Page 145 of Burn

The alarms go off in the background. “Ladder 10 . . . Engine—”

“Sorry, gotta go.” And then he hangs up before I can say anything else.

IT’S NEARING eight in the evening, and I’m finishing scheduling conflicts and arranging details and catering for a wedding we’re accommodating later this month. Just as I’m closing my laptop, the fire alarms burst on, a strobe light from the detector on my wall swirling through the room.

The sound jolts through me piercing my ears. My hands snap to my ears as I rush toward my office door without my purse or phone. Given our frequent false alarms in the hotel from guests smoking in rooms to burst dinners in the restaurant, I’m fairly calm despite my ears ringing.

Reaching for the door handle, I notice the fainting smells of smoke and freak the fuck out. There’s an actual fire somewhere in the hotel.

My door opens, and I’m met with Nixon. You didn’t think he’d give up that easy, did you?

Yeah, me either.

I’m sure you can imagine, but right about here is where I freak out. “Get out.” I try to keep my voice down, maintain a calm sense of control, but I’m not sure it’s taken that way. “Get out of my office. Right now.”

Taking a towel from his back pocket, he reaches up, wraps it around the sprinkler and then locks the door and pulls out a gun from behind his back. “Nah, I think I’ll stay.”

This can’t be happening. This cannot be happening.

He waves the gun in my direction. “Go ahead, take a seat. I need to talk to you.”

I don’t know if you can sense when you’re about to die. But right now, I’m sure I’m about to. Sure, Nixon is fucking creepy but never did I ever expect a guy like him to hold this kind of power, or be wielding a fucking gun? Who does shit like that?

But he does. He holds power over me, my father, this hotel, but most of all, Caleb.

“I just want to talk.”

“Fuck you,” I manage to say, trying to run past him, but all that gets me is tied to my office chair.

“Now that I have you where I want you, you’re going to do something for me.” Nixon leans forward, his palms flat against my desk. “Are you going to listen to me?”

I shake my head, wishing I had enough saliva in my mouth to spit on him. But I don’t. My mouth is dry and my head’s pounding. “No.”

“You better.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out his cell phone and shows me a message. It’s an e-mail he has in draft form with a video attached to it. “Or I send this to your father and every single department head in this hotel.”

It takes me a moment to understand what he’s saying, what with the fire alarms blaring in the background and my mind scrambling. And then I realize whatthatvideo is. The lap dance I gave Caleb that night.

It’s just like Nixon to think this plan will work. He’s a business man. He gets what he wants, always, except me and now he’s taking that too.

He’s leaning into my desk, hovering toward me with a callous expression on his face, his gun in his left hand against. “Do you know how many times I’ve watched that video?” His eyes find mine. I refuse to meet his stare and instead watch the door and the smoke filtering in through the hallway. “But it’s nothing compared to the images of you, on this very desk with the firefighter. Only it’s the wrong man eating your pussy. It should have beenme.”

Look at him, he believes it too.

The sick motherfucker!

“I’ll neverfuckyou!” I feel a curl of nausea as I spit the words at him, my hands shaking behind my back.

“Okay, well then, you chose. Either you give me what I want, or you lose your job and him.”

Him. He’s talking about Caleb.

“What are you talking about?”

I never imagined Nixon being this crazy. I knew him, or I thought I had. Despite having everything life has to offer and more money than he could possibly spend, he apparently doesn’t have the one thing money can’t buy. Me.

He moves around the desk to stand before me and smiles bitterly, but there’s some amusement to it. Kneeling in front of me, so his face is at my ear, his breath blows over me. His gun presses against my throat as he speaks. “Do you think he can save you now? Do you think he can protect you? He was so sure that night in the bar I’d never touch you, yet here I am, with you, and he has no idea where to find you.”

“Fuck you!” My head throbs with the blaring of the alarms, the words offering no relief. But I scream them because it’s the only thing I can do. “Get out of here!” I try to push against him with my legs, but can’t. He’s so much stronger than I am, and he knows it.

---