Endless (31 page)

“Wait.” Nikolai touched her arm. “Maybe we should get the police.”

“Do you know what happens when you get the police?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “They take a report, even if everything’s okay. They take down your name and address. Ask you questions. Should you be answering questions about who you are and where you come from right now?”

Nikolai shook his head reluctantly.

Ben didn’t wait. He opened the door and stepped into the dark interior. Jenny followed with Nikolai at her side. Books wasn’t very big, and neither was the room in the back.

“Mom?” Ben called. His voice rang through the storeroom, bouncing off the boxes that lurked in stacks on either side of them. “Are you in here, Mom?”

Jenny and Nikolai stayed close as Ben headed for the doorway to the storefront. When they came close to it, Jenny caught a whiff of vanilla. This time it wasn’t comforting. This time, it only seemed to cover the scent of something unfamiliar and menacing.

Ben stepped out of the back room and into the store. “Mom?” Then, his voice low and hard, “
You
? What are
you
doing here?”

Nikolai put a hand on Jenny’s arm to stop her, but it was too late. She’d already stepped forward. Already seen the tall man with steely eyes standing over Clare.

“Well, well,” the man said with a cold smile. “Look who’s here.”

Ben stood stock-still, staring at his mother. Clare Daulton sat in a chair next to one of the reading tables at the back of the store. Her face was calm, but there was a wild kind of fright in her eyes.

Ben turned to the hulking man. “I asked you what you’re doing here.”

“Oh,
you
asked
me
a question,” the man mocked, laughing. “Well, I guess I better answer then, right,
son
?”

Ben’s nod was slow. “I think you better.”

“I came to see my
family
,” his dad said, pacing the floor near the chair where Clare sat. “Except it seems my family isn’t very happy to see me. Can you believe that?”

He stopped near an empty chair and bent to pick something up. Jenny’s breath caught in her throat when she saw that it was a crowbar. Nikolai stepped in front of her. There was something instinctual about it. Like he didn’t even have to think about it. Like he didn’t have a choice but to stand between Jenny and any possible harm.

Ben froze as his dad walked back and forth in front of Clare, holding the crowbar in one hand, tapping it into the palm of the other. Clare’s eyes slid over to Ben. Jenny could see the worry in them, the plea for Ben to leave.

Jenny knew he wouldn’t.

“We don’t want to see you.” Ben’s voice was so calm it surprised Jenny. “Not now. Not ever.”

“Well, it’s a funny thing about that, Benjamin.” Jenny saw some of Ben in the flash of his father’s eyes, but where Ben’s were as warm as a tropical sea, his father’s were ice-cold. “Regardless of what you’d prefer, we’re family. And family sticks together. I can forgive you and your mother for not coming to see me while I was … away. But now that I’m back, it’s time for us to make a new start.”

“We’re already making a new start,” Ben said coldly, stepping forward. “One that doesn’t include you.”

Jenny had to stop herself from pulling him back. Ben needed to do this. She had to let him.

Ben’s dad took a step closer to his son. They stood eye to eye, almost the exact same height.

“It’s not going to be that simple, son. In fact, it’ll be a whole lot simpler if you and your mom just come with me quietly.” His eyes cut to Jenny. “That way your new friend here doesn’t need to get hurt.”

Nikolai stepped forward, fury in his eyes, his voice almost a growl. “You wouldn’t get any closer than where you are right now.”

Ben’s dad smirked. “Now I see where the tough-guy act is coming from. I always pegged Ben for a coward, but I guess he’s got a new role model.”

Jenny barely had time to register the flash of shame on Ben’s face before he lunged at his father.

“Ben, don’t!” his mom shrieked. Jenny didn’t move.

But it was too late. Ben hit his dad full force, knocking him backward until they hit one of the low bookshelves that separated the rest of the store from the reading area. Books flew onto the floor, Ben and his dad crashing on top of them.

