The Burning Point

by Mary Jo Putney

  She made her way down to the basement, where a front end loader was making enough noise to raise the dead while ripping away great chunks of non-loadbearing walls. Kate spent several minutes with Gil Brown, the local foreman, going over what needed to be done before demolition. Luckily Brown was quick, and he'd worked on a PDI job before. So far, this project was going very smoothly.

  Brown left to go upstairs, leaving Kate in the basement with the front-end loader. Kate did a circuit of the area, which she hadn't seen before. Originally the basement had been divided into a warren of storage and service rooms. The loader had already ripped away more than half the partitions with a violence that cracked the plaster even on the opposite side of the basement from where the machine was operating.

  A flick of her flashlight into one of the storage rooms turned into a closer examination when a crack in the ceiling caught her eye. There seemed to be an extra wide beam up there. Exactly the kind of deviation that could affect the explosives plan.

  A heavy old wooden crate sat by one wall, so she dragged it under the crack and climbed up for a closer look. Using a screwdriver from her tool belt, she chipped at the plaster to get a better view of the beam.

  The front-end loader struck one of the massive support columns so hard that Kate felt vibrations through the wooden crate. She frowned. The equipment operator was a blank-faced redhead who seemed to think he could demolish the building all by itself. She'd have to have a little talk with him before going upstairs again.

  The loader bashed into another column. This time, the ceiling above her shivered. More than shivered, Christ, it was moving toward her....

  There wasn't even time to scream before the ceiling collapsed, smashing her into oblivion.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Groggily Kate became aware that she was trapped in crushing darkness. She tried to move, and couldn't. Was she paralyzed? No, trapped under a weight so heavy she could barely breathe. Instinctively she tried to inhale to call for help.

  The constriction instantly worsened. Oh, God, there was such a weight on her chest, she couldn't breathe, she couldn't breathe.

  She clamped down on her panicky reaction. She couldn't move her head, which was turned to the left and trapped in place, but her face was clear and she could draw in air if she didn't inhale too deeply.

  After regaining a measure of control, she evaluated her position. She'd fallen backward and was lying on the cold concrete floor, pinned by a smooth mass of material. Flattened like a specimen on a laboratory slide.

  Though she was bruised and badly shaken, she felt no real pain. Starting with her toes, she cautiously flexed muscles in successive parts of her body. Everything seemed to work. The harsh mechanical clamor of the front-end loader sounded about the same as when the ceiling fell, so probably little time had elapsed. She'd been dazed by shock rather than knocked out by a head injury.

  The slab of material pinning her to the floor slanted from right to left. Her left side and rib cage were compressed to the point where numbness would soon result. On the plus side, she could move her hands and lower arms a little, especially on the right side. And the darkness was not absolute. Dim light seeped around the edges of the slab, which was much better than being trapped in tomblike darkness. Lord only knew where her flashlight had ended up.

  Was there any chance of getting out of here under her own power? Experimentally she pushed against the slab. A few fragments of debris rattled around the edges of her prison, and a dusting of particles fell across her face, but she had no success in moving the weight. She sensed that even if she had more leverage, the material would be far too heavy for her to shift.

  Gingerly she explored with her right hand. Her questing fingers touched splintered wood. The crate she'd been standing on was supporting the slab. If not for the narrow wedge of space created, she would have been crushed. She uttered a prayer of thanks for solid old crates.

  The loader was getting closer. With sudden horror, Kate realized that when it reached this room, the operator would simply sweep this pile of rubble away in the loader's steel bucket--and cut Kate in half in the process.

  She considered screaming, but even if she'd been able to fill her lungs enough for a good shout, nothing could be heard over the noise of the loader. So she couldn't move, couldn't yell. Would anyone miss her before that damned loader got to this corner of the basement? Probably not.

