by Reina Torres
“Do you even have any idea how many uniformed officers that I had to flirt with or threaten to get them to allow me past the blockade?”
Even with all her anger and anxiety, it never failed to lift her spirits when she saw Hildie being, well, Hildie.
Sloane saw a subtle shift in the traffic pattern around the area. “About the same number of times you’ve had to make up crazy stories to distract me from my moods. I guess they have to start letting traffic through now that the fire is out.”
“It makes sense,” she sighed, “but there aren’t that many cars waiting at this ungodly hour, and all people are going to do is drive through this muck and splash it all over the place.”
Sloane tried to gesture to her friend and give her an alternate way to move through the soggy bog of water and debris from the clothing distribution center she’d opened nearly three years before. “Life has to move on, right?”
“Look at all this mess!” Hildie half-skipped, half-jumped over a standing puddle and managed not to splash any of the ash-laden water over her shoes. “This is crazy!”
It took an incredible effort to lock eyes with her friend. If anyone could read her moods, it would be Hildie. And Hildie didn’t pull her punches. Not when it came to friends. Not when it came to Helping Hearts which they had built together over the last several years. It helped that all the floodlights were pointed away from her and the streetlights didn’t offer much illumination in early morning hours.
Hildie touched her shoulder and waited until Sloane turned to look at her. “What’s wrong?”
Shaking her head, Sloane let out a long breath and drew another one into her lungs. She knew how unsteady she was. She knew how much pain was surging through her veins. “Do you think this is because of me?”
Hildie stopped moving and took Sloane’s shoulders in her hands. “Hey,” she gave her friend a little shake, “don’t even go there.”
“How can I not? All this press? Don’t think I haven’t heard about the #poorlittlerichgirl online.”
Hildie’s brow furrowed. “Don’t tell me you believe that.”
“I don’t,” Sloane knew she didn’t sound convinced, “but people wouldn’t be saying it if they weren’t thinking it.”
“They don’t know you, Sloane. They have no idea how much this hurts you. How much you care.”
“It’s not about the people who talk behind my back, not really. It’s about the people who counted on the store. They’re the ones who are going to suffer the most. What happens when someone needs clothes for their children and has to decide what’s more important, groceries or clothes?”
Hildie gave her an encouraging smile. “We have foodbanks in the area and-”
“Is that what’s going to be targeted next?” Sloane heard her voice rising, felt the thinning of the space in her throat, and struggled to take a full breath. “Are they going to ruin perfectly good food to make a point?”
Hildie’s fingers dug into her arms. “Stop this, Sloane. Stop.”
“And if I’m the point, maybe I should just take a step back.”
“No,” Hildie’s voice was rough, tight, “you’re talking nonsense.”
“I’m talking good sense, Hildie. If this is about me, the worst thing I can do is business as usual.”
Sloane reached into her purse and dug out her phone.
She heard Hildie’s quick indrawn breath and then her softly spoken question. “What are you doing?”
Ignoring Hildie for a moment, she turned on the phone and hit the speed dial.
“Sloane?” Hildie’s voice had a panicked note to it. “What are you doing?”
Sloane saw her friend reaching out to take her phone, so she stepped back and put the phone up to her ear, walking away from the burn site toward the sidewalk closer to the traffic. “Yes, I’d like to speak to Glen McKinnon, please.”
Hildie caught up with her, tugging on her arm. “Don’t.”
“Yes, I know he’s sleeping. This is important,” Sloane gave Hildie a pointed look. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
Digging in her heels, Hildie struggled to pull Sloane’s arm away from her ear, but it wasn’t working, Sloane wasn’t giving an inch.
“You’re not going to give this up, are you?”
Sloane didn’t move, but she answered anyway, waiting on hold. “I’m giving it to you, Hildie. You’re a dynamo and you practically own half my brain. You can do this, Hildie. People love you. My problems don’t have to rub off on Helping Hearts. And I won’t let my bad luck ruin everything good that I’ve done.”
The hold music ended, and Sloane moved away from Hildie, turning her back to her friend. The slight would get her in trouble later, but Sloane knew that Hildie would understand in time.
“McKinnon here. This better be worth my time.”
“Hey, Uncle Glen.”
Silence, a heartbeat or two of silence. “What is it, Sloane? You do know what time it is?”
She felt the slightest twinge in her chest. It was just Uncle Glen. Sure he wasn’t related by blood, but her parents had always considered her family and even though she was used to him being gruff and borderline insulting, but it didn’t hurt any less. “The paperwork you wanted me to sign earlier this year?”
“Yes?” There it was, a happy tone that had nothing to do with her and only with how much he wanted his own way.
“I’m ready to talk about it.”
She thought she heard a soft laugh on the other end of the phone, a self-satisfied chuckle. Still, she knew she was doing the right thing, even though it felt like her insides were being torn apart. “When can you get to my offices?”
“I thought you had to sleep?” She heard the cutting edge in her tone but couldn’t stop herself.
