Chapter 9 - Through the Smoke
Toby!
Nora screamed her brother's name with a terror that tore through the night, bolting across the gravel yard toward the blazing brick freight depot as thick black smoke billowed out of the shattered windows.
Wait here by the hose line with Evelyn, Nora, do not breathe that smoke!
Grant caught her around the waist ten yards from the scorching heat of the doorway, pressed her firmly back into Evelyn's arms, snatched the heavy wool horse blanket from the bed of the pickup truck, and plunged it into the iron rain barrel beside the barn.
Grant, no, the whole center roof truss is forty-year-old dry pine—it is going to cave in!
Nora cried out, trying to lunge after him as flames licked out through the transom above the main depot doors.
Grant did not hesitate for half a second.
He draped the soaking-wet wool blanket over his head and shoulders, grabbed a five-foot steel pry bar from the loading dock, and charged straight into the roaring orange inferno!
Inside the historic brick depot, the heat was like a blast furnace, blinding smoke rolling down from the burning timber rafters while stacks of dry wooden shipping pallets blazed on both sides of the central aisle.
Toby, shout for me!
Grant roared through his wet sleeve, dropping low beneath the toxic smoke layer as burning embers rained down onto his flannel shirt and blistered the skin of his arms.
Back here in the dispatcher's cage—the iron beam fell across the door!
Toby's coughing, panicked voice echoed from the brick office enclosure at the rear of the building.
Grant sprinted through a curtain of fire, shielding his eyes with his forearm until he reached the heavy oak-and-wire door of the dispatcher's office, where a flaming eight-inch ceiling timber had crashed down across the outside latch, trapping the sixteen-year-old boy inside the smoke-filled glass room!
Behind the cracked glass, Toby was on his knees gasping for air while hugging his grandfather's heavy cast-iron heritage deed box against his chest.
Step back from the glass, kid!
Grant wedged the forged steel tip of the five-foot pry bar beneath the flaming timber beam, planted both boots on the blistering floor, and heaved upward with a guttural roar as every muscle in his shoulders and back strained to the breaking point—wrapping his bare left hand around the scorching iron latch to yank the jammed door open!
The odor of seared flesh rose from Grant's palm as the iron latch gave way and the door swung wide.
Grant dropped the pry bar, grabbed the coughing, half-conscious teenager over his right shoulder in a fireman's carry while hooking his left elbow through the handle of the cast-iron deed box, and sprinted back down the burning center aisle wrapped in the smoking wool blanket!
Three seconds after Grant burst out through the side loading-dock door and rolled onto the wet grass with Toby and the iron box safe in his arms, the entire central roof of the freight depot collapsed inward with a deafening, sky-splitting roar of sparks!
Toby!
Nora dropped to her knees on the grass as sirens wailed in the distance, throwing her arms around her coughing brother while Volunteer firefighters and Deputy Tucker's cruisers skidded into the lot and turned high-pressure water cannons onto the brick walls.
Once the paramedics slipped an oxygen mask over Toby's face and declared that the boy didn't have a single burn on him because Grant had kept the wet blanket wrapped completely around the kid's body, Nora turned toward Grant sitting on the tailgate of the flatbed truck.
When she saw the angry second-degree burn across Grant's left palm where he had grabbed the red-hot iron latch to free her brother, all the hurt and suspicion from the courthouse steps shattered completely, and Nora burst into tears, throwing her arms around Grant's soot-stained neck and burying her face against his chest.
You went into that fire for him, Grant, you almost died in there for my brother, Nora sobbed, holding onto his flannel shirt as if she would never let him go.
I am so sorry I doubted you today—I don't care if you own half the world or nothing at all, I know who you are!
Grant wrapped his good right arm tightly around her waist, resting his chin against her soft chestnut hair as his heart hammered against hers in the glow of the fire trucks.
I told you in the kitchen yesterday, Nora—I am the guy who dries the dishes and stays until the work is done, Grant murmured against her temple.
While the medic wrapped Grant's burned left hand in sterile cooling gauze, Nora used the small brass key hanging on a silver chain around her neck to unlock the cast-iron heritage box Toby had saved from the office safe.
Inside, preserved in pristine wax paper since 1994, lay the original Five-Percent Golden Share Charter of Callaway Holdings—and stapled to the back of the parchment was a confidential notarized codicil signed by Grant's late Uncle Joe three months before his death!
Evelyn Vance adjusted her glasses under the ambulance floodlights and gasped aloud as she read the final paragraph of the codicil: In the event that any executive officer or betrothed partner of Grant Arthur Callaway attempts to invoke an involuntary conservatorship or liquidate the operating assets of Callaway Holdings without the dual physical counter-signature of the Millbrook Golden Share holder, one hundred percent of the biological and corporate voting proxies held by said executives are automatically voided, and criminal fraud forfeiture takes effect immediately!
Look at the time, Grant, Evelyn said urgently, pointing to the emergency notice on her secure tablet.
Daniel Ross and Sabrina moved the ten-billion-dollar liquidation signing and the final board vote up to nine o'clock tomorrow morning at the Callaway Tower Ballroom in Manhattan so they can wire the purchase deposit to Zurich before Judge Henderson's court opens on Monday!
Grant stood up from the tailgate, his bandaged left hand closing into a fist as he looked at Nora standing fiercely beside him with the 1994 Golden Share parchment in her hand.
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Evelyn, call my chief pilot at Teterboro Airport and tell him to bring the Gulfstream to the Harrisburg runway by five o'clock tomorrow morning, Grant said, his gray eyes gleaming like cold steel in the firelight.
Nora and I have a wedding cancellation and a boardroom to attend in New York.
