Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 87

15:38 Fri, Sep 18 Chapter 87
Chapter 87
KIERAN
It rang eleven minutes later.
Not Alyssa.
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The name on the screen was James-my head of security, a man who communicated with the economy of someone who had learned that brevity was its own form of precision. James did not call during afternoon meetings unless the reason for calling outweighed the interruption, which was a threshold he had a reliable sense of.
I picked up.
“There’s a fire,” he said.
His voice had the quality it used for things that were happening rather than things that had happened-present tense, the controlled urgency of someone delivering live information.
“Where.”
“St. Mira’s orphanage. East quarter, Harland Street. Fire units are responding-call came in approximately eight minutes ago.” A pause of one second, which from James was a significant pause. “Someone said Denise went there before it started.”
The city outside the window continued its afternoon.
I was aware of the city continuing its afternoon in the way you were aware of background noise when the foreground had become absolute-registered, present, irrelevant.
“What does someone said mean,” I said.
“A witness on the street. A woman who lives across from the orphanage-she was home, she saw Denise arrive. Saw her go up the steps.” Another pause. “She went inside, sir. Before the alarm.”
Inside.
I looked at the window.
“How long ago.”
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Chapter 87
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“The witness called it in nine minutes after Denise went through the door. That was-” I heard him calculating. “Fourteen minutes ago.”
Fourteen minutes.
“Where are you,” I said.
“Six minutes from St. Mira’s. I was already moving when I called you.”
“I’m twenty minutes out. Move faster.”
“Yes, sir.”
“James.” My voice was even. I was making it even with the specific, conscious effort of someone who understood that the alternative was not useful. “What’s the status of the fire.”
“The
“Units on scene. Building is-” A sound in the background, something I couldn’t parse. back section is the source. Front of the building is-the front is intact. Windows showing people on the upper floor. Children.”
Children on the upper floor.
Denise had gone inside fourteen minutes ago.
“Children only?” I said.
A pause.
“I don’t have confirmation on anyone else yet,” James said.
I looked at the window.
The car had not turned yet because I hadn’t spoken to the driver and the driver was still taking me back to the company, which was where I had said to go, and the company was in the wrong direction and every second of the wrong direction was a second that was not the right direction.
“Harland Street,” I said. “Now. Fast as it’s legal and faster than that.”
The driver’s eyes in the mirror-a single moment of acknowledgment-and the car changed.
I kept the phone to my ear.
“James.”
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Chapter 87
“Still here.”
“Stay on the line.”
“Yes, sir.”
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The city moved past the windows differently now-the driver had found a register that was not the standard professional pace, the car moving through the afternoon with a purpose that the afternoon had not anticipated. I watched the streets and did the math I did not want to do.
Fourteen minutes since she went inside. Possibly fifteen now, sixteen.
The back section burning. The front intact. Children at the upper windows.
She had called the fire in herself-James had said the call came in before the alarm, which meant someone inside the building had made it, which meant she had gone in and assessed and made the call and then done something with the remaining time that was not standing at the front door waiting.
This was Denise.
Of course it was.
I knew her well enough to know, with the specific, certain knowledge of someone who had been paying attention for longer than she was aware of, that standing at the front door was not what she had done with the remaining time. She had gone in. She had identified the geometry of the building and the location of the people in it and she had done the arithmetic the way she always did arithmetic-quickly, accurately, without the luxury of pausing to consider that the arithmetic was being done at personal cost.
I held the phone.
James’s breathing on the other end of the line-steady, present, the specific quality of a man who was also moving fast toward the same destination and understood that the line needed to
stay open.
“Tell me when you see the building,” I said.
“Yes, sir.”
The streets changed as we moved east-the architecture shifting from the glass and steel of the commercial center toward the older, more layered texture of the east quarter, the buildings with their decades of incremental maintenance and the particular quality of a part of the city that had been held together by determination rather than resource.
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Chapter 87
Harland Street was six minutes away.
Six minutes.
I looked at the phone.
I was not going to call her.
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This was a decision I made in the thirty seconds after the car turned and held with the discipline of someone who understood that calling her while she was inside a burning building would split her attention, would make a sound in the wrong moment, would take something from her that she needed whole.
I was not going to call her.
I was going to get there.
“Sir.” James’s voice, changed. “I can see the smoke.”
I looked out the window.
From this distance, from this angle, the east quarter skyline had a smudge in it-darker than the grey sky, specific in the way that smoke was specific, rising from a location that was becoming identifiable as we moved.
“I see it,” I said.
“Two minutes,” James said.
I watched the smudge and thought about fourteen minutes and the back section and the children at the front windows and the woman who had gone inside before the alarm and had been doing something with the time since that I could not know and could not control and could only arrive at.
The car moved.
The smoke was visible now without looking for it.
One minute.
had my hand on the door handle before the car had stopped.
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Chapter 88