More Than Forever (Providence Series Book 2) (30 page)

I sat grinning as I looked down at the floor plans for it in front of me and then remembered that I hadn’t opened the box from the supplier. Normally, these were lights for our special desks or stationary, so although it wasn’t urgent, it was another thing that I could give to Leanne if it wasn’t needed while I worked from home. I  

stood up to pick up the medium sized boxed and looked at the label from the supplier on the front; something didn’t look right. Leaning closer, I noticed that there was no return address on it and that the company was spelt wrong. 

Standing back from it, I picked up my cell to call Baz. 

“Yo!” 

“Baz man, there was a box on my desk that says it’s from a supplier but it’s all wrong. No return address, the company is spelt wrong, and I’ve just noticed there’s no postage on it.” My heart started racing as I looked up the stairs where Isla would still be fast asleep.  

“Don’t touch it Luke,” Baz warned, sounding pissed off and worried at the same time. “I’m twenty minutes away so I’ll deal with it when I get to you.” 

“I can’t,” I choked out. “Isla’s asleep and I can’t take the risk of this hurting her.” 

“
Fuck
! Right, let me call Graham and get him to get it out the house. Do
not
touch it Luke, wait for him to get to you.” 

Hanging up, I stood back and stared at the box scared shitless that something was going to happen. I couldn’t give a fuck about myself, it was something happening to Isla that was making it hard to breathe.  I was just about to pick it up when the door slammed open and Graham and five other guys burst into the house. 

“Step back, Luke,” Graham said walking up to it. “Right, I want you to make sure that the path to the west field is clear of civilians,” he said pointing to what I assumed was two of Coleman’s plain clothed guys who I’d seen working around the ranch. “You - call Cleary and tell him we need the bomb squad dispatched. Mitchell and me will take the box to the field. Luke…” he turned to me and I saw sweat forming on his forehead and upper lip; fuck if he was nervous then we were all fucked. “Call Coleman and update him. He arrived in Dallas with Brett last night so he needs to be updated and I don’t know if Baz has done that yet.” I picked up my cell as he turned back to the box and roared, “
FUCK
, how the fuck did they get in here? After this, we need to do some cleaning because some motherfucker had to have helped them.” 

This hadn’t occurred to me, and now that he’d said it, all I could think about was being fast asleep upstairs with Isla, trusting that we were being kept safe from these fucking psychos, and that someone had come into the house right under our noses to leave whatever this was on my desk.  

Pressing Coleman’s name in my contacts, I waited for him to answer as I watched 

Graham and the guy he’d called Mitchell carefully, and so damn slowly, pick up the box and turn towards the door. Shooting another look up the stairs to make sure that Isla wasn’t coming down them, I turned around and followed them out. 

“Yeah?” Coleman answered. 

“We have a big fucking problem,” I said before I filled him in on what was going on. His reaction was the same as Baz and Graham’s. 

“Fuck me, right under our fucking noses!
Motherfucker!
” I heard Brett asking him what was going on in the background and continued to follow behind Graham as I listened to him fill Brett in. 

“Luke, man, what the fuck?” Brett said down the phone. 

“I don’t know, man; I mean, Jesus fucking
Christ
. I was asleep with Isla and someone fucking walked in, left it, and walked back out again without me fucking knowing about it!” 

“Coleman says it has to be an inside job and he’s calling his guys to go and check that no one else has anything waiting for them. Keep me updated, yeah?” 

“Yeah, stay safe!” 

“You, too,” he said before disconnecting. We’d reached the field and Graham and Mitchell were slowly walking across it to get it as far away from the houses and where there were people working as possible. 

We’d just reached half way across the field when one of the guys grabbed my arm. “Don’t go any further. We’re dropping it off over there.” He pointed to about fifty meters in front of us. 

I watched as Graham reached the area and placed the box down before he and Mitchell jogged back towards us. They’d almost reached us when there was an explosion behind them that shook the ground under us so much that I almost fell.  

Looking up, I could see a plume of black smoke going up into the sky above where the box had been, as tiny pieces of burning paper floated around the air. 

Around me, I could hear the guys swearing and yelling, but all I could think was if I had left that box any longer it could have gone off in the house.
Fuck me
! 

“Luke,” I heard Baz yelling as he ran across the field to us. “What the fuck happened?” He roared. 

Graham walked up behind us, wiping grass and dirt off himself from where he’d dropped to the floor when it went off.  

“We removed the box from the property and had just put it here as far away as we knew would do no damage to the properties or civilians and it exploded. This wasn’t like the other ones though, Baz,” he said grimly. 

“How so?” 

“If you’re going to create as high tech an explosive as the previous ones and hide it in a box, you would make sure that there were no errors in the packaging. Luke confirmed it, and Mitchell and me saw it - the company was spelt wrong and there was no postage. It was definitely dropped off, so we also need to look at doing some cleaning.” He looked and sounded disgusted as he said the last bit. 

I heard Isla screaming my name and turned around to see her being held back by a couple of Coleman’s guys, who were trying to calm her down, and left Graham and Baz to discuss what was going to happen. I was still in shock that there had been a bomb in our house. I could feel tears building up, seeing Isla crying and still screaming my name, knowing that we’d come so close to losing each other and the babies. Running up to her, I lifted her off the ground and just held her to me with my face in her neck, aware that I was shaking all over. 

“What happened?” she sobbed. 

Baz walked up with Graham at that point and I heard the sound of vehicles driving across the field towards us.  

“Bomb Squad is here!” Baz said, sounding pissed off and almost inconvenienced.  

