Flash Point (24 page)

The elevator rasped slowly, slowly, slowly down.

“The gunfire is louder,” Waverly said. “Do you think Rafe will be all right?”

“How would I know?”

“Well, don’t snap at me!”

“Sorry.”

Amy’s nerves felt ready to shatter. The elevator took forever, and as they passed each floor, she grew more shaken. By the time they reached the basement, her knees trembled. She locked them in place, seized Rafe again, and dragged him through a vast laundry area where the dirty linen from all nineteen floors ended up. At the far door, she pressed her ear to the door and listened.

“What?” Waverly said.

“I don’t hear anyone. . . . But we won’t know for sure until I open the door.”

The girls stared at each other. Waverly’s face was white as paper except for a long sooty smudge. She said, “Open it.”

Amy eased the door open, peering out. Nobody. The door led to the basement storage room where Rafe had taken her. His key unlocked the door at the far end, it rasped open, and there was the tunnel, long and damp and low. Amy’s relief was so great that for a moment her eyes filled. But there was no time for that.

“It’s OK, come on!”

They hurried along the dim tunnel, which seemed to go on forever, silent except for pipes gurgling overhead. Just before they reached the end, Rafe moaned.

“It’s OK, we’re here,” Amy said inanely.

“My . . . head . . .” Rafe said.

“I know. But we’re safe now.”

“We are?” Waverly said. “What’s up those steps?”

“Fenton Street.”

“
Fenton Street
? Like, Prada and Angelique’s?”

“If you say so. Come on!”

Rafe mumbled, “Can . . . walk . . .”

He couldn’t, but Amy got him upright and then it was easier to half-carry him. The nearness of safety somehow made this last stretch of their escape the worst piece. Amy trembled so much she could barely walk. Waverly, still pushing the cart, gave a single massive sob. But by the time they reached the rickety, cobwebby stairs up to the alley, Amy had herself under control.

“You go up,” Amy said. “Get help. I’ll stay with Gran and Rafe. Be careful!” What if protestors, and not cops, held Fenton Street?

No. This was Fenton Street. The police would let the Fairwood Hotel burn to the ground before they allowed damage to this enclave of riches.

Waverly scuttled up the stairs, the hem of her satin robe catching on splinters and turning black with dirt. Amy’s eyes had adjusted to the gloom of the tunnel. She saw that Gran’s were open. “Gran? Are you OK?”

Gran whispered something. For a heart-sickening moment Amy thought it was good-bye. But then she repeated it, her quaver no more than a cobweb in Amy’s ear. “Bravo, dear heart.”

“They’re down there!” Waverly cried. Then people pounded down the steps, someone said, “I’m a doctor,” and Amy allowed herself to sink to her knees beside Rafe and let relief take her like a tsunami.

Twenty-five

T
HURSDAY

PEOPLE JAMMED
the hospital ER: crying, shouting, moaning, swearing, looking for friends and relatives or demanding attention for the ones they’d already found. Amy heard the cops cursed, the protestors cursed—sometimes by the same people—the medical staff cursed, the economy cursed, the world cursed. The only quiet people were some of those who lay on the gurneys jamming the waiting room, the examining room, the corridors.

No gurneys were left for Rafe or Gran. Gran lay on the stretcher on which she’d been carried in from the ambulance. Rafe slumped in an orange plastic chair, holding his head. Waverly had been carried off by a cop to make a report. Amy, in her filthy pajamas, crouched on the floor beside Gran, and when a man in a bloody white coat went by, she grabbed the hem of his coat and said, “My grandmother! Please! She was in the fire and so was my friend—”

The doctor knelt beside Gran. “Burns?”

“No,” Gran whispered. “I’m fine.”

His hands went expertly over her, and somehow she found the strength to push him away. “Fine!”

“She inhaled smoke,” Amy said, “and she has cancer!”

He looked at her for the first time, and recognition moved in his eyes. “You’re a kid from that—”

“Yes. And so is Rafael Torres! I think he has a concussion!”

The doctor turned his attention to Rafe, peeled back his eyelids and shone a light, asked him some questions. Then he stood. “Neither of them is critical. Keep Rafael awake, preferably walking, for at least twelve hours. You’d actually do better to take them both home, there are so many badly off here that no one will see either of them for hours.”

“I can’t go—” Amy began, but the doctor was already gone. She and Gran were in nightclothes, but Rafe was dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. “Rafe?”

“Perfectly coherent,” he said, the words only slightly slurred. “You’re holding up sixteen fingers.”

“Does your head hurt?”

“President is Lady Gaga.”

“Do you have your cell phone?”

“Two plus two is infinity. Yes, I do.”

He produced the phone, a complicated piece of tech that Amy wasn’t familiar with. She did discover that it was set to Vibrate and that he had eight missed calls from Myra. Kaylie wasn’t on his speed dial and Amy couldn’t remember her number, but Cai was there. Someone was wheeled past on a gurney. Someone else moaned. Someone screamed, “Those fuckers!”