Nikolai pushed Jenny back against the wall and moved forward, trying to pull Ben off his father. Clare stood, circling them and crying until Jenny grabbed her hand and pulled her back against the wall.

“Shhhh, it’ll be okay,” Jenny intoned, trying to calm her down. “It’ll be okay.”

Nikolai pulled Ben off his dad, but before they were all the way up, Ben’s dad grabbed the crowbar lying near his body. He took a swipe at Ben, hitting him in the left knee. Ben’s leg buckled underneath him, sending him crashing to the floor with a grunt of pain. His dad circled him, still holding the crowbar, a twisted smile on his face.

Nikolai took a step toward them, then stopped. He looked around, obviously confused.

At first, Jenny didn’t understand, but then she smelled the smoke, too.

She followed the scent of it to the curtains separating the storeroom from the rest of the store. They were on fire, flames traveling up the length of them, eating through the fabric like a hungry beast until they licked the ceiling. Jenny’s eyes dropped to the candles rolling around on the floor. There had been more than books on the shelf Ben and his dad had cleared on their way to the ground.

She turned back to Nikolai, shouting over the growing noise of the fire. “We have to get out of here!”

The fire was spreading, reaching its fingers to the pages of the books that lined the shelves near the storeroom. In seconds, it was a full-fledged blaze, as loud as a hurricane inside the store.

Nikolai grabbed her. “Take Clare. Get out now. Out the front. I’ll get Ben!”

Clare seemed to be in shock, staring at the wall of fire in horror. Jenny pulled on the older woman’s hand but she was like a dead weight.

“Clare, we have to leave.”

“Ben?”

“Nikolai will get him. You and I have to go.”

While she tried to convince Clare to come with her, Jenny watched Nikolai bend to help Ben up from the floor. Ben’s dad stood between them and the front of the store, the crowbar still in his hand. On his face was a look of utter calm. Something crackled over Jenny’s head. She glanced upward, shocked to see that the fire was roiling across the ceiling, bubbling the paint as it washed like a wave in all directions.

“We’re all going to die if you don’t move.” Nikolai’s voice was surprisingly even.

“You’re not taking my family,” Ben’s dad said.

There was a moment of stillness interrupted only by the popping and crackling of the fire moving through the store, the beams inside the walls creaking and growling under the heat of the blaze.

Then, Ben lunged forward. “We’re not your family anymore.”

Ben’s dad didn’t see it coming. By the time he brought his arm up to swing the crowbar, it was too late. Ben had plowed into him, knocking him off his feet. They both went down amid the smoke that was winding its way across the floor like ghostly snakes.

Everything seemed to slow down and move too quickly all at once. Ben and his dad rolled around, both of them throwing punches. Nikolai jumped into the fray again, trying to separate the two men.

Even as he struggled to get to Ben, Nikolai found Jenny’s eyes. “Get Clare and get out of here!” he shouted, coughing on the smoke.

Jenny shook her head. She wasn’t leaving Nikolai or Ben, and she doubted Clare would leave her son.

Ben extricated himself from his father.

And now he had the crowbar.

He stood, wielding it over his dad, who stared up at him defiantly. “Nikolai, get my mother and Jenny out of here.”

“Finally going to be a man?” Ben’s dad sneered, blood trickling from the side of his mouth.

“I should have been a man a long time ago,” Ben said.

The smoke was getting thick. It was hard for Jenny to make out details of the scene playing out in front of her, but she saw Ben raise the crowbar higher like he was trying to get as much momentum behind it as possible before bringing it down on his father, still on the floor.

“Ben, don’t!” Jenny shouted, suddenly wracked with coughs.

“I have to, Jenny.” He kept his eyes on his father. “That’s the whole point of it all, remember? I have to get it right this time.”

“Right doesn’t mean somebody has to die!” she shouted. “It just means standing up, fighting, and you’ve done that, Ben.” She lost her words for a minute in a fit of coughing. “Now let’s get out of here before we all die.”

He hesitated, his eyes drifting to hers before he looked down at his mother, crouched on the floor and nearly passed out.

