Page 73 of I'll Be There
“What about Rube?” Conner tucked his face into his shirt, his hand on Jed’s arm.
“Evac’d. Keep up.”
Conner could outrun him. Still, he nearly tripped as Jed hauled him up the stairs to the tiny alcove bar. He hit his knees on the top step, the smoke so thick it seared his eyes, turned him blind.
Jed slapped Conner’s hand onto the wall. “Here, feel the hole!” He coughed even as he pushed Conner into a jagged space where lath and plaster had once covered the wall. Hands reached through the expanse, grabbed Conner around the collar, his upper arms, and in a second, pulled him through to another room. He skidded across the carpeted floor, gulping cleaner air, his eyes so thick with mucus they felt aflame.
Water spilled onto his face. “Open your eyes,” said a voice. Darek. Conner fought them open, and clean water flooded his eyes, cleaning them.
Jed lay beside him, doubled over, coughing. Seth was giving him the same treatment. “Lie back. Let’s get your eyes cleaned out.”
Jed let out a word as Seth doused him.
Conner rolled over, found his hands and knees. “What did you do?”
“I know these old buildings pretty well,” Darek said. “Pierre’s connects to an old apartment building. It’s a bookstore and café now, but there are stairs leading down to the parking lot.”
His vision had cleared enough to make out the group, drinking bottled water pilfered from the café area. Ingrid sat with Grace and Ivy and their children at the tables and chairs, and in the corner Liza embraced Raina and baby Layla, who was coughing.
Darek had moved a box in front of the opening, but smoke still billowed out.
John and Casper came up the stairs, moving fast. “The fire department is on the way.”
“We can’t wait,” Conner said, finding his feet. “That fire is going to catch up with us. And Reuben is surgical immediate.”
“We can’t go out the front,” Jed said. “That shooter has the same angle. Maybe better.”
“Then we go out the back,” Micah said.
“And shooter number two?” Conner pushed himself to his feet. “We can’t send everyone out there to be picked off like rabbits.”
Oops, he said that a little too loud, because Casper and Max looked at him like they wanted to hurt him. “We have kids here,” Max said tightly.
“Sorry.”
And right then, his gaze met Liza’s. She had lifted her head at his words and now wore such a destroyed, broken expression he wanted to push past everyone, pull her into his arms, and tell her that it would be okay.
Not even remotely. Not until he found Blankenship and finished this.
Conner bent over, grabbing his knees, hauling in breaths, then he looked up at Micah. “Just us.”
A quick nod, tight jaw, and Micah was no longer a soccer dad. “Stay here,” he said to everyone. “Wait for us to give the all clear.”
Conner pressed Pete’s shoulder as he ran past him and Reuben. “Keep him alive.”
Micah had already unlatched the door to the back stairs, now wedged it open.
The smoke, acrid and ferocious, blackened the already bruised sky behind Pierre’s. “Maybe he won’t see us,” Conner said, and made to open the door wider.
A shot pinged off the metal, and he jerked back. “Sheesh. They mean to burn us alive.”
“Unless,” Micah said, gesturing to the reception tent. Staked out below like peaked frosting, it had so far survived the sparks and flames from the burning building. Set thirty feet from the back door, with pavement on all sides, yes, it might make it through this blaze.
“No...Micah...”
“It will go up fast. And create the smoke we need to cover us. From the ground up.”
Shoot, it made sense. Still, “I’m not leading anyone out until we get that shooter.”
