Chapter 14 - The Spark in the Dark
The explosion shook the foundation at ten minutes past midnight.
It wasn't dynamite; it was an incendiary device thrown through the temporary plywood barrier covering the theater's southern fire exit on LaSalle Street.
The concussion wave blew down the corridor, rattling the drafting table and sending showers of soot across the newly laid oak subflooring.
Alarm bells shrieked, their mechanical clatter bouncing wildly off the auditorium’s plaster domes.
"Fire on the mezzanine!" Marcus roared, charging up the utility stairs with an industrial chemical extinguisher tucked beneath his arm.
I followed him through the suffocating gray smoke that was already curling through the aisles.
The heavy velvet curtains left hanging on the backstage rigging had caught the flame, sending towering ribbons of orange fire curling up toward the ceiling murals my father had spent months designing.
I grabbed a high-pressure canvas hose from the standpipe, twisted the brass valve with all the strength in my arms, and braced my heels against the floor as thirty gallons of pressurized municipal water slammed through the nozzle.
The water hissed violently against the flames, boiling into toxic clouds of steam that burned our eyes and coated our throats with acrid soot.
Through the blinding veil of smoke near the fire escape doors, I caught the outline of a man.
He didn't wear construction gear.
He wore a long dark wool coat, his collar turned up against the freezing draft, standing motionless amid the wreckage like an apparition.
"Ethan!" I choked out, coughing through the sleeve of my jacket.
The figure stepped through the dripping water, his boots crunching over shattered glass.
It wasn't Roman.
It was Ethan Carter, his face pale, his jaw set in a hard, violent line, a semiautomatic pistol gripped down against his right thigh.
"Get out of the building, Claire," he ordered, his voice cutting through the wail of the alarms. "Now."
"You told me you were done!" I shouted back, refusing to drop the hose, my chest heaving with rage and smoke. "You promised me on my father’s memory that you were leaving this theater alone!"
"I didn't order this fire!" Ethan snapped, closing the distance between us until I could see the fresh cut over his cheekbone and the bruised shadow under his left eye. "Roman brought in three crews from Detroit. They aren't looking to intimidate you anymore. They know the Grand Jury is unsealing the indictments tomorrow morning, and the ledgers inside that bedrock vault are the only things that can send Roman to a federal penitentiary for the rest of his life."
"My father built that vault for your family!" I cried out, the water stream dying down as Marcus cut the secondary line. "He was one of you!"
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Ethan’s eyes softened with a look of profound, devastating sorrow.
"Julian wasn't one of us, Claire," he whispered, stepping into the mist of the settling water. "Julian tried to steal the ledgers to buy your freedom before you ever married me. That’s why my family ran him off the road."
