alarm was shrill enough to shatter the glass on Zafir’s emergency-only adrenaline store. Once upon a time, he’d felt this urgent, explosive focus before every game, the roar of the crowd battling the rush of blood in his ears. But he was an old has-been now, so he took his thrills where he could get them, and if that meant handling a routine, semiannual drill like he was Jason bloody Bourne, so be it.
George, the secondary
officer responsible for Echo, appeared from a nearby corridor, took one look at Zaf, and snorted. “You do know this is a drill, yeah? Why are you giving me Terminator vibes right now?”
Zaf rose to his feet, let the vibes intensify, and said grimly, “Shut up, George.”
George shut up.
“All right. As discussed, I’m your point, timer’s set, go.” They split apart and got down to business. While George took the primary sweep, Zaf opened all exits before going to hunt down anyone who might have unregistered mobility issues. He had a database of staff and students who’d need emergency assistance in situations like this, but none of them were in the building right now. Still, there might be someone who’d broken their leg last week, or someone whose knee stopped working when it rained, or some shit like that. It was Zaf’s job to keep an eye out for those people, because, as his line manager had said, “I reckon you could lift anyone, if you had to.”
Bit presumptuous, but not exactly wrong; Zaf could do anything if he had to. Like wearing a uniform jacket that didn’t come in a size big enough to cover his wrists.
After a sweep of the building showed staff and students evacuating without issue, Zaf went back downstairs to coordinate with the professors checking their class registers. He found the pavement outside Echo a mess of pure chaos, because, routine drill or not, people loved a fuss—and, he was discovering, they rarely checked their bloody emails. Students in particular were shouting useless questions at each other, shoving like trapped animals, and generally fanning the ever-glowing coal of his anxiety.
Well, maybe it wasn’t the students doing that last part. Maybe it was the fact that he still hadn’t seen Danika evacuate, even though he knew full well she hadn’t left with her class half an hour ago.
By the time George returned, Zaf was outside scanning the crowd for cropped, pink hair while using a bellow honed on the rugby pitch to make sure everyone knew, “This is just a drill! You’re safe, and there’s no need to panic. There is no threat to you inside, but we can’t let you back in until the building is secure.”
“But you just said there’s no threat inside!” A nearby student scowled.
Obviously, one of the email ignorers. Give me bloody strength. Zaf sighed. “I know. This is part of the drill.”
“Well, if it’s all just fake, I don’t see why you can’t—”
He speared the man with his flattest look, the one that made his mother smack him on the head and call him a shark. “Do you know what the word drill means, mate?”
The guy swallowed, shrugged, and turned away.
George appeared at Zaf’s shoulder to mutter, “Anyone ever tell you that you have strong supervillain energy?”
“Be quiet. Final sweep?”
“All clear.”
Zaf studied the crowd again. “Did you see Danika? Because I haven’t.”
“Er, no.” George scratched his ear, brow furrowing. “Probably took one of the emergency exits.”
Probably should be good enough, in a situation like this, right? Clearly it was for George, because the man looked annoyingly unconcerned. For all they knew, Dani could be trapped in a supply closet by some evil academic rival whose theories she’d called “woefully uninformed.” Or maybe a cult obsessed with worshipping her had seen their chance in the chaos and swept in to steal her away. Or something.
“All right,” George was saying, “I think that went well. Let’s shut it down.”
“No.”
A slow blink. “Erm . . . pardon?”
“No,” Zaf repeated. “I’m going back in.” Yes, he was paranoid about safety, and no, he didn’t give a fuck. Maybe if everyone was paranoid about safety, his dad and big brother wouldn’t have died in a car accident seven years ago. And if that was a messed-up thought process, oh fucking well. He was a work in progress.
“Back in? Why?”
Zaf pushed through the crowd, ignoring George’s obvious confusion. “Danika Brown,” he called, his voice rising over the chatter and the sound of passing traffic. “Who’s seen her? Pink hair, teaches English lit, about this tall—”
“I know Dani!” chirped a blue-haired girl a few feet away, turning toward him. “I had a seminar with her, last period.”
Relief rolled through his body. “Did she leave with you?”
“Uh, no,” the kid said, twisting the end of her ponytail around her finger. “She stayed behind on her laptop, I think. But I’m sure she’s fine—it’s just a drill, right?”
“Yes.” Zaf nodded calmly. “This is just a drill. What floor?”
“Third. Hey, are you okay? You look—”
“I’m fine,” Zafir said over his shoulder, already running. “Remain calm,” he shouted as he raced back toward the building. He yanked open the power-assisted door so hard it actually smacked into the wall. Fuck. Had he just broken the motor? Never mind. He turned back to the crowd and reminded them, “This is just a drill!”