“I admit that I’m tired of your petulance, but if you’ve finally seen the merit of my idea, then I have time to let you make amends, Sloane.”
“Why does this have to be about you?” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t you understand how much this hurts? I built this foundation from the ground up. Everything we’ve done has been a labor of love.”
Now he didn’t bother to hide his laughter. “You’re losing a series of flop houses and second-hand stores. You think you’re being altruistic when you’re just a bleeding heart, Sloane. People that don’t deserve what you give them. And what do you get from it? A handful of humanitarian awards? Your father knew what was important. Your mother supported him. And you? What have you done? Go on some kind of religious mission to succor the downtrodden like some New Age Messiah if you want to feel good about yourself-”
“Can we not make this personal?”
“You’re the one making it personal. Don’t make me wait.”
Sloane lowered the phone after he ended the call, staring at the phone as if she could bore a hole right through the phone with her eyes.
She expected to hear Hildie in her ear arguing with her, but when she realized that Hildie wasn’t standing beside her a few feet away at the edge of the first responders, gesticulating wildly at Agent Bravo.
Hildie didn’t look happy. Not one bit.
But Vicente? There was no way for her to see his reaction. The area behind him was dark, but there wasn’t a lot of illumination in front of him either. What she could see gave him hard lines of exhaustion on his face.
Since the moment that they had arrived on site, he’d been in the thick of it, even at the edges of the scene, gleaning whatever information they could provide and passing it on to her.
They were all exhausted and Sloane knew she should be doing something. Thanking people, or making calls, but she didn’t trust herself not to start crying and making things worse for everyone as they did their jobs. She always tried to be strong, the shoulder to lean on, the helping hand, but just this once. Just this one time when everything was so close to the edge she needed to stand by and hold herself together. That’s all she had left.
Closing her eyes against the building migraine in her head,
Sloane drew in a long steadying breath before letting it out.
She repeated the simple action again and again, struggling to tamp down on the building tide of anxiety inside of her. Her hand reached for her purse, only to realize she’d left it in Vicente’s car.
It was sheer stupidity on her part. She should have grabbed it when she got out of the car, but the columns of smoke… the flames eating their way through the structure had drawn her out of the car and into the thick rush of emergency personnel.
Now, as all the adrenaline started to bleed out of her veins she could feel her energy and her control flagging. As long as she could keep herself together, and hold all the panic inside, she had a hope of remaining on her feet so she couldn’t embarrass the organization and all the people she hoped would come back to them after they cleaned up and rebuilt.
“Sloane!”
She heard her name as if someone was calling to her from a great distance, but she didn’t want to answer them and she didn’t want to look. All she wanted to do was have a few minutes to wallow in self-pity.
Didn’t the world owe her that much?
Didn’t she deserve a few minutes to be a sloth instead of the self-motivated woman she always presented to the world?
“Sloane, for the love of God-”
She lifted her head, intending to give Vicente Bravo a piece of her mind, but a blur of motion from the opposite direction pulled her attention.
It was still dark and that was probably why no one noticed it until it was close enough to cause such worry, but when she saw it-
Saw the low car with the wide base.
No lights.
Dark tinted windshield.
Too dark to see who was behind the steering wheel.
That’s when panic set in.
And all the stupid, idiotic things she’d muttered in her head moments before seemed even more ridiculous.
Because she was about to die.
And boy, wouldn’t that be the perfect way to end things.
She had time, she knew, to go one way or another, ducking away, but if she chose the wrong one…
“Sloane, here!”
She reached for him, giving into trust.
Giving into hope.
And a moment before the car bumped over the curb and missed her by the barest of margins, Vicente Bravo lifted her into his arms and pulled her to safety.
Chapter 8
Instinct told him to protect. Everything else told him he was going to be too late, but it didn’t stop him. Instead, he pushed harder, and when he got his arms around Sloane he knew he’d have to work to let her go ever again.
The car careened into a newspaper box down the sidewalk, and even in the dark, Vicente could see papers spilling onto the pavement.
He saw the low-set frame and heard the ear-splitting scrape of metal on the curb as it dropped back to the road on the far side of one of the fire engines.
Uniformed officers ran after the car, but Vicente wasn’t moving. Not while his heart had just begun beating again.
The thought that reverberated through his head was a simple yet damning mantra.
Just another inch. Just another second. She would be dead.
The words pounded through his skull as he held Sloane in his desperate embrace. He had almost made the worst mistake of his life.
“What,” he felt, rather than heard the question that fell from her lips, “what happened?”
He wanted to keep her safely in his arms, but he knew he had to check her for injuries. With adrenaline rushing through both of them, there was no better way to make sure she was still in one beautiful piece.
So, he kept one hand on her at all times. Turning her slowly in one direction as his eyes and his other hand searched Sloane up and down for any sign of injury.
Finding none, he looked up at her as the EMTs tried to draw her over to the rig.
“No.” He kept his hand on her, stepping closer to put her flush against his side and protectively tucked into his larger frame. “She stays with me.”
