She thought of the night before, and her sleepless night, and that Kane had said all sorts of things she’d been hoping he would say, right up until she rejected him for saying them. She cried harder. She felt almost churlish for crying over her breakup with Kane, which was her fault, when the visa issue, which wasn’t, had been solved. But she cried anyway, because so much could have been different if she’d known she could stay. Perhaps that would have given her the bravery to flip the bird at Edward and the muggers and embrace the life Kane had given her.
She went home feeling exhausted but restless. Maybe eating might help pass the time. But she’d been at Kane’s for so long that her fridge was almost bare. Just a cup of tea, then.
It was a couple of steps from the kettle to find the remote and turn on the television. With the weekend came a new news cycle; it seemed that discussion of her and women’s safety was no longer a talking point. She made the tea and looked around the room, trying to think of something to do. What had she done with all her weekends up till now? Maybe she should get a dog. She went over to her bookshelf and stared blankly at the titles, pulled out a well-thumbed Joanna Trollope, and sank onto the couch.
The nine o’clock summary came on. The first shot was of a building in an industrial park, with smoke billowing out of one side. The usual fire trucks and vans surrounded it. Later Ellen could swear that she’d begun to tense up before the newscaster even read the headline. “Yet another fire at Fielding Paper,” he said, somehow sounding both serious and gleeful at the same time. “The firm’s warehouse in the Inner Belt Park has been blazing for the past two hours. We’ll have our correspondent, Shari Jones, on the scene after the day’s other headlines.”
Ellen wasn’t sure when she stood up, but by the time Shari came on, she was close enough to the TV to see the pixels on the reporter’s face. The fire seemed to have started at around seven that morning. The shift workers, brought in from other locations to help with Fielding Paper’s increasing distribution problem, were just turning over from the night shift.
The parking lot was packed. The fire chief gave the details he had while the pictures alternated between fire coming out of the warehouse’s small upper windows, the hoses of the fire trucks, an aerial shot, and the reporter with her microphone. An old-model Audi was parked haphazardly between a fire truck and a police car. The ticker at the bottom of the screen gave doom-laden information like, “THIS FIRE FOURTH IN SIX WEEKS” and “1,500 FIELDING WORKERS NOW DISPLACED BY ARSONISTS.”
With Kane and the workers nowhere in sight, the reporter ran out of report, so the studio put on the press conference Kane had given on Friday. Ellen put her hand to her mouth. She could immediately tell that he wasn’t putting on the act he usually did. His voice was even different, more like the way he talked with her and Carl, not like he was reading from a script. She kept her hand at her mouth, lips trembling under her fingers. The way he’d been before was all an act; one he’d gotten so good at it was easy to mistake that Kane for the real one. But she’d been given the real one. And she’d handed him back.
The image on the screen switched back to Shari Jones, the reporter onsite. She’d got ahold of the police captain. He said that the workers were all being questioned in the smaller office building across the street, and they would be released when the police were good and ready to release them. She asked him if he knew if Kane was with them. He said he thought he was. The fire chief came back into shot at that point and said, “Well can you ask ’em to get him out here and move his car? He’s blocking the trucks.”
Ms. Jones looked ecstatic. She thanked the captain and planted herself firmly behind the Audi.
Things were winding down. They cut back to the studio for a recap of the other fires, then went back to her, because Leo Palmer had just shown up. In the slick, media-savvy language that Kane had used before, he answered her questions, seeming to be very helpful while giving away nothing at all. Yes, there had been security guards at all the entrances, but he wasn’t about to get into a discussion about how the arsonist had been able to get inside. When she asked how Kane was holding up, considering his family history, Leo just smiled blandly at her and didn’t say anything.
Then the building behind them, the one with everyone in it, exploded.
The blast had them both ducking behind Kane’s car and then running to the more substantial cover of the fire truck. The camera pointed down, showing running feet before peering down the length of the truck to the auxiliary building, which had disappeared in a storm of smoke and debris. “Oh my God,” the reporter said, and Ellen didn’t need to hear Leo’s horrified yells to know. “They’re in there! He’s in there! They’re all in there!”
Ellen’s book and mug fell to the floor, the tea spreading over the cover and onto her rug. Terror that she’d never known propelled her to her feet. She didn’t stop to change, or put on a coat, or turn off the TV. The only thought her horrified mind could process was go. Keys, purse, and she was out the door.
