Chris literally bounced off the hood of the bagel truck, his shoulder and left side taking the brunt of the impact. Although he’d been hit, thankfully, the truck had been slowing significantly. The impact was minimal, and he even managed to stay on his feet. He took a second to catch his breath, ignoring the pain that now radiated up his shoulder and hip. He’d been shot in the shoulder about six months ago during an assignment in Atlanta, and this new collision aggravated the old injury and made the nerves up and down his arm tingle along with the pain in his joints.
He swallowed, got his bearings and noticed that the cars in the final two lanes had stopped and were now waiting for him to cross. He waved his badge at both drivers, gave them both a grateful smile and continued his trek across the road. Moments later, he was bruised but safe and running toward the ground floor entrance, hoping that the building had a security guard or some other way to notify the workers of the danger. He said a quick prayer as he ran, thanking God for getting him across the street with his life intact.
He kept running, then slowed to glance up to see if the smoke that was coming out of the window was dissipating or getting worse. After a few more steps, he ran smack into another man with brown hair and dark gray eyes.
“Sorry,” the man muttered, then put his head down and quickly moved away from Chris and continued down the street.
“No problem. It was my fault, not yours,” Chris replied. He paused for a moment and watched him go, his mind filling with questions. Was that they guy he’d chased at the hospital who had tried to question Katie? He looked vaguely familiar, but he wasn’t quite sure. He turned and continued on toward Eleni’s building. Foe or not, his first priority had to be making sure he got Eleni safely out of the building. He pushed his way through the two sets of glass doors that led into the lobby. By the time he made his way to the security desk, he had his ID badge in his hand again and presented it front and center to the guard, who still stood with his eyebrow raised in response to Chris’s dash to his desk.
“FBI. You have a fire on your sixth floor,” Chris said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You need to clear this building, now.”
The guard seemed in no hurry to comply. He was a sleepy grandfather type that looked aggravated rather than pleased that Chris was sharing this information. “I don’t see anything on any of the sensors. What makes you think we’ve got a fire?”
“I can’t help what your sensors are saying. Maybe they’ve been disabled. What I can tell you is that you have smoke coming out of a sixth-floor window.” His cell phone rang again, and he recognized Eleni’s number. Was she safe and heading down to the ground floor? He answered as the elderly security guard picked up his own phone—ostensibly to call the fire department.
“I can’t get out!” Eleni blurted before Chris even had a chance to greet her. “Someone has locked all the doors to the stairways. They won’t open and the elevators have been shut down. People are coming down from the floors above me, too, and we’re all stuck up here.”
Chris felt a fist tighten around his heart. “I’m coming.” He glanced quickly around the lobby and noticed a stairway to the left of the elevator bank. He turned back to the guard, still holding his phone. “The elevators aren’t working, and the exit doors are locked on the seventh floor. Everyone that was working above that level is trapped. I see some stairs by the elevators. Are those the only ones?”
“No,” the guard responded. “There’s another set on the south side of the building that is for employees only, but those doors are kept locked, too, to keep unauthorized people from using them. The employees all have key cards, so they can get in and out. If the key cards aren’t working, then something must be blocking the doors, or overriding the system.”
“We can smell the smoke, and it’s getting really stuffy in here,” Eleni said through the phone.
Her voice had an edge to it and a tremor that made Chris’s heartbeat speed up even more. “Okay. I’ll start with the employee stairs. I’m heading your way now.”
He stowed his phone and turned to the guard who was still on his own phone with the fire department. “...Some guy with an FBI badge...Yes, smoke...”
Chris had no patience to wait. “I need a key card to the employee stairway doors. Now.”
The guard put his hand over the bottom of the phone. “I can’t give you that. I’ll lose my job.”
“You won’t have a job if the building burns to the ground. Hand over that key, now. I’ll take full responsibility.”
“How do I know you’re even who you say you are?” the man replied. “I haven’t even had a chance to run your name through the database...”
“Be my guest,” Chris replied, handing the man his ID wallet. “You keep this, and I’ll head up those stairs.” He put his hand out. “The key. Now. I’m not asking again.”
The guard finally shrugged, pulled a key card out of his pocket and put it in Chris’s outstretched hand. “This will get you through any door in the building except the executive suites on the top four floors. I’ll need it back.”
“Fine. While I’m gone, you get as many people as you can out of this building. Everybody needs to evacuate. Now. I called the fire department, too. They should be here any minute.”
Frustration ate at Chris as he grabbed the card and ran for the stairs. Did the man not believe him? Did he need to actually see or smell smoke like the people congregating on the seventh floor to shift into action? He jumped the turnstile into the employee-only area and found the south side set of stairs near the back of a hallway. With shaking hands, he touched the key card against the sensor, then grabbed the door and opened it as soon as the red light turned to green by the handle. At least the key card was working for him. He charged up the stairs, two at a time, unsure of what or who he’d find blocking the doorway on the higher floor.
By the time he’d made it to the third floor, a few of the other employees from the lower floors had already started passing him in their hurry to exit. He was glad the evacuation message was finally getting passed through the building, and he was also thankful that it was after hours and there weren’t that many people still working inside. Even so, he felt like a fish swimming upstream, and several people bumped him in their hurry to exit. Was one of them the perpetrator? It was a possibility. He knew that arsonists sometimes liked to hang around and watch their work unfold. But right now, getting those doors opened so the rest of the building could evacuate was his top priority.
