Quiver & Burn (Surrender to Them 5)

“I wasn’t checking up on you this quickly.” He chuckled under his breath. “I parked on the other side of the building. Wrong stairs.”

“Oh okay.” I forced a smile and nodded.

I walked back to my desk and sat down once I heard the door on the other side of the building slam shut. The conversation with Mr. Dunkirk continued to play in my head as I looked through the accounts. I was wasting my time. There was no way I was going to find anything. I was set up to find perfect accounts, write a great report, and reap the benefits for the rest of my career. I tried to figure out why they would pick me, and the only thing I could come up with was that Dana or Paul told them I knew. Perhaps that was why they refused to answer me. They knew I would be joining them in the lap of luxury with dirty money in my bank account. I wished I had no moral compass to guide me because life would have been a lot easier if I was able to just take the money. As I sat there contemplating everything, my computer suddenly shut off. A second later, the lights overhead went off too.

“Fuck!” I slammed my hand on my desk and furiously tapped my keyboard. “What happened?”

Do they turn the lights off at night—no? That doesn’t make sense.

There was enough light coming in through the windows that I wasn’t trapped in pitch black, but it was still dark. I reached for my cell phone and didn’t find it where I thought I left it on the desk beside me. I quickly felt around and couldn’t find it anywhere. I even opened my desk drawers to feel around, but it was nowhere to be found. I checked my desk phone and was not surprised to find that it was dead since the power was out. I started looking for my phone again, even feeling around on the floor with my feet to make sure I didn’t drop it. It was clear that I wasn’t going to find it in the dark, so I grabbed my purse to head for the exit. I couldn’t work if the lights were out and I definitely couldn’t work without my computer. Luckily, I had Mr. Smith’s business card in my purse which had his cell phone number, so if I could just find a working phone, I could let him know what was going on.

The elevator is obviously out, so—stairs it is.

“What the hell?” I got to the door that opened to the stairs, but when I pushed on it, I found that it was locked.

I was annoyed, especially since I remembered Mr. Dunkirk using the door when he left—but maybe not. He left through the other door. I carefully walked across the office in the dark until I got to the other side of the building and when I tried to open that door, it was locked too. A bit of panic started to creep up inside me. There was no way both doors could be locked by accident. Mr. Dunkirk definitely left through one of them. As I stood there trying to figure out how I was going to leave, I saw something else—an orange glow in the staircase. It took me a couple of seconds to process it, but then I realized exactly what I was seeing. It was a fire! The panic turned to intense terror. I was locked inside Dunkirk Accounting and the building was on fire. Not only that—Mr. Dunkirk had locked me inside.

“Oh my god. He’s not giving me a promotion. He’s trying to kill me!” I slammed my hands into the door several times, but it didn’t budge. “Help!”

Okay, screaming is stupid. Nobody is going to hear me.

I walked in a circle as I tried to figure out what I could do. I ran to the windows and looked outside. It was far too high to jump so that was out of the question. It would take time for the fire to get to me—hopefully someone would see it and call the fire department. I watched the street, just waiting to see lights—anything. Someone had to drive by and see the fire. A car started approaching and I tried to pound on the window and wave my arms, hoping they would see me, but they drove by without slowing down. A few minutes later, I started smelling smoke. The fire was spreading. I had no idea how long it would take to get to me. I ran over to the office area and started checking phones, looking around in the darkness for anything I could use to communicate with the outside world, but it was futile.

Mr. Dunkirk must have taken my phone. That son of a bitch.

The smoke started to get thicker. I was sure it was in my head, but it felt like the building was getting hotter. The fire shouldn’t have been able to spread that fast. Suddenly, there was an explosion of some sort and the floor trembled. That wasn’t in my head. The fire was definitely spreading and something was making it accelerate faster than it should have. I had to break out a window. I couldn’t let the smoke fill the floor or I would pass out before the fire ever made it to me. I wished Jett and Rand were there. They would know what to do. I ran over and grabbed one of the office chairs. It was heavy, and even though I threw it with all my might, it just bounced off the glass. I ran around the office trying to find something heavy—anything I could throw at the window. It wasn’t easy in the dark, and everything I found just bounced right off.

The smoke is getting too thick—I really am going to die in this freaking building.

Chapter Twenty-One

Rand

“Break down the fucking door!” I pointed at the door and a team of firefighters hit it with everything they had.

“It’s not budging.” One of them turned to me and shook his head.

“Then I’ll go through the mother fucking window.” Jett pulled out his ax and slammed the blade into the window next to the door, but it popped back so violently it nearly caught him in the face.

“Shatterproof glass? On a building like this? Son of a bitch!” I kicked the door hard and glared at the impenetrable wall in front of us. “Where is the window punch?”

“I’ll get it.” One of the firefighters turned and started sprinting towards the truck.

“Hold on, I got an idea. Rand, come here.” Jett motioned for me to come over to the window. “Let’s take turns—point of the ax, right in the corner.”

Jett demonstrated and focused all of his effort on the corner. I hit the same spot and then he hit it again. It took a half dozen hits before the glass started to break, but we had progress. We picked up the pace, one after another—driving the hard point of our ax into the shatterproof prison. Once we had enough of a hole to grip the glass, we used our combined strength to tear the glass out of the metal frame that was holding it. We pushed through the opening and secured our masks. The building was made out of steel, so it wasn’t in danger of collapsing, but the fire was everywhere. I didn’t know if Brylee was inside, but she still wasn’t answering her phone, so I had to assume that was the case, especially after finding out that her coworker had met the same fate.

“There’s nothing down here that we can save, let’s go up the stairs,” I yelled over the roar and motioned to Jett.

I really hope Brylee wasn’t on the bottom floor.

We took the building one floor at a time as the other firefighters finally punched through the glass and joined us. The fire had swept up the stairs, but that part was already burned out. The worst of it was spreading up through the ceiling and the building was full of office supplies that just created more fuel for the blaze. I could already tell that the fire had been set intentionally. There was no way the building went up that quick without some sort of accelerant. My heart dropped in my chest when we turned the corner and I saw a floor that was nearly engulfed in flames. We were several floors up already and that fire had to be independent of the one downstairs. There was a huge hole in the middle of the floor that looked like some sort of explosive had been ignited. If anyone was on that floor, they didn’t survive. I motioned for Jett to follow me again and ran up the next flight of stairs.

“This fucking door is locked.” I slammed my hand against the metal and tried to peer through the window.

“Why the hell would this door be locked? Oh my god!” Jett ran into the door with his shoulder. “Fuck—ow!”

“They would only lock if they were trying to keep someone inside.” I pulled out my ax and started trying to break off the handle.