On a count of three, with the muscles on their arms bulging from the staggering weight, they heaved the heavy piece of tree trunk at the wall. She waited until that exact minute and hit the buckling wood with a blast of water.
At first nothing happened. She held her breath and kept shooting the water. Then the crashing started. With a series of booms and thuds, a beam buckled. The roof side closest to them caved in and took a chunk of the wall tumbling down with it.
One minute she saw peeks of fire through the wall. The next it flared right in front of her. Scorching heat licked at her and then her back hit the ground.
The breath knocked out of her and the world went dark for a second. When she opened her eyes again, Joel’s body pushed her into the mud as fire flashed over their heads.
Men yelled all around her. Over Joel’s shoulder she saw Cam grab the abandoned hose and Charlie and Lance heave what looked like some sort of white powder at the fire. The joint hit had the flames lowering by a few feet.
She knew they weren’t safe and the whole thing could explode. She searched her memory for anything incendiary inside the cabin and couldn’t think of a thing.
Without another word, Joel helped her off the ground. In a line, working together, they all kept at the flames and doused any fires caused by sparks before they could burst into a new disaster.
No one mentioned how it could have started or pointed fingers. They were too busy trying not to be consumed by it.
* * *
TONY COULD FEEL the clock ticking as if it had been wound and placed in his brain. Connor had thrown his weight around and gotten Rafe all riled and demanding action. Now search parties had been set up. On Connor’s orders, they were planning a hike to the campsite, rain or shine. Connor threatened to take a helicopter in even if it was raining.
Control had shifted and Tony no longer held the reins. After all the plotting, all those tedious hours of setting this up just right, one stupid woman had brought it all down. She didn’t play the role he’d assigned her. Add in Connor and his group and it all fell apart.
Tony had planned this from the beginning. Step in, turn Baxter around and become its savior. When the sales numbers had come back soft, he’d waited. Then he’d seen preliminaries for a second quarter worse than the first and panicked.
He knew the work was there for Baxter. Piles of money just waited to flow his way, but he had to get the division in line with expectations. He had to dig more, push his staff harder. He needed time and bought it.
Then people got nosy and he had to regroup. The retreat had been the perfect way to settle things down. An accident and the game could reset.
Instead, Tony shoved pages into the shredder at four in the morning. His wife had called twice. She spent most of their weeknight dinners complaining about his long work hours.
Never mind that he worked around the clock for her. For the things he could give her and buy for her. That he had won her with his checkbook and the big house.
His trophy wife was slowly turning into a regular annoying one. He wanted pretty and obedient and understanding. A woman to wear on his arm and show off at the club. A blonde he’d enjoy in bed. One who would cause envious glares from his business associates. He’d had that for less than a year, and now he had the whining.
The shredder buzzed and the paper pulp dropped in the can underneath. He had a batch here and more at home. With his problem gone and the evidence erased, he could put the system back together again. The board might back off in deference to whatever was happening at the campground.
Tony could get his needed time, but it all depended on Connor not sticking his nose where it didn’t belong. Making pages disappear and fudging numbers was one thing. Taking out a guy with a background in special ops was another.
No, Tony had to pull the plug. Shift the blame to another member of the executive staff. Plant the seed and focus the guilt elsewhere.
The idea came to Tony. If Mark was missing, maybe there was a reason he’d walked away, disappeared. Guilt. He’d played with the books to improve the look of his performance. He caused it all, did it all.
The more the idea spun in Tony’s brain, the more he liked it. Turn Mark into the guilty party and then sit back and act surprised.
Tony pressed the button and stared at the stack of documents left in the file. He needed to spend his time recreating paperwork and making the trail. It would lead right back to his trusted vice president.
That meant Tony had to hold on to the money he’d syphoned off. Keep it hidden for now. Take everything underground until Connor and his team crawled back out of Baxter’s business. The sooner that happened, the better.
Chapter Eleven
Hope had no idea how long they worked. Spraying the water, smothering the shorter bursts with blankets. They ran through all fire retardant Charlie had, but not before the flames had receded to a manageable level. It could have been an hour or minutes, but finally Cam waved them all back and went in with the hose to extinguish the last of the fire.