“Please, Ben!” Jenny pleaded. “We need to get your mom out of here.”

He lowered the crowbar a fraction of an inch, his shoulders sagging. He glanced at Nikolai.

“Get them out!” he shouted. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Nikolai nodded, helping Clare up from the floor before taking Jenny’s hand. They edged carefully past Ben and his dad.

Jenny stopped when they were a few feet away. “Come on, Ben. It’s time to go.”

He was turning to join them when the building groaned, shifting violently all around them. They froze, looking upward toward the sound.

“Ben!” she yelled. “Watch out!”

The building seemed to shudder just before a wood beam dropped out of the blazing ceiling. It fell with a crash, knocking Ben’s dad off his feet. Jenny looked away as plaster and debris rained down. When she turned back, it took her a minute to find him, pinned underneath the massive wooden post.

“Ben?” Jenny couldn’t stop coughing. “Come on, Ben! We have to get out of here.”

But Ben was already moving toward his dad. Already raising the crowbar. Jenny winced, but a second later, Ben bent over his father and used the crowbar to try and pry the wooden beam off his father’s body.

They were both coughing now. Jenny’s throat was on fire, her eyes burning, as she peered through the flames. Ben was working on getting his father free as if there weren’t an inferno raging around them, ready to swallow them whole any second.

Nikolai tugged on Jenny’s hand. “What are you doing? You have to get out of here!”

“I’m not leaving without Ben!” she screamed.

Nikolai shook his head. “Well, I’m not leaving without you.”

Jenny turned back to Ben. “We have to go! Now!”

Nikolai pulled harder on her arm, half dragging her out of the building.

“No!” She fought against Nikolai’s strength. “Stop it! We’re not leaving Ben!”

“Ben can stay if he wants!” Nikolai shouted. “You’re coming with me.”

Jenny rushed forward and grabbed Ben’s arm. “Please, Ben! Your mom needs you.”

But Ben still wouldn’t go. He yanked his arm out of Jenny’s grasp, leaning over his dad and wedging the crowbar underneath the beam, giving it one more ferocious pump. It took a second to move, but then the beam shifted, falling to the left of his dad’s body.

Now, the building was in flames, top to bottom. The walls and ceiling creaked and moaned, the flames surrounding them on all sides with only a small, perilous path to the front door.

Silently, Ben helped his dad to his feet.

“Let’s get out of here!” Nikolai shouted. He grabbed Jenny and sprinted for the door.

Jenny turned to find Ben a few feet behind her, holding his father up, helping him out. Obviously injured, his dad was moving slow.

Too slow.

Then Nikolai had ahold of her arm, and this time he wasn’t letting go. He half carried her to the front of the store, the smoke so thick she couldn’t see anything but dim shapes all around her.

They crossed the threshold, the cool night air hitting Jenny like a wave of cold water. Sirens broke through the night, flashing lights painting Main Street with red circles as they emerged from the building. When they were safely away from the building, Jenny turned to make sure Ben was with them. She was relieved to see that he was almost at the door.

Until he froze, looking upward.

At first, Jenny didn’t understand, but a second later, she heard it, too. The building groaned, shifting. She had a second to realize that Ben wasn’t going to make it out. That he was going to be buried under the rubble of the building that was, at this very second, collapsing around him.

Then as Jenny watched, Ben’s dad gave his son a violent push, shoving him out the door.

Ben fell forward just as the blazing building came down with a deafening crash. Plaster, burning wood, and debris rained down.

Jenny and Nikolai ran to him, helping him up and pulling him forward. He turned and stared into the raging inferno, his eyes locked on the space where his father had last been.

Jenny’s legs gave out and Nikolai lifted her easily into his arms, carrying her toward the firefighters rushing to meet them. They tried to pull her away from him, but she wouldn’t let go.

She glanced toward Ben, standing in the circle of his mother’s embrace.

Then, she burrowed into Nikolai’s shoulder and held tight.