Money to Burn

69

IT MAY HAVE BEEN A DIRECT HIT, OR PERHAPS MY SHOT RICOCHETED off the floor, skipped up, and punctured the fuel can. Regardless, the explosion threw me out the door and at least another ten yards toward the helipad, which was a good thing. The hangar was engulfed in flames.

And then I blacked out-but only for a moment. When my eyes blinked open, I was looking up at Ivy. Olivia was beside her.

“Michael, can you hear me?” Ivy asked.

It was a feeling I’d never had before-knowing my name only because she was calling me “Michael.”

“Yeah, I can hear you,” I said. I tried to sit up, but Olivia gently pushed me back onto the pavement.

“Be still,” said Ivy. The expression on her face was somewhere between fright and concern; her tone was beyond urgent. “Do you have pain anywhere besides your leg?”

Olivia’s coat was tied around my thigh to stop the bleeding, and before the question, the pain had oddly gone away. But suddenly my leg was throbbing again.

“Just in the hamstrings,” I said.

There was another explosion from inside the hangar, and I felt the blast of heat on my face. Fortunately, we were far enough away to be out of danger. Sirens sounded from somewhere down the road. Olivia jumped up and darted off into the darkness. I could no longer see her, but I heard her shouting for help.

“Over here!”

“You’re going to be okay,” said Ivy.

“This way!” someone else shouted.

A moment later I was looking up at another woman. It gave me a moment of confusion-What the hell is Mallory’s friend doing here?-but then my thoughts cleared, and I remembered that she was an FBI agent. She had paramedics with her, and right behind them was the FBI SWAT unit dressed in full tactical armor. A fire truck rumbled right past us and the firefighters jumped off and went immediately into action. The SWAT guy cut Ivy’s hands free from the plastic cuffs with a serrated knife. As the paramedics checked me out and lifted me up onto the gurney, I heard Andie screaming at two men, one from FBI SWAT and the other wearing a black flak jacket that said SHERIFF in white letters. Both men were shouting back at her. As best I could tell, the plan had been for SWAT to hold its fire until negotiations failed, but there had been a miscommunication. It was hard for me to comprehend a blunder like that, but it would soon mesh perfectly with everything I would read about law enforcement activities directed toward Wall Street.

The paramedics lifted me into the ambulance, and Ivy started to climb inside with me.

“Sorry, miss,” said the paramedic. “You can’t ride in here.”

“You can’t stop me,” she said.

He grabbed her arm. “Who are you?”

“I’m his wife,” she said.

“And I’m her husband,” I said, just feeling a need to say it.

The paramedic was too rushed to argue.

“Hurry up then,” he said.

Ivy climbed inside, and it felt good as she took my hand and laced her fingers with mine. Through the open ambulance doors, we glanced back at the firefighters battling the inferno, knowing that there was no way McVee had survived. Ivy’s reason to run was no more.

The ambulance doors closed, and I looked up at her face. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead.

“You feeling okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yup,” I said, feeling a little foggy again, another one of those memory flashes to Papa coming on. “Just another beautiful day in paradise.”