Then he sprinted in and took the stairs three at a time.
Chapter Three
After what felt like an hour of yanking at the lift doors and making as much noise as possible, Dani was starting to worry just the teeniest, tiniest bit. It had occurred to her, approximately three minutes ago, that if the building had indeed been evacuated due to the presence of dangerous gas, she probably shouldn’t be breathing so deeply to power her yells for assistance. So she’d switched to slamming her hands against the doors while trying not to breathe at all, which seemed less effective but also less likely to speed up her imminent carbon monoxide poisoning. Now she was trying to figure out if she felt light-headed because the poisoning had begun, or because she wasn’t fucking breathing.
It could possibly be both.
When she heard a voice shouting her name on the other side of the doors, she wondered for a moment if she was hallucinating as her body suffocated on ricin. Then she pulled herself together, patted the trio of gemstones hanging beneath her dress, and shouted back, “Hello?” Bang, bang, bang went her hands against the door, her left wrist aching and swollen because she’d wrenched it a little, back when she’d tried to open the lift. “HELLO?”
“Danika!” The voice was closer now, much closer, and almost familiar over the scream of the alarm.
She hesitated. “Zaf?”
No answer. But there was an odd, metallic wail, as if an iron elephant had been struck down, and then a high screech. She leapt back instinctively from the doors, and a second later, a tiny slice of light appeared right down the center. She caught sight of one dark eye and almost collapsed with relief.
“Hang on,” Zaf called through the gap, and then there was another wail and the door opened a little more. She saw his blunt fingertips at the edge of the chrome and realized he was actually succeeding in the endeavor at which she’d so tragically failed.
“You can’t just pull the thing open! You’ll hurt—”
The alarm cut out abruptly, plunging them into silence. Dani clapped her hands over her ringing ears, as if the quiet was attacking them, before blushing at her own silliness and lowering her hands. Zaf, meanwhile, continued the superhuman and technically impossible—shouldn’t it be impossible?—feat of forcing open the lift. Unfortunately for him, these doors were the least of their issues. Dani had been trapped long enough that her death by poisonous gas was assured, and Zaf had likely doomed himself to the same fate by rescuing her. For some reason, she was intensely upset by that, and also felt a little bit like swooning.
Must be the formaldehyde inhalation.
Zaf gave one final heave, and the doors opened. She had an instant to register the sight of him: tall and broad and heavily built, his usual resting bitch face veering into furious territory, his warm, brown eyes gentle enough to negate the effect. For some reason, the contrast—the hard precision of his features versus that soft, liquid gaze—made her shiver. The light shone behind him like a halo, and he looked even larger than usual, and it hit Dani like a giant, cosmic fist that this whole nobl
y-rescuing-her-from-death situation was almost certainly a sign. As in, a sign. The timing and the drama were too significant to ignore. The universe might as well have pointed flashing neon arrows in the direction of Zaf’s delicious shoulders and screamed, This one, then, since you’re so impatient.
Dani stared. Really? Him? Are you certain? After all, sleeping with a friend hadn’t ended well for her last time. Plus, Zaf could be a teeny bit uptight, and then there was that excess of chivalry and the habit some men had of reading commitment into copulation . . . She opened her mouth to ask Zaf if he might, against all her previous instincts and assumptions, be up for no-strings shenanigans. Then she remembered that they were dying, which made the whole thing immaterial, and anyway, he looked to be in a foul mood. His jaw, beneath its short, black beard, was tight, his lush mouth was a hard line, and his thick hair was an outrageous mess, perhaps because he’d just forced an elevator open with his bare hands.
Before she could comment on that strange, if impressive, behavior, he reached into the lift, dragged her out by the front of her dress, and plastered her against his massive chest. An almost silent “Alhamdulillah” rushed out of him on a sigh. Dani was just thinking, rather ungratefully, that he better not have creased her bodice, when he wrapped his arms so tightly around her that she could barely breathe.
Or maybe that was the mercury vapor.
“Why the fuck were you in the lift?” he demanded, his words hard, the rest of him . . . not. She was quite certain he was nuzzling her head like a cat. “You don’t use the lift in emergency situations!”
“I know that,” she griped, her voice muffled against his chest. And what a lovely chest it was, like a big, meaty pillow. His belly was nice, too, both soft and solid. She wondered if she could get away with grabbing his arse, since her brains were probably melting out of her nose as they spoke. “I was already in the lift when the alarm started. It just sort of . . . shut down.”
He growled. He actually growled—she felt the sound rumble through him. “This shitty old fucking building. The outer doors weren’t even closed.”
Take a Hint, Dani Brown Page 3