by Diane Castle
Acrid smoke billowed into the hallway and a cloud enveloped us.
Nash and I held our breath as we turned the corner again and came upon a door blocked by a chair. A very familiar-looking door blocked by a chair.
I could barely see Nash through the smoke, but I knew we needed to get into the supply closet and get some respirators, pronto—never mind that Dorian was probably still in there and armed.
I moved the chair away from the door and tried to open it as Nash covered me. The door wouldn’t budge. The explosions and subsequent shaking of the building had warped the door frame and the thing was stuck.
In desperation, Nash handed the gun to me as he tugged on the door.
In one violent motion, the door wrenched free, and as expected, I found myself staring down the wrong end of the barrel of Dorian’s gun.
I aimed my own gun straight back at him. I didn’t even know how to use a gun before yesterday, and I certainly hadn’t become a crack shot overnight. What was I supposed to do? Duck? Shoot first? Run?
Nash and I edged into the supply room as Dorian inched backwards. We circled each other, Dorian making for the door, Nash and I making for the safety equipment.
I watched Dorian’s trigger finger tense as the smoky, toxic air around us seemed to grow even thicker. Walls shook and the floor rolled beneath me as another explosion thundered through the building. The PetroPlex flagship oil refinery was fast on its way to becoming nothing but a memory.
The doorframe buckled before my eyes—our only means of escape. Sharp orange tongues of flame lapped at me from above, sending down a rain of fiery particles as acoustic ceiling tiles disintegrated overhead.
That’s when I knew that gun or no gun, I was going to die.
I tossed my useless weapon on the floor. Dorian did the same.
Nash grabbed a couple of respirators from the floor, put one on himself, and tossed the other one to me. I put it on, not for one moment believing it could save me.
“Help me,” Nash said, motioning toward a freestanding metal shelf.
Dorian and I both understood. We rushed to the shelf and emptied it of its contents so that we could knock it over and use it as a battering ram.
The roar of the burning refinery around us was so loud we barely heard the crash of the shelf when it hit the floor.
All three of us hoisted it and aimed at a section of wall that wasn’t yet on fire.
“On the count of three, put all your weight into it, okay?” Nash yelled.
Dorian and I nodded.
Nash counted, and we rushed the wall.
The impact jarred me so hard I thought my joints might never be the same, but the shelf punctured a hole in the wall, and air rushed into the room.
Dorian was through the hole and gone before I could even regain my balance.
Nash and I moved more slowly, limping along at a wounded turtle’s pace. Nash never complained about his foot, but I could tell it pained him more after the drop to the ground from the slick pipe.
I could hear rafters falling and the building creaking all around us. Flames easily caught up with us, and even through the respirator, the scent of smoke and chemical waste scorched my nostrils.
Bits of flaming particles rained down on us, the deluge of the devil, and we dodged as best we could.
Another explosion. The building shuddered, and a flaming crossbeam crashed down behind us, missing by mere inches.
“You have to go,” Nash said. “If you wait for me, you’ll die.”
“I’m not leaving here without you.”
“Then I’m afraid you’re not leaving,” Nash said.
“We can make it! Come on. Just a little farther!
The building shuddered again, and this time an entire section of hallway collapsed. Nash heard the walls coming down and jerked me into an open doorway, hoping to gain what meager protection he could.
In the space of three seconds, debris crashed down, all aflame, blocking the pathway out completely.
“Look!” Nash said, pointing to a window in the office we’d just ducked into.
I nodded. We weren’t on the first floor, but there was a fire escape outside.
I picked up a desk chair and hurled it through the glass.
Then we both climbed through and surveyed the long distance down to the ground. We were six stories high. There would be no quick descent for Nash on his wounded foot.
We began the descent together, one painful step at a time.
Another explosion from somewhere inside shook the stairs. Again, I heard the shriek of metal on metal and knew the infrastructure was beginning to collapse.
I panicked, grabbed onto the railing, and stopped.
“Don’t stop!” Nash said. “Go! Go!”
I refused to budge without him.
“So help me God, Chloe, if you don’t go now, I will pick you up and throw you over the railing! Go! I’ll catch up with you!”
Still, I hesitated. I didn’t want to leave him to die, even if it meant saving my own life.
Nash hopped onto the stair railing and slid down. Before I knew it, he was beneath me.
“See?” he said. “Hurry up!”
Reassured, I pounded down the stairs as Nash continued to slide.
When my feet hit the ground, I breathed a sigh of relief.
Too soon.
The refinery grumbled and groaned in its death throes. High at the top of the building, the smoke stacks caved in. The structure swallowed itself and belched fire.
The loudest explosion of all shook the dirt beneath my feet, and I thought the very ground would open up and swallow the entire refinery, and us with it.
“Run, Chloe! Run!”
This time, I ran. I hadn’t intended to leave Nash, but sheer survival instinct propelled me forward. A thicket of trees lay ahead of me, and I ran deep into it, hoping its thick trunks and green canopy might provide some measure of protection if the refinery blew.
Nash ran behind me more slowly.
“Nash!” I called. “Nash, hurry up!”
“I’m coming!”
