Truth and Humility (35 page)

“Sorry, Danny,” he mumbled, feeling awkward after having made such an uncharacteristic mistake.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied, brushing glass from his shoulders.  “Someone down there is trying to get your attention.”

Just as he said it, an ear-splitting whistle re-captured her attention. tenatte She squinted, pushed her hardhat up a notch to get a better look.  “Mac?” she verbalized in confusion.  The visual confirmation of the vehicle he’d driven made her swear.  The Cahill logo on the driver’s side door was unmistakable.  Just then the passenger door opened and Sue stepped out onto the dirt.

“What do you want?” Danny yelled from her position four – no five – stories above.

“I need to talk to you!” Mac yelled back, his wide face turned up toward the sun.

“I’m working!”

“It’s an emergency!”

It would have to be in order for the Cahill loyalists to seek her out, Danny thought with distaste.  The people whom she thought were her friends wanted nothing to do with her as long as her services weren’t needed.  On her way down the pole she wondered what mishap had happened in the salvage yard this time.  Another piece of equipment drive over the embankment?  Someone’s lottery ticket get stuck in a tree?  Like she didn’t have better things to do.

“Who are they?” Shaw asked as she untied the rope.

“Cahill’s crew,” she informed sourly and began her descent down the ladder.

“I’ll come with you.”

She didn’t object.  When her feet hit the ground, Mac and Sue were right beside her. 

“There’s been an accident at the Minerva plant,” Mac said, worry distorting his features.

“Just tell me why you’re here, Mac,” she sniped bitchily.

“We were dismantling a blender and it broke apart from its moorings.  Now it’s just dangling there and we have a man trapped inside.  Nobody can get to him, Danny, but maybe you can.”

The panic on Mac and Sue’s faces was clear and it rattled her slightly.  But she stood her ground.  “I don’t work for Cahill anymore.”

Sue piped in to emphasize the urge in urgency.  “We’re running out of time before that thing breaks loose, Danny, please!  There’s a man inside and we know he’s conscious, but barely.  We need to get him out.  There’s no telling how badly he’s injured.”

“Did you call the fire department,” Shaw asked from behind Danny.

Sue and Mac both looked him over distastefully.  Mac said, “Of course we did, but they won’t get near it until we stabilize the blender first and we can’t do it to their standards without wasting valuable time.”

“Then they won’t let me get near it, either,” Danny deduced with a noncommittal shrug.  “They have rules about that kind of thing.”

Panic lent a strangled vibrato to Mac’s voice.  “Not if you make it inside the blender without them knowing.”

Her brows drew down in anger.  “I’m not getting within a mile of any Cahill jobsite, Mac.  I’ve been warned, remember?  Austin will just have to handle this one without me.”

“Danny…” Sue reached out, grasped her shoulder before she could walk away.  “The man who’s trapped…it
is
Austin.”

Several more of her crew members were walking toward the small group having finished loading the flatbed trailer with scrap metal.  Danny didn’t notice.  Shock waves spread through her body at the thought of Austin being injured or possibly killed.  But her heart still warred with her brain.  She shouldn’t care.  She should send them away, let the fire department handle it.  Her father would kill her because if she went with Mac and Sue, he would inevitably find out about her relationship with Cahill Salvage…and the man behind it.

“Danny,
please!”

“SHIT!”
she screamed, stomping her boot into the dirt and creating a small dust storm in the process.  The tantrum did much to sort her priorities.  “Shaw, send everyone home.  I’m going with them.”

“But Danny…”

“Just do it!”  She was mad enough, in no mood to deal with the kid’s protective nature.

Shaw removed his hardhat when she did and refused to budge.  “If you’re going, I’m going.  Derek would kill me if he found out about this from someone else.”

“Fine,” she snapped.  “I might need you.  In fact you can call Derek, have him meet us there, too.”

Mac gave the kid his measure and opened the passenger door for Danny.  “We don’t need them, Danny.  Just you.”

Danny worked to get her tool belt off while scooting to the middle of the bench seat.  “If I’m going to risk my life for him, I need people around me that I trust,” she grumbled, consternation gnawing at her insides.

Both doors slammed shut and suddenly Danny was sandwiched between two much larger people.  Mac started the engine, threw the truck in reverse.  “Danny, you can trust us as much as you did before.”

Danny continued to stare straight ahead as the truck bounced out of the parking lot into the road.  “Would you put your trust in people who turned their back on you?” she asked quietly.

Sue winced and Mac ran a hand over his mustache.  When she put it out there like that...

While Mac drove, Sue unrolled the plans for the blender and went down the list of specs for Danny to look over.  Two levels of blades, eight blades altogether.  No one knew how many Austin had cut apart before the blender broke away, or how violently the sway had moved those loose pieces around pielevhim.  The only thing they were sure of was that he was still inside the blender, he was conscious at one point, and he was no longer responding.

As they approached the plant, Danny stilled her trembling hands.  Her body was awash with feelings, emotions she would have to get under control if she were to do this without getting herself hurt in the process.

Mac turned into the enormous parking lot and wrapped an arm around her shoulders.  “It’ll be okay, Monkey,” he soothed, his confidence in her unwavering.  When she didn’t answer, he peered down at her face, gave her shoulder a firm squeeze.  “I really missed you, you know that?”

Danny sniffed, remained tensed under his arm.  Finally, she admitted, “I missed you too, you big jerk,” then for a brief moment, laid her head on his shoulder.