“Indeed,” Rafe said. “God, my head hurts.”

Cai picked up on the first ring. “Rafe?”

“It’s Amy. Is Kaylie—”

“Amy! Where are you? Are you safe?”

Before Amy could answer, Kaylie seized the phone. “Amy! Are you OK?”

“Yes, I’m in the hospital with Gran and Rafe and—”

“With Gran! How did you get out of the hotel? Violet said—”

“It’s too long a story for now. Are you all OK?”

“Yes. We’re at a new hotel. Myra got us there. Look, we’ll come get you. Is Gran all right?”

Amy looked at Gran. She looked very fragile, very weak, and her breathing seemed hoarser. All at once her face spasmed and her eyes rolled back in her head. Amy leapt up from the floor and screamed, “Doctor! Nurse! Heart attack here! Oh, somebody come!”

A nurse rushed over, took one look at Gran, and yelled, “Code Blue. Code Blue. Get a crash cart over here!”

“Amy!” Kaylie screamed into the phone. “What’s happening?”

Amy dropped the phone and seized Gran’s hand. “Don’t go, don’t go, not yet!”

The next few minutes were a blur. The crash cart did not arrive. But a doctor gave Gran a shot of something, she was heaved onto a gurney, and an IV was attached to her. When the blur of fear eased, Gran lay breathing regularly, eyes closed, and Rafe stood beside Amy, holding her free hand. His head was still bloody. Chaos still raged around them in the ER.

“Admit her,” a doctor shot at a harried nurse, and then raced off to the next patient.

Amy heard Rafe say into his phone, “She’s all right.” Oh—Kaylie was still on Rafe’s cell. It didn’t seem important, not even when Rafe said gently to Amy, “They’re on their way.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“No,” Rafe said, “I didn’t expect you would.”

* * *

Gran rallied. “She’s a fighter,” a nurse told Amy several hours later. “She’s sleeping really peacefully now, probably until tomorrow morning. After that she’ll most likely be moved out of the ICU. Some of these old people just have remarkable staying power. You should go home, clean up, get some rest.”

Except that Amy didn’t have a home. The old apartment’s lease had been terminated and the few bits of furniture worth saving put into storage. The Fairwood Hotel was burned, or was a crime scene, or was still held by protestors: Amy had no idea which. There were no TVs in the Intensive Care Unit.

Cai and Kaylie arrived at the hospital, saw Gran, and brought Amy some clothes from somewhere. Now Kaylie sat outside in the waiting room since only one person at a time was permitted in the ICU. But when Amy dragged herself out there, only Rafe occupied the stiff, poison-green sofa. A bandage wound around his head and dipped near one eye.

“Jaunty,” Amy said. She was almost too tired to stand.

“I’m aiming for that wounded-but-brave-soldier look. How is she doing?”

“Amazingly well, according to everybody. One doctor called her ‘a tough old bird.’ How are
you
?”

“Nothing to worry about. The staff has no time to worry about me, anyway. A slight concussion is small potatoes today.”

She dropped onto the other end of the sofa. “Tell me.”

Rafe didn’t sugarcoat. “Six dead, at least fifty injured. A SWAT team retook the hotel. Criminal charges are being filed against the anti-Pylon group, and the other group, the looser Times Be Tough Man organization, have publicly dissociated themselves from the anti-Pylons. The president gave a press conference, with both stick and carrot. The stick is to send in the National Guard if the riots spread more—”

“Are they spreading?”

“Atlanta, L.A., and Detroit are on fire. Well, parts of them, anyway. The carrot is promised legislation of incredible scope. Something like the New Deal, to aid everybody at the bottom of the economic ladder, which is pretty much everyone. The rich are howling.”

“So nothing will get passed.”

“I think it will, Amy, this time. Even billionaires recognize that real revolution is a possibility, and revolution would bring down everything. The legislation will have to include some tariff protectionism and—”

“Stop, Rafe.” She put a hand on his arm. “I don’t have your grasp of politics, and anyway I’m too tired right now. Tell me later. For now—where are Kaylie and Cai?”

“They left. Myra summoned them.”

Exhausted anger washed feebly through Amy. Kaylie preferred to go where Myra summoned—Kaylie, who wasn’t even on the show!—rather than wait to see Gran again.

Rafe said, “A doctor told Kaylie to go home.”

“Where’s ‘home’? Where are we supposed to go now?”

“Another hotel. The Carillon, on Portman Island.”

That got Amy’s attention. Portman Island, in the bay, was a beautiful, expensive resort. She’d seen pictures. “Well, I suppose there won’t be any protestors there.”

“Not unless the cleaning staff and kitchen help riot. But they won’t. The security is massive. Since the Collapse, Portman practically has its own army.”

“And you know this how?”