Please, Nash. Please. I mentally willed him to overcome the pain and keep up with me. Please.
I ran ever farther into the thicket, frantically kicking my way through brush and weeds until I was in so deep I could no longer see the refinery or Nash behind me.
Nash!” My lungs were on fire. I could barely get the word out.
There was no answer.
Nevertheless, I could not stop. I mechanically jerked one foot in front of the other, over and over, churning out as much distance as I could between me and an imminent catastrophic disaster.
When the final explosion came, my eardrums popped with its force, even though I was far into the woods. I felt the heat and the force of the blast propel me into the air, up, up, and forward. Trees flattened behind me. Splinters of wood and bark shot forward. Leaves burst into the air and caught flame, transforming into embers that floated softly to the ground.
My skin burned. My body ached. I flew forward, my body one with the motion of the forest around me. And then I slammed into the ground.
The last thoughts I had as the world went dark were of Nash and how I’d never see him again.
CHAPTER 39
From out of the darkness, I felt a repetitive, wet pressure on my face. A sponge? No. A tongue. In the distance, I heard a voice. It sounded like Miles.
“She found her!” called the voice that sounded like Miles.
I opened my eyes to find Lucy standing on my chest, frantically swiping her tongue over and over my cheek.
“Lucy,” I said. “Good dog.”
I figured I must be dead. I had to be dead, and this had to be some Heavenly incarnation of my dog, because otherwise, what on earth could she be doing here?
I glanced around. I lay in the midst of flattened trees and stripped bushes. I didn’t see Nash anywhere. If I were dead and in Heaven, wouldn’t Nash be here, too? And my family members who had gone
before me? Angels? Harps? Singing and that sort of thing?
I saw none of that. Instead, I saw only Lucy and the semi-flattened woodlands around us. But I could still hear the voice that sounded like Miles calling my name.
I turned my head in the direction of the voice and saw Miles, Cameron, and Gracie racing toward me. Wait. . . Gracie?
I did a double-take. Yes, that was definitely Gracie.
“Oh, thank you, Sweet Jesus!” Gracie said, coming to her knees beside me. “Thank God you’re okay!”
“Where’s Nash?” Cameron asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think he might be dead. Am I dead, too?”
“You’re not dead,” Miles said, “which is an ever-loving miracle, I might add! I swear that if you ever try to pull any more crazy stunts like this ever again, I will kill you myself!”
So I was not dead, but Nash might be. Please, God, no, I prayed. Please don’t let Nash be dead. I just wanted to spend some time with him. Any time—even just one day. There was so much I still wanted to learn about him. So much I still had to tell him. So much of his lips, body, and soul I wanted to explore.
“Find Nash,” I murmured.
“We’ll keep looking,” Cameron said. He stood up and called to some dark shapes in the distance. “Over here!”
Large, looming men jogged towards us. They were dressed all in black except for the letters ‘FBI’ in white across their torsos.
The men in black arrived and began checking my pulse and testing my bones for breaks. For the first time since I regained consciousness, my body began to register pain.
One of them looked up at Cameron and nodded.
“It’s okay,” Cameron told me. “You’re okay.”
It was then I noticed that Cameron was also dressed all in black with the letters FBI across his chest.
I frowned at him. “Wait a minute. Where’d you get that uniform?”
Cameron flashed me a badge.
A tsunami of conflicting feelings washed over me. Relief. Anger. Happiness. Rage.
He bent down to help me to my feet. When I was up, I hugged him. And then I slapped him.
“You are FBI and you let me go in there by myself? All alone? To most likely die?” I punched him in the ribs. “FBI?For real?
So that’s why he was able to kill those thugs in the garage so easily. So that’s why life on the run didn’t seem to bother him. That’s why he could be so cheerful in the face of life-threatening stress. He was trained to handle all of it.
Before I could punch him again, Miles grabbed my arms and restrained me.
“Lay off,” Miles told me. “It was necessary.”
“I’m sorry, Chloe,” Cameron said, “but I’ve been deep undercover for more than five years now, and I was under strict orders not to reveal myself, no matter the cost.
“But why?” I said. “Why the press release and all the sneaking around and stuff? If you’re FBI and you knew you had probable cause, why didn’t you go in and raid the place?”
“This was never meant to be a public operation,” Cameron said. “Can you think why?”
I was so tired and hurt and stunned that I could barely think at all, let alone piece together the secret motives of the FBI.
Cameron saw my blank look. “Certain government officials are aware that our energy policy needs to change. And they’re aware of the need for stricter regulation and a move toward green energy. But these officials, who will remain nameless, are also aware that Big Oil is the richest industry in the world and also one of the biggest campaign contributors. There is hardly anyone in office that is not beholden to PetroPlex in some way, shape, or fashion. If these officials came out publicly against PetroPlex without popular opinion behind them, their careers would be over.”
It all began to make sense to me now. “So instead, they launched a covert operation to expose the dirt and corruption in the industry and spark a public cry of outrage. Then when the country cried out for effective regulation and clean energy, the PetroPlex lobby couldn’t hold them back.”
“Right,” Cameron said.
Wow. I felt like my world view had been rocked. “But if it was so covert, why risk the operation by revealing yourself to Miles, Gracie, and me?”