Once again, Chris said a quick prayer of thanks to God—this time for spurring the security guard into action. Hopefully, the building had protocols for notifying everyone when an emergency existed and they would have time to get everyone out safely, but if the doors were still locked and the elevators disabled, everyone from the seventh floor and above was currently in danger, and probably starting to panic.
He sucked in a deep breath as he hit the sixth floor and coughed as a result when the chemicals entered his lungs. Smoke had already started permeating the air in the stairwell, and he could smell the acrid scent of plastics and other synthetic materials burning. He made it to the door that led to the seventh floor and found a long metal bar braced against the door handle, keeping the door from opening if pushed from the other side. It was wedged tightly, but after several hard kicks, it finally gave way and he was able to pull the door open. A group of fifteen people or so were on the other side and surged forward as soon as the door started to open, almost knocking him over in their panic to leave the building. He regained his footing and held the door against the wall, searching the faces for Eleni. Smoke filled the musty air and whooshed into the stairway as the people rushed past him.
Chris didn’t have to wait long. Eleni found him quickly and gave him a fast hug. She had her laptop bag swung over her shoulder and was wearing another blue suit jacket with navy trim that made her eyes seem an even deeper gray than they had before. He saw relief there as well as gratefulness at his presence. He was surprised by the warmth that traveled through him at her expression. And she had touched him! In fact, she’d hugged him! He had been so hurt in his last relationship that he never allowed a woman to get close—either physically or emotionally. As a result, he rarely allowed any physical contact beyond a handshake with anyone. Yet even though her hug had been fleeting, he had actually enjoyed the contact.
That thought scared him even more. He didn’t want to enjoy it. This woman was inducing feelings that were most unwelcome.
“Thank God you arrived when you did! You saved us all! Folks were starting to panic in there. Apparently, the main stairwell has been blocked as well, and it was really getting harder to breathe.” As if to accent the point, she coughed, grabbing his arm for support.
Chris stiffened, even though she released him as soon as the spell passed. Good grief! She’d touched him again! This time when she withdrew her hand, he suddenly felt bereft. The emotions this woman evoked made him so uncomfortable that he found himself swinging between pleasure and discomfort. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so discombobulated around a woman. “We’d better get out of here and let the firefighters do their jobs,” Chris said quickly to cover his uneasiness. “Do you know if everyone inside was notified?”
“Yes, the security guard issued a warning through an internal intercom system,” she said. “He also told everyone to go to the employee stairwell.” She raised an eyebrow. Was it her, or had she made this big bear of an FBI agent uncomfortable again? At first, she had thought it was her daughter’s presence that made this man seem out of sorts, but now she wasn’t so sure. He looked like a cornered wild animal. Either way, the stairwell of a burning building wasn’t the place to try to analyze the issue. They both did a quick once-over of the surrounding area, and seeing no one else, she headed down the stairs with him following closely behind. The others who had previously gathered at the doorway had already rushed down the stairs ahead of them, and she was fairly certain no one else remained in the building on this floor or the ones above. Smoke made her eyes water and a host of burning smells filled the air and made her throat tighten. She hadn’t seen any actual flames yet, but the fumes were permeating the entire floor as well as the stairways, and they made her sick to her stomach.
Who would want to kill and hurt so many people?
The question ate at her as she descended the stairs. She’d seen the metal pole that had been jammed under the door to keep it from opening and assumed there had also been something else blocking the stairway exit doors on the other side of the building. Even the elevators weren’t working and had probably been tampered with or damaged before the fire was even discovered. Whoever had closed off the exits had obviously done so deliberately, uncaring of the consequences. Even though it wasn’t the middle of the business day, the building had still held several people working after hours. If Chris hadn’t come along and beaten the firefighters to the building, there might have been several people injured from the smoke, the fire or both.
Had she been the target of this latest attack? Or was this another random act of violence?
If she had been the intended victim, then why?
Questions swam through her brain as she descended the stairs. Although her latest article had garnered quite a bit of attention, her ego wasn’t so inflated that she believed this event and the poisoning at the restaurant had been about her. In fact, even if she had been the target, the timing of the incidents still didn’t make any sense. If someone had wanted to hurt her, it would have been before her story had been published, not a month after the fact. She was working on a few different articles right now, but none of them would have the same sort of far-reaching impact that her exposé had accomplished, and she couldn’t imagine any of the subjects choosing murder as the answer to stop her current work.
But if not her, then who? She ran through the other businesses that occupied the floors above the newspaper in the building in her mind, but again, nothing stood out. There was a court innovation project, an accounting firm and the business offices for a small string of hardware stores, all of which seemed completely innocuous.
Was she simply a victim of circumstance who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, not once but twice?
Maybe the FBI agent had some insight. She sure didn’t have any. “Any idea what’s going on here?” she asked Chris, turning slightly to get his attention.
He shrugged as he continued down the stairs beside her. “None. I’m hoping the fire department can help discover some clues.” As if on cue, they heard the sirens in the distance and coming closer, signaling that the fire department was nearing the building.
“Do you think it’s related to the restaurant poisoning?”
“Anything is possible,” Chris replied, “but it seems unlikely, unless you know something I don’t.”
Eleni shook her head. “I can’t think of a single reason why this could be about me, but even so, I sure don’t like coincidences.” Regardless of her words of denial, a tingle of fear crept down her spine. People were getting hurt all around her, and she needed to figure out what was going on before anyone else was killed or wounded. She thought of her daughter, who wasn’t even living at home right now because Eleni didn’t feel safe having her nearby.
These attacks had to stop, and stop them she would, or die trying.