  The floor vibrated as the loader struck another support column. The slab settled a fraction lower, reducing her ability to breathe even more. Panic surged as she recognized that death was minutes away. She'd never been so terrified in her life, not even when she'd been clinging to the edge of the elevator shaft in Las Vegas.

  Facing death stripped her life down to stark simplicity. There weren't too many things she regretted, and all of them had to do with people. She should have worked harder to bridge the estrangement with her father, and to maintain her relationship with her mother during the California years.

  And she should have risked herself with Donovan while she had the chance. The fears and doubts she'd experienced since coming East had been legitimate, but Rachel had been right--Kate had been avoiding intimacy. Only by braving the smoldering fires of her broken marriage might she have become free. Now, perhaps, it was too late. If only she could call Patrick, apologize for her cowardly evasions...

  Call him! Cursing herself for not remembering the walkie-talkie sooner, she scrabbled around with her right hand until she located the radio on her belt. It seemed undamaged.

  She swore again when she realized that she couldn't raise it to her face to speak. For a moment she wanted to weep with despair, or rage. Unless the loader operator took a break and turned off his engine before reaching this room, she was dead. Papa, was this what you feared--that I'd die the way you did?

  A curious sense of calm came over her, almost as if Sam were present, tucking her in at bedtime as he had when she was very small. If she died here today, she'd find out if there really was a tunnel of light with the spirits of people she loved waiting at the other end. If so, Sam would be there for sure.

  But she wasn't ready to die, damn it! She made another fierce attempt to move the slab. This time, the crate creaked ominously and the mass settled painfully lower. Cold sweat formed on her face as she realized that her efforts might bring on the collapse of the crate, with lethal results.

  Her hand touched the radio again. So near, yet so far.

  Then she realized that the transmit switch was under her thumb. She couldn't raise the device to her mouth, but she could depress the switch. That would produce a click on the other radios on the circuit. People working inside the building probably wouldn't notice because of the demolition noise, but the sound should be audible at the base station radio in the site office. With luck, Donovan was still there.

  Grimly she started pressing the switch in and out, using the only Morse code message she knew.

  Please God, let someone hear.

  Chapter 35

  After saying good-bye to the Bowens, Donovan had just time to make a fresh pot of coffee and review his notes before Bob Glazer showed up for their meeting. A shrewd, affable man, Glazer was a major Southern developer. If he liked working with PDI, it would mean more business down the road.

  Naturally Glazer needed the building down as soon as possible so he could start work on the office tower that would replace it. Now that Donovan had evaluated the structure, he could project with fair accuracy how long each demolition phase would take. They were discussing the schedule when he realized that the radio had been making odd little clicks. He made a mental note to look at it later.

  The meeting was almost over when the clicks again caught his attention. "Excuse me. Do you hear that clicking sound?"

  "Yes. What about it?" Glazer listened. "Three quick clicks. Three slow. Three more quick ones."

  Their gazes locked. "SOS." Donovan swore, then picked up the handset of the base radio. "Attention, radio check! Please sou
nd off by number and location."

  A few seconds later, Gil Brown said, "Unit one here, fourth floor."

  Another voice, one of the two crew chiefs, said, "Unit two, third floor," followed by, "Unit three here, on the first floor," from the other crew chief.

  Unit four was Kate, and he himself was unit five when he was onsite. But after the third response, there was only silence. Kate, where the hell are you?

  Speaking into the handset, Donovan said, "Unit four, report now."

  The receiver clicked rapidly in reply. "Kate, is your radio malfunctioning?"

  The radio responded with another burst of clicks. During the intervals when the transmitter switch was open, he heard construction noise in the background. So her handset was working properly. Why wasn't she talking?

  Because she couldn't. "One click for yes, two for no. Are you in trouble?"

  One click.

  "I read you." Donovan glanced at his client. "I'm going over to the hotel. My associate seems to be having problems."

  "Of course. First things first. Anything I can do to help?"

