“No,” Zaf repeated. “I’m going back in.” Yes, he was paranoid about safety, and no, he didn’t give a fuck. Maybe if everyone was paranoid about safety, his dad and big brother wouldn’t have died in a car accident seven years ago. And if that was a messed-up thought process, oh fucking well. He was a work in progress.
“Back in? Why?”
Zaf pushed through the crowd, ignoring George’s obvious confusion. “Danika Brown,” he called, his voice rising over the chatter and the sound of passing traffic. “Who’s seen her? Pink hair, teaches English lit, about this tall—”
“I know Dani!” chirped a blue-haired girl a few feet away, turning toward him. “I had a seminar with her, last period.”
Relief rolled through his body. “Did she leave with you?”
“Uh, no,” the kid said, twisting the end of her ponytail around her finger. “She stayed behind on her laptop, I think. But I’m sure she’s fine—it’s just a drill, right?”
“Yes.” Zaf nodded calmly. “This is just a drill. What floor?”
“Third. Hey, are you okay? You look—”
“I’m fine,” Zafir said over his shoulder, already running. “Remain calm,” he shouted as he raced back toward the building. He yanked open the power-assisted door so hard it actually smacked into the wall. Fuck. Had he just broken the motor? Never mind. He turned back to the crowd and reminded them, “This is just a drill!”
Then he sprinted in and took the stairs three at a time.
CHAPTER THREE
After what felt like an hour of yanking at the lift doors and making as much noise as possible, Dani was starting to worry just the teeniest, tiniest bit. It had occurred to her, approximately three minutes ago, that if the building had indeed been evacuated due to the presence of dangerous gas, she probably shouldn’t be breathing so deeply to power her yells for assistance. So she’d switched to slamming her hands against the doors while trying not to breathe at all, which seemed less effective but also less likely to speed up her imminent carbon monoxide poisoning. Now she was trying to figure out if she felt light-headed because the poisoning had begun, or because she wasn’t fucking breathing.
It could possibly be both.
When she heard a voice shouting her name on the other side of the doors, she wondered for a moment if she was hallucinating as her body suffocated on ricin. Then she pulled herself together, patted the trio of gemstones hanging beneath her dress, and shouted back, “Hello?” Bang, bang, bang went her hands against the door, her left wrist aching and swollen because she’d wrenched it a little, back when she’d tried to open the lift. “HELLO?”
“Danika!” The voice was closer now, much closer, and almost familiar over the scream of the alarm.
She hesitated. “Zaf?”
No answer. But there was an odd, metallic wail, as if an iron elephant had been struck down, and then a high screech. She leapt back instinctively from the doors, and a second later, a tiny slice of light appeared right down the center. She caught sight of one dark eye and almost collapsed with relief.
“Hang on,” Zaf called through the gap, and then there was another wail and the door opened a little more. She saw his blunt fingertips at the edge of the chrome and realized he was actually succeeding in the endeavor at which she’d so tragically failed.
“You can’t just pull the thing open! You’ll hurt—”
The alarm cut out abruptly, plunging them into silence. Dani clapped her hands over her ringing ears, as if the quiet was attacking them, before blushing at her own silliness and lowering her hands. Zaf, meanwhile, continued the superhuman and technically impossible—shouldn’t it be impossible?—feat of forcing open the lift. Unfortunately for him, these doors were the least of their issues. Dani had been trapped long enough that her death by poisonous gas was assured, and Zaf had likely doomed himself to the same fate by rescuing her. For some reason, she was intensely upset by that, and also felt a little bit like swooning.
Must be the formaldehyde inhalation.
Zaf gave one final heave, and the doors opened. She had an instant to register the sight of him: tall and broad and heavily built, his usual resting bitch face veering into furious territory, his warm, brown eyes gentle enough to negate the effect. For some reason, the contrast—the hard precision of his features versus that soft, liquid gaze—made her shiver. The light shone behind