No answer, but with all the noise, his words sounded muffled and distant.
He shoved through the outer door, unable to shake the intense smell of smoke, then sucked the night air into his aching lungs.
A circle of men stood a safe distance from the inferno—cops, firemen, and paramedics. Emergency vehicles had arrived, flashing their lights across a pitch-black sky.
He held Jessie, not wanting to put her down. When he turned, the building had started to implode and fire raged inside, hitting pockets of gas and erupting. In the growing crowd of faces he searched for Joe and Sam. They’d been right behind him.
Payton clung to Jessie, feeling her move in his arms. But when a massive explosion caved the front of the structure into a fiery heap, the only words that came from his mouth sounded like the voice of a stranger.
“Oh, God. Please…no.”
CHAPTER 20
Running down the dimly lit corridor, Alexa Marlowe heard the explosion deep in the tunnel. The ground shook under her feet and nearly knocked her off balance. She knew in an instant what had happened.
“Damn! Move it, Marlowe.”
She secured her H&K in its holster and ran for the underground construction elevator dead ahead—no more than a wire basket with a layer of cement as flooring, hoisted on a motorized steel cable with a hook suspension. If she didn’t get ahead of the blast, she’d be cooked where she stood. And if the contraption didn’t have power, or juice supplied from a backup generator, none of her effort would matter.
“Come on.” She secured the basket door behind her and punched the lift button. “Damn it! Move.”
The elevator heaved with an uneasy jolt, and the motor kicked in with a loud whir. It strained and lifted her into a dark shaft, heading to the surface. She couldn’t see where she was going, but the elevator was the only escape route possible. Since the corridor below had dead-ended, she had no doubt the men of Globe Harvest had done exactly as she did now.
A loud rumble trailed after her with a huge sucking sound, depleting the air in its wake—a toxic vaporous cloud building momentum in the dark. And a rush of heat swelled around her. Alexa knew she was running ahead of a massive and deadly fireball. The basket swayed under her feet, and between the fumes and the motion, she felt light-headed and nauseous.
She punched the button again and again, unable to stop the compulsion.
“Come on. Almost there.”
The darkness of the elevator shaft swallowed her. She couldn’t see anything, not even the hand in front of her face. But as an orange molten glow erupted below, she realized that the black void had been a blessing.
“Oh, God.”
She looked down long enough to feel the blast on her face. Scorching heat surged up the shaft like a frenzied snake, writhing after her. Waiting for impact, she fought the natural tension in her muscles. When the time came, she wanted to roll with the punch, grappling for safe ground. As she peered through the dark above her, she felt a cool wisp of night air on her cheek and knew her race to beat the fire would be close.
Alexa braced her feet and held on, taking a last gulp of air so her lungs wouldn’t cook.
Raging molten flames soon devoured the inky black of the narrow shaft. And for an instant she had enough light to see what lay ahead—shored up stone walls leading to freedom. But when the blast hit, it slammed into her, hard. It catapulted the basket and launched her like a human cannonball, propelling the wire cage with her inside. Her body collided with the metal girding and she narrowly escaped being crushed against the hoisting mechanism. Finally free of the cage, she forced her body to tuck and roll. When she landed, she hit with such force that the impact jarred her knees and back, but she managed to go with the flow and minimize the shock.
Dodging falling debris, Alexa scrambled away as fast as she could and avoided the wire cage that smashed to the dirt near her legs. When the worst was over, she lay on the ground, stunned by what had happened. She rolled to one side, out of breath and completely spent, her body shaking like a junkie in withdrawal. She stared at the blaze that nearly killed her. Like a torch, flames licked the night air, rupturing from the shaft. Yet seeing how close she’d come to becoming a skewered bratwurst brought an unexpected and aching grin to her face.
“Holy crap!” she panted, still shaking off the adrenaline burn. “What a…ride!”
At the surface, an old barnlike structure had been built around the elevator shaft to keep out prying eyes. By her estimation, Globe Harvest’s evacuation route was a few miles from the abandoned textile factory. Authorities would eventually find it. The old building had started to catch fire, an aftermath of the explosion, the top of the barn blown apart in the blast.
“You bastards had this all under control, one step ahead.”
Alexa knew she needed to head for her car before anyone came to investigate the barn fire, but she had quite a hike back, and the way she felt, procrastination had appeal. Sweat covered her body, along with a layer of dirt. And smoke rose off her jeans and shirt. She felt the sting of burns on her fingers and elbows, with hot spots on her legs, but nothing that needed immediate attention. And it took her a moment to feel the rain. It soothed the raging heat of her skin, although her face and body were almost numb. All things considered, she’d been lucky.
But a distant commotion nudged her awareness. Slowly and with great pain, she stood on shaky legs and listened through ringing ears, straining to hear what instinct told her was there. It took time to realize that what she heard was the rotors of helicopters—more than one.
To regain her night vision, Alexa ran into the dark beyond the barn and away from the fire. She narrowed her eyes and focused on the night sky.
“Shit!” They were running without lights, and she had no idea which way they headed or how many there were. She spun and searched for any signs of movement, but beyond the city lights there was only darkness.
She’d lost them again.
Desperation turned her stomach, and she bent over, exhausted, drained, and still shaking. But when she moved, she felt a crumple of paper at her waist and remembered what she’d found in the control room. She pulled out the documents and examined them in the light from the fire. Nothing but a series of numbers, but she knew where to get help in deciphering the pages.
Suddenly, the hike to where she’d hidden her car didn’t seem so daunting—yet one dark thought lingered to taint her small victory.
With luck she might uncover a thread of evidence leading her to another arm of Globe Harvest. The online international organization operated in secrecy and answered to no one, committing heinous atrocities. But tonight any discovery would be too late to help the young girls being flown out of Chicago to parts unknown.
She couldn’t handle that harsh reality. Alexa collapsed to the ground and emptied her stomach.
Nikki stared out the window, squeezed next to another frightened girl. The ground fell away from under the helicopter when it lifted, making her queasy. Once they got high enough, she fixed her eyes on the horizon with its glittering patches of city lights in the distance, fighting the throbbing headache instigated when the Russian knocked her unconscious. The textile factory besieged the night with its belching fire, giving the skyline the appearance of sunset, but the sight barely registered.
All she thought about was Uncle Payton. His smiling, handsome face with that crooked dimpled grin. He came to Chicago to find her, and now…he was dead. Her eyes blurred with tears as she choked back her guilt.
All the reasons she’d left home, and her desperate struggle for independence, suddenly felt unimportant and trivial. She’d come half a world away to learn what really mattered, but it was too late to do anything about it. Memories of her mother didn’t give her comfort, as they had only hours before. Her mom would be alone to deal with Payton’s death and she wasn’t strong enough to do that.
Nikki shut her eyes tight, but nothing would hold back the pain…or the fear. Now, no one would find her. And she had a feeling with what these men had in store for her, death would be a mercy.
Amidst the moans of the wounded and the commotion of the scene, Payton heard the man say, “Give her high flow oxygen. Fifteen liters per minute for smoke inhalation.”
A paramedic gave direction before moving on to the next victim. Each of the injured got a colored triage tag around the neck, indicating the severity of the injury. Jessie had a yellow tag. Payton had no idea what it all meant, but the medics worked with care and efficiency.
