Michelle held her breath, not realizing she was doing it as they came to a stop at the intersection. There were no cars coming from either direction. Rachel eased out onto the road and was soon up to the speed limit. Michelle turned around, looking back toward Corporate Financial, watching it burn.
“We did it,” Rachel said, her tear-filled eyes on the road. “Damn, we fucking did it.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hands. It looked like she was trying to control her own emotions. Their eyes met in the rearview mirror. Michelle saw that Rachel had beautiful eyes—they were a deep green, reflecting care and emotion and that same fiery passion they’d held a few nights ago when they first met in Chicago. Now those eyes were red from sleep-deprivation and watery from crying. “I’m sorry. I can’t cry now even though I want to. I gotta get us out of here.”
“We’ll share a box of Kleenex whenever we get to where we’re going,” Michelle said.
Rachel laughed and Michelle smiled. She was turned away from the flames now. She sat up in the back seat, head resting against the seat, trying to relax as Rachel drove them toward the Interstate. Far off she heard the dim sound of police sirens.
“Here comes a car,” Rachel said. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel.
Michelle didn’t care. She was just glad it was over. But was it?
She caught a glimpse of the passing car. It was a tan Acura being driven by a man.
Rachel relaxed. “Okay, here we go,” she said as she made a turn down another road. “This should take us to the Interstate faster.”
They were now descending downhill, away from the hilly, mountainous region into small towns and suburbs. Sirens could now be heard from all around. Michelle closed her eyes, only wanting to put the nightmare behind her.
“We’re gonna be fine,” Rachel said from the front seat. Michelle opened her eyes. Rachel was calm. She kept the vehicle at a safe speed. “Everything’s going to be fine.” Their eyes met in the rearview mirror again.
And for the first time in weeks Michelle Dowling began to feel that this was true.
CHAPTER TWENTY
DESPITE BEING PHYSICALLY exhausted, Michelle Dowling sat on a rumpled sofa in an apartment somewhere in downtown San Francisco, sitting with Rachel Drummond and four other members of the Coalition, their attention riveted to the news.
It was nine-thirty p.m and the major news story was the explosion that leveled the National Headquarters of Corporate Financial Consulting Group near Calistoga, California.
Speculation was running rampant on all the news networks that the explosion was caused by a bomb, or a series of bombs. Shell-shocked survivors were interviewed, men and women in rumpled, dusty business attire, their features glazed with shock—something that surprised Michelle. They all said the same thing, how they were working when all of a sudden there was an explosion, or they heard an explosion, or something down the hall exploded. They ran out of the building despite feeling that they should stay and help salvage the company. One man said, “I was at my desk when the building shook and the lights went out. The building kept shaking and something inside me just snapped and I realized what was happening. I realized I had ducked under my desk and I thought that if I stayed there I’d be crushed, so I ran out of the department and was lucky enough that the explosion came from a department a few doors down. I went down the staircase and made it outside as the rest of the building just started going under.” The man was streaked with dirt and blood and appeared visibly upset. For a moment Michelle felt guilty that she had been responsible for causing this man pain but then something John Stanley, one of the Coalition members who was gathered there, said, “Look at his face. Listen to what he’s saying.”
Michelle paid closer attention to the man, as well as other victims of the bombing. All of the people interviewed by the media said pretty much the same thing; they were in a daze, just blindly going about their everyday duties prior to the blast; they felt a brief desire to stay and help protect company property and their work but then something snapped—it was as if they realized their very lives were at stake. Then they ran out of the building.
“That’s the key,” John Stanley said as they watched the news coverage. John appeared to be in his late forties, maybe early fifties, had thinning blonde hair, and he wore thin wire-frame glasses. “When we blew up Corporate Financial we severed its hold on people. That’s what happened.”
The investigation was ongoing and the fire had been put out an hour ago. The estimated death toll was over six hundred so far. The Department of Homeland Security was called in and the Federal Government was investigating possible links to Islamic Terrorism. Still, other sources opined that it looked to be the work of an American Terrorist outfit, one probably holding the same anti-government views as Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
Michelle kept waiting for a news flash to announce that two women were seen fleeing the scene in a battered Honda and were wanted for questioning.
As the evening wore on those fears slipped further away.
The apartment she was in was on the tenth floor of an old building near the Mission District. It was owned by an ex University Professor of Philosophy, a golden-skinned white-haired man named Rafael Martinez, who introduced himself to Michelle as one of the founding members of the Coalition when she and Rachel arrived. Talking with Rafael and John and the other members she met there—everything had happened so fast she couldn’t remember the names of the other people—helped calm her down. Only Rachel appeared to lose it in the hour or two after they arrived at the apartment. She retreated to a corner, plopped herself down in an easy chair and wept. A few times Michelle heard Rachel say Alan’s name during her sobs. Michelle felt bad that Alan didn’t make it out of the building, that he was probably dead, lying in the rubble of Corporate Financial. She was too numb emotionally to react. Rachel, on the other hand, couldn’t get over it. The way she was crying gave Michelle the feeling that she was mourning the loss of a great love.
As much as Michelle wanted to see Donald, as much as she yearned for him, she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother, Connie Dowling.
She was positive that her real mother had somehow broken through the corporate influence that had taken over her physical self. When Connie had told Michelle to leave the building, to run, to get away, that had been the real Connie Dowling. Michelle had seen the stark terror in her eyes and the love her mother never lost for her; she knew now that her mother had been fighting with Corporate Financial the entire time and somehow Michelle had never known it. The Corporate Financial side had tried to trick her into believing her mother still cared for her whenever it gained control. That’s what tipped Michelle off. When Connie told her to remember her childhood and the good times they’d had, that was the clincher. Michelle had no good memories of childhood and her real mother. The Corporate Financial side was pretending to be emotional and human. But it didn’t know how to do that. It didn’t realize it had sucked all the humanity out of her mother years ago, when Michelle was a baby.