Page 30 of Saving Salem
“I haven’t, but I just came to a couple minutes ago. Care to catch me up, what’s happened?”
“Fire. Salem and I were having dinner, and she smelled smoke. By the time I got the front door open, the hallway was ablaze. Overwhelming smell of gasoline, especially in front of Salem’s apartment. It’s my fault. I sent her down alone, while I tried to get the other residents on the floor out.”
“Don’t panic, dude. We’ll find her. I’m going to call for reinforcements, and we’ll get everybody looking for her. She can’t have gone far.”
But Jack’s gut told him they wouldn’t find her. She’d been taken and he felt helpless. In a city he didn’t know squat about, he’d be practically blind trying to find her. That was inconsequential because he wouldn’t give up. He couldn’t because she was his life, his everything.
Nate had his phone out, but Jack couldn’t wait. He climbed up on the side of one of the nearby fire trucks, which gave him a height advantage to look over the huddled groups of people, even while the firefighters did their job, shooting geysers of water into the burning building. Still no sign of Salem.
Nate waved at him, and he jumped down, sprinting over to him. He held his phone in his hand, and extended it to Jack.
“Samuel. Wants to ask you a couple questions.”
“It’s Jack.” He held his breath, a building sense of anticipation, almost like a premonition spreading through him.
“Salem’s fine. She and Chloe are on their way here as we speak. Stephanie spotted her as she was driving past and picked her up. The cops cleared the street, wouldn’t let them stay, so she’s bringing them here.”
“That’s good. Great. For a minute, I thought the Amirs might have taken them.”
“Understandable. Any idea what happened?”
“Nate told you he got ambushed?”
“Yeah. Bleeding heart, always has to help others.” Jack could hear the smile in Samuel’s voice, knew he liked the other man. He had a feeling he would, too, once he got to know him better.
“Salem smelled smoke. By the time I got the fire extinguisher, it had spread up the front door. I got the door open, had them take the stairs down. I stayed long enough to let the rest of the residents on her floor know the building was on fire, and came down looking for them. Samuel, there was obviously gasoline poured all over the hall in front of Salem’s apartment. This fire was no accident.”
There was a long sigh on the other end. “I was afraid of that. Did you talk to Salem about moving into an apartment here?”
“Yes. I planned to talk to you tomorrow about taking a look. I want her to be happy with wherever we move to.”
“How about you and Nate try to figure out what the fire department has to say, then head over here. I’ll have Stephanie take Salem and Chloe upstairs and look at the apartment and you can meet them there. If you like it, you can move in tonight. The place comes fully furnished, although you’re more than welcome to change anything you don’t like. We’ve got a warehouse stuffed full of things from the past few years. People buy new stuff, and we store the old furniture. Plus, Andrea likes to change things out, so there’s quite a variety of styles and colors.”
“Sounds great, if Salem is amenable. We’ll try to wrap up here and head to the office. Thanks.”
Handing the phone back to Nate, Jack finally took the first deep breath since coming downstairs.
“Everything settled?”
Jack nodded. “For now. Appreciate your watching over my wife, and for that,” he gestured toward Nate’s head.
Nate grinned. “Occupational hazard. Isn’t the first time, won’t be the last. Luckily, I have a hard head.” He chuckled, adding, “Ask anybody at the office, they’ll tell you it’s the truth.”
“Samuel wants us to talk to the firefighters, see if they can give us any information about what happened.”
“Good idea. Looks like they’ve got it pretty well controlled. I’m not seeing any new smoke or flames.” Nate glanced back toward the building as he spoke, watching the spray of water from the firehoses.
“Let’s do this. I need to get back to Salem.”
Rashid slammed hishand against the desktop, anger boiling up inside. The Americans he’d hired were beyond useless. That disloyal whore had slipped through their fingers again. For the amount of money he was paying these fools, you’d think they would pull their heads out of their backsides long enough to get the job done.
“What happened, my darling son?”
“She managed to escape the fire.”
“How is this possible? Didn’t we have someone there to eliminate her if she escaped the building?”
Rashid sighed and leaned back in his leather office chair. “Yes, Mother, we did. However, some stupid woman picked her up in an automobile before they could grab her. It’s like she has the luck of the devil on her shoulder.”