  "If you have any prayers, toss a couple at the St. Cyr." On the run, Donovan keyed his walkie-talkie again and barked, "Does anyone know where Kate is?"

  The three voices came in together, each saying that she wasn't on his floor. Donovan snapped, "Has anyone seen her since lunch?"

  "She and I talked down in the basement," Gil Brown replied. "She was still there when I came upstairs."

  Donovan entered the hotel. "Are you in the basement, Kate?"

  One click.

  Christ, the front-end loader was busy ripping out walls down there! He raced down the stairs, heart hammering with fear.

  More than half the basement was now an open, rubble-strewn space. To his left, the loader was crunching partitions with its steel maw. Donovan leaped into the operator's line of vision, both arms waving. The redheaded driver almost ran over him before noticing and halting the loader. Donovan barked, "Turn this thing off!"

  The operator obeyed. Voice loud in the sudden silence, Donovan asked, "Is Kate down here?"

  "I saw her earlier, but not lately. I guess she went upstairs."

  "Take a break," Donovan ordered. He keyed the radio again for a general announcement. "We've got a missing worker. Stop all pieces of heavy equipment."

  One of the Bobcats upstairs cut off, followed a moment later by the other. The hotel fell abruptly quiet. Ominously so.

  Slowly Donovan turned, scanning the basement. There were piles of rubble from the loader all over the place. God, he hoped Kate wasn't under one. If she'd been run over... "Kate, are you in the section of the basement that hasn't been cleared yet?"

  One click.

  "Northwest corner?

  A pause, then two clicks.

  He spun and headed to the southwest corner of the basement. Not using the radio, he shouted, "Can you hear my voice?"

  One click.

  Moving at a trot, he headed down the corridor that connected the rooms remaining at this end. "Am I getting louder?" he yelled.

  One click.

  He saw odds and ends left behind when the hotel was closed, but nothing large enough to conceal a person until he passed a storage room where half the ceiling had come down in a single massive piece. Sweet Jesus, could someone be alive under that? "Are you in here, Kate?"

  This time it was her strained voice that answered. "I'm here, and more or less OK. It's not as bad as it looks. A crate is supporting most of the weight."

  Too wired to rationally analyze the best way to free her, he flattened his hands underneath the edge of the slab and heaved. Straining legs and back and arms, he managed to raise the fallen piece, the shove it backward, using the edge that rested on the floor as a pivot.

  Kate's cramped body was revealed. As the slab crunched into the wall and cracked into irregular chunks of plaster and wood, he dropped beside her. "Kate?"

  She doubled up in a paroxysm of coughing as her first frantic gulps of air drew dust into her lungs. He supported her as she struggled for breath.

  Shivering violently with cold from lying on the damp concrete floor, she pushed herself stiffly to a sitting position. "Thanks."

  His relief changed to fury. Why did she insist on doing such hazardous work? He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled....

  He cut off the thought, appalled at himself, and drew her closer as a childhood memory scorched through his mind. He'd climbed on the roof to get a neighbor's cat, then slipped and fallen to the ground.

  As he lay there, stunned, his parents had rushed from the house. His mother sobbed with relief when she saw he was all right, but his father had exploded with rage. Shaking Donovan viciously, he threatened that if his son ever did anything so stupid again, he'd be beaten within an inch of his life.

  That was the male model Donovan had been raised with: a man could show anger, but not softer feelings. Despite his mother's influence and his own vows to be different, the grim truth was that he was much like his father.

  Christ, he was a fool! When his emotions threatened to spiral out of control, which happened with Kate regularly, he too often responded with fury, which was far more masculine and acceptable than tears or fears. The connection was so damned obvious now that he thought about it.

  From the doorway, someone said, awed, "Son of a bitch, did you see him move that?'

  "It musta weighed seven, eight hundred pounds," another voice said.

  Donovan realized that an audience had collected--the men who carried radios, along with the driver of the front end loader, and several laborers from the first floor. Even Bob Glazer had come, complete with hard hat.