Sue began to tear up.

Derek’s Challenger was parked in plain sight, off to the side of the flashing fire trucks and emergency vehicles.  He preferred his own ride to the Bennett trucks, just as she did.  His post-work visits to Melanie’s house were becoming a regular routine.

He met her as she exited the truck.  “You sure you want to do this, Danny?” he said before she could open her mouth.

“She wants to,” Mac answered for her and met the younger man’s glare with one of his own.  “You just wanna leave him in there to die, Bennett?  Would that make you happy?”

Derek answered without pause.  “No.  I was going to volunteer myself, asshole.”

“Jeez, you guys, like I’m not under enough pressure as it is!”  Danny shrugged out of her brother’s hold.  “I’m lighter than you, Derek.  I’ll be the one going in and you and Shaw can communicate with me from the outside.”

Derek nodded at something behind her.  “Looks like your whole crew is in on this one, baby sister.”

Danny, Mac and Sue all followed his gaze.  Two Bennett trucks entered the parking lot, six guys total.  Danny blew out a breath.  “I told him to send them home.  They don’t need to be mixed up in this.”

It didn’t matter.  It warmed her somewhat to know her crew was behind her.  At least they hadn’t gone back to her father and enlightened him on the reason behind their early dismissal.

The old plant was massive, ancient, tarnished from years of neglect.  Endless rows of clouded, broken windows, weeded parking lot, broken fencing, and that was just on the outside.

Two double doors at the side of the plant were wide open, giving rescue workers the necessary access.  When the group entered, they were immediately exposed to the hovering wreckage of the busted blender – an old, crude contraption that had been customized for a gravity-fed processing system back in the thirties.  Supported by an attached metal chute from above and a hastily wedged scissor-lift from below, the thing looked as if it would topple at any second.  There was no; T.  thing stable about it.

Danny’s heart froze in a brief moment of terror.  Austin was in there.

Birds nested inside the place were flitting about in their daily routine while fire crews and police officers worked the floor.  A ladder truck was close by, but dared not get too close fearing the instability of the buckling scissor-lift.

Derek took one look and swore beneath his breath.  “This is too dangerous, Danny.  You’re putting a lot on the line.”

“Isn’t that why we came?” she remarked, then caught his look.  “You used to love him, too.”

Shaw heard her comment and his expression darkened.  Mac noticed as he had been keeping a close eye on the young stud since Danny’s crew had arrived.  He leaned in close to the kid’s ear.  “Did you get all that?”

It was then that people started to notice the group heading straight for the danger zone.  The Cahill crew recognized Danny, figured out that the unfamiliar crowd around her must be from the Bennett side.  A couple members of the fire crew headed for them and attempted to stop any further progress.  One of the firemen recognized Derek and approached with a hand out.

“Derek,” he greeted with a look of confusion.  “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Ty,” Derek clasped the other man’s hand and jerked his chin upward.  “Can you help us get up there?”

“You, maybe.”  The man, suited up in rubbers and helmet recognized Danny from a few years back.  “She stays on the floor.”

Danny blew out a short laugh and shook her head at her shoes.  Now was not the time for misplaced machismo.  “The only difference between us is sixty pounds, if you know what I mean.”

Ty narrowed his eyes, moved them back to Derek.  “She as good as you?” he asked, taking the hint.

Derek chewed his bottom lip.  How to answer that one.  All he needed to do was say no and the decision would be taken out of her hands.  Danny knew what he was thinking and silently warned him from a few feet away.  “Yeah,” he answered finally, hoping beyond hope he wouldn’t regret his decision.  “She’s damn good.”

“Any one of these guys in here will attest to that if you need us to,” Mac piped in from behind her, following along.

After some thought, the fireman began to back away.  “I’ll talk to the chief.  Meanwhile you all stay put.”

“This is bullshit.”  Frustrated by the bonds of rules, Danny scoped out the top of the blender and the funnel-shaped bottom.  All she wanted to do was get up there and make sure Austin was okay.  “I’m going whether I get approval or not.”

“Just wait a second,” Derek admonished holding out a hand.  “Ty’s cool, if he doesn’t get anywhere with the chief he mige cize="+ht still help us.”

“The lid to that thing is only, what...ten feet wide?”

Derek slanted her a glance.  “It always looks easy from the ground.”

The seconds went by achingly slow.  Meanwhile, Danny scraped together various items from her crew and prepared for her climb.  “The least they could do is pull that ladder truck in closer, cushion the blender in case it falls.”

“It would at least slow it down,” Derek added.

“They won’t do it,” Mac interjected.  “Too unstable of an environment is what they’ve been sayin’ so far.”

Danny shoved a small flashlight in the back pocket of her jeans.  “But they might if we up the ante.”

Derek groaned and dropped his chin to his chest.

“What do you mean by that?” Shaw asked, sensing by Derek’s reaction that it wasn’t good.  When he looked to his supervisor for the answer, Danny was already gone.  “Where’d she go?”

“To up the ante,” Derek muttered, then stuck out a hand and pushed the kid back when he made a move to follow her.  “Jeez, man, do you not know her at all?”

“But she’ll get herself killed!”

Derek shook his head and got up close to emphasize the importance of what he was about to say.  “Something you need to learn about people like us.  We like to test our limits, sure, but when we’re doing it we can’t and don’t think about our own mortality.”