He held up his cell and grinned. “I’ve been waiting here to take you home. You can do a lot of research in all those hours.”

Waiting to take her home. And Waverly had said that Rafe had been climbing the Fairwood Hotel stairwell to reach Amy. But she was too weary to deal with this now, or with the look in Rafe’s eyes. She said, “Where’s Waverly?”

“At the hotel. How come
she
came through for you?”

“It’s complicated. But she did. Are Violet and Tommy OK?”

“Sure. They were outside with Cai and Kaylie, remember? One more thing: Myra gave a press conference. She said that TLN is looking into the possibility that the protestors attacked that particular hotel because of us. That we were targeted.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Amy said. “Those riots were bigger than some stupid TV show!”

“Of course. Myra misstepped badly. Now it looks like she’s piggybacking on everybody else’s anger and desperation just to get free publicity. Come on, I’m getting you somewhere you can sleep.”

“How? Portman isn’t close . . . and how are we going to get to the studio every day?”

“I don’t know about that. But I do know how to get you to the Carillon.”

He stood and held out his hand. Amy took it reluctantly and dropped it as soon as she could. The look was still in his eyes, and she was too grateful to him, and liked him too much, to tell him she couldn’t respond to that look. He was a good friend, but no more.

They took an elevator to the roof. Rafe, grinning mysteriously, made a call on his cell. A few minutes later a helicopter landed on the huge yellow cross that marked the helipad. The side of the helicopter blazed in red and orange
TLN NEWS
.

Rafe said, “That’s probably the only time in my life I’ll ever be able to summon an aircraft. I hope you’re suitably impressed.”

“I am!”

“Good.” They climbed in and Rafe said, “Home, James.” The pilot twisted to give him a sour look. Rafe grinned again, and they lifted into the sky. For a nauseating moment the view of everything far below—tiny cars, tiny people—reminded Amy of looking down at the riots from the burning hotel.
Ants
. She shuddered and closed her eyes until they were away from the city, over the blue waters of the bay, sparkling in the morning light.

* * *

“No,” Alex said. “We can’t.”

Midnight of the night before, and the conference room at TLN was lit like an operating room.
Surgical removal
, Myra thought—but not of her. She would do anything to keep that from happening.

She said calmly, “Let me make my case before you interrupt, Alex. Just grant me that courtesy.”

“This is not a case anyone should make!”

Myra twisted her body so that her left shoulder was turned to Alex, her face toward James Taunton. He sat at the head of the mahogany table, his face inscrutable. Myra wasn’t fooled by the lack of expression. She had erred badly with that press conference, and he was deeply unhappy with her. She was fighting for her life—for the one chance to regain the life she’d once had and had lost. And it was her only chance; Myra was under no illusions about that. Television had always been a sharks-in-the-water field and if she was fired now, in this economy, she would be so much bleeding meat.

“Mr. Taunton, we didn’t cause the riots or the fire. No one could possibly say that—and no one
is
. This is not a scenario. But it
is
an opportunity. At least three other stations are preparing quickie ‘special news reports’ on the hotel protest. That’s because it’s big news. Those reports will replay footage of the attack, the occupation of the premises, the counterattack, and then analysts will attempt to explain the behavior of everyone involved. Well, behavior is what our show is about! We can turn these news reports to the personal with the behavior of six individuals, three of which are pretty spectacular. We don’t even have to include the voting, and we can explain why we’re not including it—so as not to capitalize on tragedy. That ought to cover any objections from the bleeding-heart liberal crowd. What we can offer is a close-up, inside view of what happened, to complement and round out the outside view everyone else will have. Our show will almost be a historical document, focusing on teenage heroism.”

Alex said, “You can’t possibly believe that crap, Myra!”

“Alex—”

“Six people died, and we run it as entertainment?”

Myra opened her mouth, then closed it again. Taunton had shifted on his chair: a subtle shift, but she’d caught it and Alex had not. The best thing she could do now was shut up and let him come by himself to her idea. Under the table she laced her hands together so tightly that the rings on her right hand cut into the flesh of her left.

Taunton said, “We don’t have footage of those three kids in the tunnel. Or the elevator, which we didn’t even know existed.”

“And neither did the protestors, which will be dramatic,” Myra said. “We can re-create that part, with actors shot in soft focus and with towels over their heads against any heat, which is what Waverly told me they actually did. And—”

“Falsify footage?” Alex said.

“No, of course not—we say frankly that this part is a re-creation—a
faithful
re-creation. And we have footage of the girls loading the grandmother onto the service cart in Amy’s suite. Visual and audio. Only visual in the hallway and stairwell, but it’s dramatic. And we have spectacular shots of Rafe fighting free of the protestor who tried to eject him from the building, of the blow to his head, of him staggering up fourteen flights and then collapsing. He was trying to get to Amy! Now you tell me, what plays better than young love, unless it’s young love in wartime?”