Cameron gestured toward his team. “As soon as it became clear there was going to be a massive refinery explosion, I called in my guys. At that point, I knew we wouldn’t get out of this without a Congressional hearing, and we would need Gracie, Miles, you, and Nash as witnesses.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “My life became valuable to you only after you knew there would be a Congressional hearing? What if Fitz hadn’t set the refinery on fire? What if I went in there and he killed me?”
Cameron put his hand on my shoulder. “You can’t say I didn’t do my best to get you in and out of there, considering the orders I was under.”
Even so. While the logical part of my brain understood, my emotional side still felt a little bit betrayed. I swayed on my feet, but Miles caught me.
“And Gracie?” I asked. “Where did you come from?”
Cameron answered for her. “Remember when I had to hang up on you because someone was coming? Well, it turned out to be Gracie. She saw the news and came home.”
“I knew y’all wasn’t murderers,” Gracie said. “I had to tell someone down here, didn’t I? But when the refinery exploded, we thought you was goners for sure!”
“But Cameron agreed to search the area anyway,” Miles said. “We told Lucy to find you, and she did! We might have missed you in all these trees if it wasn’t for her. Your dog’s a hero!”
I always knew she was.
“Can you walk?” Cameron asked.
I thought so, and I let him take my elbow.
“We’re going to escort you to a secure medical facility and take you into the Federal Witness Protection Program. We have to hurry. We’re still trying to do this without alerting local law enforcement.”
“We have to find Nash,” I said.
Cameron frowned. “I thought you said he was dead.”
“Find his body,” I said. “I’m not leaving him out here to rot.”
Lucy was prancing around my feet joyfully.
“Lucy!” I said. “Go find Nash!”
She stood still and cocked her head up at me. I don’t think she knew what that meant.
“Nash!” I said. “Go find him!”
She cocked her head the other way, uncertain.
Suddenly, she heard something. She spun and growled, then took off running through the trees.
I felt unsteady on my feet, but hope surged through me and I chased after her. Miles, Gracie, Cameron, and his FBI entourage followed.
Lucy stopped beside a fallen tree. I could see something pale and white pinned underneath.
As I drew nearer, I could see that it was a body lying face down in the dirt.
Lucy sniffed it.
It was a man, but his hair color was wrong. Not Nash. Not Dorian. Nobody I knew.
Lucy took off again, and I kept following. A couple of FBI guys stayed behind to check for vital signs, but I instinctually knew they wouldn’t find any.
We were definitely in the kill zone. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. How on earth could Nash possibly have survived if this other man hadn’t?
As we moved forward, the ratio of flattened to still-standing trees increased. The destruction around me seemed even more evident, and I could see the flames of the refinery still raging only a short distance away.
“Chloe,” Cameron said, not unkindly, “it’s not safe to go any farther in. We can’t be seen.”
Before I could answer him, Lucy sniffed the air and took off again.
“Somebody get that dog!” one of the FBI agents barked.
We all took off after Lucy.
She wasn’t heading straight for the refinery. Instead, she veered a bit to the east parallel to the heap of ruins that was once PetroPlex.
; Lucy stopped when she reached a clump of several fallen trees.
The trees appeared to be moving, and Lucy barked at them frantically.
“There’s somebody in there!” I said, daring to hope that by some miracle it might be Nash.
Agent Roberts and his men jogged ahead of us and pulled the trees back to reveal a sinkhole—a natural phenomenon that was common in this area, especially near the refinery.
Then I saw the impossible.
Nash’s shirtless silhouette emerged upward out of the hole.
Cameron helped him climb out, and Nash limped and lurched through the foliage toward me. Lucy pranced around him, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth as she panted happily.
Nash had some minor burns and scratches on his torso, and his pants were torn to shreds, but his perfect face was unscathed. He must have found the sinkhole and dived into it in the nick of time. It was more than I had dared hope for. Thank you, God, I breathed.
I ran toward him, and Nash caught me in his arms. My lips found his. My eyes sank shut, and it was as though no other part of my body existed. I felt no more pain. Only the rhythmic, pulsating motion of his lips on mine. Wave after wave of pleasure washed over my soul, erasing the hurt, anger, and loss of the past few days. Kiss by kiss, Nash was making me whole again.
Nash pulled his lips from my mouth and kissed my eyelids, my forehead, my nose. He covered every inch of my face with kisses before moving down to my neck, my shoulder, and then lower.
“Ahem,” Miles said.
Nash moved back to my lips for one last, deep, hungry connection. Then he pulled away. “To be continued,” he said.
“Yes, please.” I grasped his hand and we turned toward the crowd.
“Wait a minute,” Nash said. “Am I seeing things? Cameron is FBI?”
“You’re not seeing things,” I said. “I’ll explain later. Right now, we have to go.”
One of Cameron’s agents, who was apparently unwilling to let Lucy get away from him again, had scooped her up and held her in custody in his arms. She didn’t protest.
Cameron led us to a van parked in a remote location, and we all piled into the back. I wasn’t sorry when an agent put the car in gear and drove away. If I never, ever came back to this place, that would be just fine with me.