  His gaze shifted to the debris he'd moved. Good grief, no wonder people were amazed. Score one for adrenaline.

  To help Kate, he'd have moved Mt. Everest. "How do you feel?"

  Her hair was a dusty mess and her face streaked with filth, but she managed a crooked smile. "I'm fine. Really. I was lucky. A little numb on my left side, but that's passing now that the blood is flowing again."

  He helped her to her feet. "Real luck would have been to avoid being flattened like a bug on a windshield in the first place."

  She stumbled a little when she put weight on her left leg, but moved without apparent pain. Maintaining his grip on her arm, he said, "You're a magnet for trouble."

  "Some of us are just talented. I've always believed in getting into my work."

  The remark produced a rumble of relieved laughter. These were men who knew how close disaster could be on any job.

  Donovan said to Kate, "I know you eat rebar for breakfast, but I'm still taking you to the hospital for a check up."

  "Not necessary. Besides, you haven't the time. The schedule on this project is too tight."

  Chuckling, Glazer stepped into the room. "A woman after my own heart. But just to make me and my insurance company happy, let me take you to a walk-in clinic near here for a quick examination. Then I'll drop you by your hotel. Anyone who has been buried alive deserves the rest of the afternoon off."

  Kate exhaled roughly. "I must admit that I'm ready to call it a day."

  Donovan would rather have taken her himself, but this made more sense. "All right, but call right away if there are any complications."

  "There won't be. By the way, I was checking that beam when the ceiling fell. It's double width, which will affect your calculations."

  He shined his flashlight on the chasm in the ceiling and saw that she was right. "I'll look for others." He had to smile. Kate was Sam's daughter to the core.

  Gil Brown lingered after Kate and the others left. "She your girlfriend, Donovan?" Donovan?"

  "Ex-wife."

  "Maybe you should do something about the 'ex' part of that."

  Donovan pulled off his hard hat and ran tense fingers through his matted hair. "Yeah. Maybe I should."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Glazer called later on his car phone to say that Kate's clinical examination had
revealed no serious injury. When he'd dropped her off at their hotel, she had declared her intention to have a bath and a nap, not necessarily in that order. There was no reason for Donovan to continue worrying about her.

  Nonetheless, he wrapped up his work as early as possible. Atlanta was packed to the gills with a homebuilders' convention, so they had ended up in a small luxury hotel in a bridal suite that was so expensive he was picking up half the cost personally rather than billing it to PDI. As a bridal suite it didn't even have two bedrooms, but the sofa in the living room opened into a bed. He'd slept there the previous night while Kate took the bedroom.

  What the suite did have was lots of lace and mirrors. When they'd checked in the day before, they had both laughed about the candy box decorations. Tonight Donovan stalked through the elaborate living room like a twitchy tiger. No sign of Kate, so he quietly opened the bedroom door, expecting to find her sleeping.

  The lace-canopied bed was rumpled but empty. Frowning, he glanced around. The bathroom door was closed, and a low rumble emanated from inside. He tapped on the door. "I'm back. You're taking advantage of the whirlpool?"

  The rumbling stopped. "You bet. Feels very good on sore muscles. Could you do me a favor?"

  "Sure. What do you need?"

  "There's a split of red wine in the mini-bar. Would you open the bottle and bring it in, please?"

  Before his imagination could get too wild, she added, "I'm decent. Relatively so, anyhow."

  Wondering what the devil that meant, he went to the mini-bar. Apparently there had been two splits of wine, because an empty bottle of chardonnay sat on the bar. He took the little bottle of zinfandel from the refrigerator, twisted off the cap, and opened the door to the spacious bathroom.

  He was met by a cloud of warm, fragrant air, but that wasn't what stopped him dead in his tracks. "Relatively" decent meant Kate was lying back in the pink tub, hair clipped on top of her head and immersed in bubbles.