One of the EMTs, a no-nonsense woman with a shrewd look in her eye and an apparently low bullshit meter gave him a look that would have made him think twice… if Sloane was any other person.
His thoughts didn’t betray him as much as put things in startling clarity.
“Sir, we need to examine her.”
He wanted to argue, but he took one more look at Sloane and saw the pale cast of her complexion, the grey undertones of her skin.
And then he felt her nails digging into his side, through his shirt.
She wore her nails short, ready for any kind of labor. Feeling their bite into his flesh, he knew he’d made a mistake.
“Sloane,” he turned, trying to edge her toward the EMT, “let’s go to the ambulance-”
“The car didn’t touch me.” She shook her head. Adamant. “No. I want to go home.”
“Miss King,” The male half of the pair cleared his throat and caught Sloane’s attention, “we need to check and make sure you weren’t hurt.”
She turned back to Vicente and he felt her eyes on him like a physical weight. “I’m not hurt. I just want to go home. I’m exhausted. I promise… the car didn’t touch me.”
He was in between a rock and a cliff. Neither one offered much of a chance to make this better for Sloane.
He saw her lower lip tremble and lost the battle of indecision. Being back in the hospital and under the overly-watchful eye of the staff wouldn’t help Sloane. Not then.
“I’m taking her home. If we find she needs medical attention later, I’ll bring her in. But right now, she’s still under protective custody.”
“Miss King will have to sign saying she refused treat-”
“Where’s the paper?” Sloane had found her balance and more of her voice. She gave the female EMT a look that didn’t invite an argument, Sloane held out her hand. “I’d like to get home. We have a busy day tomorrow figuring out what to do about clean up.”
They took care of the paperwork in moments, but it wasn’t until Vicente had started up his car that Sloane spoke again.
“I should apologize to her,” she began, “I’m sure I was a little short with her.” She sagged against the seat in his car. “I didn’t mean it like that. I was just so afraid I’d fall apart that the only way to hold myself together was…”
Sloane’s voice faded off and Vicente wondered if she’d fallen asleep.
“I’m just not cut out for this.” Her words were pitying, they were disappointed. “I thought I was stronger than this. That having a purpose would give me the will and the backbone to keep things on track.
“Now, I’m just worrying that by the time I extricate myself from the foundation, that there’ll be something left to save.”
“Hey,” the pain in her voice hurt more than the heavy weight in his chest, “this isn’t the end of anything. You’ve done amazing work building the foundation to where it is. This is just a setback, Sloane.
“Give yourself some time to digest it all. A day or two to breathe before you make a decision that you’ll regret.”
“This has been a long time coming,” her words sounded like a confession, “I should have turned it over years ago, but I’m just too stubborn.”
Everything about her words struck him like an off-centered punch. Not strong enough to knock him down, but enough to stagger him.
She’d said the words, but they didn’t sound like her.
Didn’t seem like her.
“Who told you that?”
Her lips parted and closed a moment later. She wasn’t ready to say what was on her mind, but there was time.
Vicente’s first duty was to get her home and safely inside. Hindsight being what it was, he had to acknowledge that she would have been better off at home when he went to the fire, but she’d insisted and he’d given in, using proximity as an excuse.
He was going to try to make up for it now.
Looking over at her for a preci
ous second, he saw the downturn of her mouth and the slump of her shoulders. “Don’t let people stop you from doing what you want to do. For years people tried to make me give up on applying to the FBI for a number of reasons, but what it really came down to was the fact that what I was doing made them uncomfortable. My dreams were bigger than theirs.
“If I had let them win. If I had listened to all the reasons why I shouldn’t go after the goals I wanted, I don’t know what I would be doing today, but I know one thing about you, Sloane.”
A long moment passed between them before he heard her voice. “What’s that?”
“You live for this foundation. It breathes with you, and its heartbeat is yours. The giving spirit that has made such a difference in this town is yours.”
“Well,” she shifted on the seat, “this spirit is tired. I don’t know if I could survive it if even one more person was hurt because of me. All these women and their children already live with pain, suffering, and some with a target on their backs. If I added one more painful experience to their lives…”
He heard her drawn in a breath and then slowly let it go.
“Let it go for tonight, Sloane.” He felt the weary pain in her body as if it was inside himself as well. “Take a few hours for yourself and when you’ve had time to really think about it, then you can make a decision for the right reasons and not a knee jerk reaction.”
She didn’t answer him, but he had a feeling that he’d made his point and she’d listened. From there, it was all up to her.
When they returned to her building, additional security was in place. This time it was a pair of FBI Agents watching over the building. Agent Mumford at the security desk alongside the regular security officer, and in the hallway outside of Sloane’s door was Agent Hamada. She gave Vicente a quick rundown of the schedule and then stepped back to let Sloane and Vicente inside.
He didn’t even bother to set his keys down on the counter, he just dropped them in his pocket and followed Sloane to her bedroom.
Vicente wasn’t sure what he was going to do or say, but if there was some way he could offer her comfort, he was going to do it.