Looking over at him, I saw that he was glaring at them, and I realized that this was actually inconvenient because it meant that they would probably take away any evidence that they found before we could examine it. Looking over I saw the flashing lights of Fire and Rescue, the police, and ambulances with a black boxy looking vehicle that I assumed belonged to the Bomb Squad. 

Reluctantly, I put Isla gently back on the ground and held her to me as we watched them pull up around us. I asked the question I’d asked myself for the millionth time since all of this had started to happen - what the fuck had we ever done to deserve this and who the fuck was doing it? 

B
rett
 

Hanging up the phone
to Luke, I turned around to a pissed off looking Coleman. 

“What the ever loving fuck, man?” 

“I dunno, Brett,” he said, tearing his hand through his hair and looking out the window at the walls and gates that surrounded my home here. “This really fuckin isn’t good, one of ours had to have let them in or helped, and what really fucks me off is that we don’t know who.” 

I was just about to reply when his phone rang again, and I listened as it was confirmed that no other packages had been found in the houses or the area around them. They were going to check further away in the surrounding fields and forests just to be safe. My family was safe, that’s all that matters. 

I finished my coffee and put the cup on the table, shrugged on my suit jacket and then gathered up all of the files and paperwork that I was going to need for the day. Another effect that all of this bullshit was having was that I was spending long periods of time away from the office. And although I brought the work with me or my secretary emailed it all to me in Piersville, I was missing big meetings, so I had a conference in two hours with my department managers and my cousin Noah, who was my Vice President, to get filled in on what I’d missed. Before then, though, I had to sort through the paperwork that hadn’t been marked as urgent while I was away, but that still needed sorted through and I also wanted to see…no I didn’t. I wasn’t going to allow myself to go there. Women couldn’t be trusted because they were all out for themselves and for what they could get. 

Coleman hung up and filled me in on what had happened as we walked out the house to the waiting SUV. I was fucking pissed that it had been a bomb; it could have killed Luke and Isla. And what if someone had come in and decided to move it or it had been knocked off the desk by accident?  

Discussing the situation, I didn’t realize we were at my building until we stopped at the lights waiting to pull across the road that it sat on the opposite of. I took a second to take in the sight of it and as always felt the pride I got every time that my family had created this. Just as we went to pull forward, there was an explosion in the top of the building where my office was, and I watched as a ball of fire came out the glass walls, showering the road and cars below with glass and burning debris. 

“Stay in the vehicle,” Coleman barked as he jumped out of the car and started running across the road, dodging falling debris. 

No fucking way
! Running toward the building, doing the same as Coleman had dodging burning papers and shit that was falling everywhere, I got to the doors just as people came pouring out of the stairwells and ran towards the glass doors of the building. I wove my way through them and got to the lobby just as I saw Coleman go through the stairwell doors. At that moment, a higher volume of people came rushing out, some of them covered in dust and covering their mouths and noses as they coughed. I was waiting for my cousin and for the other person that I’d told myself repeatedly that I had no interest in, though. 

I’d just said fuck it and was about to run toward the door when it opened and Noah came out covered in grey soot and coughing hard.  

“Noah,” I yelled over the noise of people screaming and crying and ran over to him. “Are you okay?” I checked him over and only saw a couple of cuts where he must have been hit by things caught in the force of the blast. 

“What the fuck, Brett,” he croaked before he started coughing again.  

“What happened?” I kept my eyes on the door begging for her to come running through them. 

“I’d just sat behind my desk and was waiting for Amelia to come to my office and the next thing I knew there was a roaring sound and then everything just exploded. I tried to check the floor to make sure that there was no one else left on it, but the smoke is so dark and thick that you can’t see jack shit up there.” I heard the sound of men yelling directions and turned around as firemen came running through the door and started towards the door that I’d reluctantly taken my eyes off of. 

Ambulances were pulling up on the other side of the road and the police were already setting up a cordon on the road so that only the emergency services could get through. It looked like a war zone outside, with debris from the office all over the road. Some of it had landed on cars that were driving by, and I could see people staggering across the road toward them, some with blood pouring from their heads or from other various injuries. Burning papers continued to fall, and the staff members that had already made it out were being led away from it all to the fire evacuation point designated by our Health and Safety department.  

Noah was wheezing, so I yelled for help and saw a member of Fire and Rescue running from the latest truck to pull up carrying a medical bag.  

Then it hit me what he’d said and I spun back round to face Noah. “Did you say Amelia was on her way to your office?” 

“Yeah,” he wheezed. “We had a meeting.” 

Fuck me, she was up there! 

I was running toward the door when it opened and I saw a fireman carrying her out with her head hanging limply over his arm. 

“Get a medic!” He yelled moving past me toward the door while I stood staring at her soot covered face. She had to be okay, she
had
to be. 

I walked over to Coleman, who stood staring grimly at the mess around us as he watched the firemen put the fires out on the street as smoke billowed out of the building. There were the sounds of hysteria all around us, but I couldn’t stop staring at the ambulance where they’d taken Amelia, she’d been so limp and there was soot all over her. Was she even still alive? 

“Sir?” A voice said beside us and we turned to look at the member of Coleman’s team called Ross who was standing there looking pissed off. “How the fuck did this happen?” 

“Get me the security footage and make a copy for the police. I want to speak to security as soon as fuckin’ possible, so find them. And I want you to go and get me anyone who was on that floor when this happened. Monitor what the police know and are being told and report back,” Coleman growled. “Oh and Ross, have two men follow Miss Logan’s ambulance, too, and report back on her condition,” he finished, turning to make eye contact with me, which didn’t surprise me, this guy knew everything about my life.