looked over at Max. “How’s she doing?”
“I take it I don’t have to introduce myself?”
“Raine told me you’re working on the case. I’m her assistant, Tori Campbell.” The woman offered her hand, but kept her body language closed, making Max wonder exactly what Raine had said about him.
He took her hand, noting a mostly concealed flinch that told him far too much. “Call me Max.” He nodded to the row of lights on the telephone, some lit, some blinking. “You taking all the calls?”
“No, we’re using a service to handle the majority. There were a few I wanted to handle personally, though.” She glanced away.
People she knew, Max surmised. People she’d wanted to make sure were still alive.
Tori Campbell didn’t trust her own product.
Interesting.
“Did you know any of the women who died?” Max deliberately turned his back on the receptionist and leaned against the desk, so they were both facing out into the lobby, where the FDA investigators were loading fat files into sturdy cardboard boxes.
“No,” she answered, “none of us did. It seems so…random. Those poor women and their poor families. I talked to the first husband on the phone when it all started, before the lawyers and the FDA got involved. His name is James Summerton. He sounded awful. Hurt. Confused. Angry.” She paused. “I can’t get his voice out of my head.”
Her words resonated inside Max, where something clicked. He stiffened as he realized there was yet another possibility that could explain the house fire.
Revenge.
What if Thriller really had killed the women? What if Raine really had deleted the data records? What if someone connected to the dead women had decided to take matters into his own hands?
The possibility didn’t ring as false as Max would have liked. Stifling a growl, he pushed away from the reception desk and faced Tori. “Do you think the drug killed them?”
“Raine is a good person,” she said quickly. “She wouldn’t have gone forward with the sampling and the advertising if she’d thought there was any chance of Thriller being deadly.” Then the secretary pursed her lips and looked both ways, making sure nobody could overhear her say, “There are a couple of others here that I’m not so sure about, though.”
Max leaned closer. “Meaning?”
Her voice dropped so low he almost couldn’t hear it. “Jeff Wells has been pretty chummy with the FDA people. And he’s been hanging out with the computer techs. He never used to do that.”
Max watched her eyes, trying to gauge whether this was real or a personal agenda. “You don’t like Jeff?”
“I’ve never had a problem with him before, but ever since this thing started with Thriller, he’s been…” She shrugged. “Weird, I guess. Then again, we’re all under a ton of pressure right now. If Thriller goes under, it’ll take Rainey Days with it.”
He’d heard the same fear from hundreds of employees at dozens of companies since he and William had gone into business. Now, though, it resonated on a different level.
A personal one.
Max scowled and shifted away from Raine’s secretary. How could he trust Raine so little, yet still want to help her?
“I don’t know,” Raine’s voice said unexpectedly from right behind him. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.”
Max jolted and turned toward her, halfway thinking he’d asked his question aloud. But her eyes were focused beyond him as she crossed the office lobby with her cell phone pressed to her ear and her long red coat draped over her arm, as though she were going somewhere.
He shifted to block her path, interrupting. “You’ve been wondering what?”
She focused on him and her eyes changed, so slightly that he might not have noticed if he hadn’t been watching for it. She clicked the phone shut and said, “Computer stuff. Jeff and two of the techs are in my office trying to figure out when those data ghosts were inputted. Maybe-”
A ripping, rending explosion cut off her words and a fireball erupted from the second floor, blowing away a chunk of the balcony. The heavy construction crashed to the first floor, narrowly missing a section of office cubicles.
Max shouted as an invisible concussion wall slammed him to the ground.
He instinctively grabbed Raine on the way down, tangling their bodies together so he took the brunt of the fall. Debris stung his back and shoulders.
The roar of sound and fury escalated to painful levels, seeming to go on for far too long. Cursing, Max rolled them behind Tori’s desk, where they were partway shielded by the solid wood kiosk.
An unearthly groan rose above the fading roar of explosion. Aware of Raine beneath him, of Tori and two FDA drones huddled in the lee of the reception desk, Max risked a look just in time to see the giant hanging mobile snap from its cable. The huge model crashed to the ground and splintered into brightly colored shrapnel.
The noise faded slowly.
And the screams and shouts began.
Almost as an afterthought, fire alarms shrilled to life. The fire suppression system activated with a thump and water sprayed, not from the overhead sprinklers, but from ruptured pipes along the walls and in the ceiling far above them, pouring down in haphazard sluices that added nothing but wet and noise.
“Everybody out!” Max shoved Raine toward the main office door and gestured for Tori and the FDA agents to follow. “Outside, into the parking lot. The whole building could come down around our ears!”
As he said that, the other half of the balcony let go partway, sagging directly over a handful of cubicles, where workers cowered beneath their desks.
“I’m staying!” Raine yanked away from him, face gray with shock and drywall dust. “These are my people! That was my
“These are your people, too.” He gestured to the small knot huddled behind the desk. “Get them out and call 911.” He got them up and moving out the door before he turned back to the destruction.
Without the balcony, the entire second floor was inaccessible, with office doors opening onto thin air. A giant hole gaped where Raine’s office had been moments earlier.
Even as the possibilities snapped into his mind, he was moving-not toward the door, but deeper into the office, toward the cubicles. He could hear moans and shouts and prayers, a litany of human misery. “Come on!” he shouted, coughing against the plaster dust and acrid smoke. “Everyone out!”
As though they’d been waiting for someone to tell them it was clear, a half-dozen people bolted for the exit, skidding on the wreckage. Farther into the cube farm, where a chunk of balcony had landed, he heard voices shouting for help.
“What can I do?” Raine’s voice asked from behind him.
Max spun. Her face was bloodless, her eyes huge in her face, sending a stab of something hot and ugly through his chest. “I told you to go outside and call this in.”
She gestured behind her, where Tori and the two FDA agents stood, looking grim but determined. “They’re on their way. Until then, we’re helping.”
Max wanted to argue, but she was right, damn it.
He glanced up at the raw edge of wall where the balcony had been and saw faces peering out of three different office doors, heard more calls for help. Nothing was shifting, and it seemed like the building was structurally okay.
For now.
“Take that side-” Max’s voice broke and he coughed out a lungful of dust and grit before saying, “If they’re mobile, get them out. If they’re too wounded to move, mark their positions for the professionals. Got it?”
