"We're going to miss you around here," Tomás told me on my second-to-last day at the Newark office. We were in the break room getting coffee and Javier had been sitting at the table drinking his own and reviewing updated plans for the apartment building job. Javier looked up from the plans in surprise as Tomás left the room.

"I believe I told you so," I muttered as I walked past him out of the break room. He laughed and shook his head.

"Yeah, you did," he acknowledged.

It was the second week of August, and more exactly, it was Ranger's birthday. He never celebrated his birthday because that would require acknowledging he had emotions, but I wondered if Javier called or texted him. He was the kind of guy who would do that, unlike my own father. I wasn't sure if he remembered my birthday.

I was going to miss the Newark office, and Javier in particular. We had built a strong bond in the time I had worked there, and I was going to miss it when I went back to Trenton. Not that I wouldn't call him or visit the office on occasion to check in, but it wouldn't be the same as showing up every day and seeing him. We had plans to go back to Rosa's for lunch the next day to celebrate the fact that I transitioned the office over to Kowalski & Sons without anyone quitting, which had been Javier's biggest fear. Everything was going smoothly, and the occasional problem had been easily fixed. I liked working with someone who cared about the people who worked for him, who wasn't an enormous asshole that had little regard for other people's feelings.

I did one last check in of all the sites and more of the contractors to see if anyone had questions. But everyone had seemed happy with the system and several had commented that it was very easy to use. I felt very proud of the changes I had helped bring to the company. It didn't seem like much, but it had an impact.

I packed up my work bag and headed downstairs at five to make my way through the rush hour traffic. I was surprised to see Javier also leaving. He was locking his office door and has his work bag slung over one shoulder.

"Is the building on fire?" I asked him.

"No, why?" he asked, looking mildly alarmed.

"Oh, I just didn't think anything else would get you to leave work before seven," I said with a smile.

Javier snorted. "Smartass." We headed towards the door and said goodbye to Mara, who was also packing up. "It's my son's birthday today. My wife somehow conned him into having dinner with us, so I have to get out of here now in time to pick her up and get there. He's thirty-five years old. You know you're old when your baby is thirty-five."

"I'm the youngest and I'll be thirty-five in a couple of months," I told Javier. "So my parents can relate. Enjoy your dinner."

We waved goodbye and climbed into our respective vehicles. Ranger was having dinner with his parents tonight. It was the first time Javier had mentioned seeing him in the time we had been working together. I imagined their conversations as I made my way home. Would I come up? Either as Ranger's friend or as the woman working with Javier? Or was that self-absorbed to assume either of them would think to mention me? Despite my anxieties when I had first started working with Javier, part of me had wanted him to know about my connection to Ranger. I wasn't sure why, though. Did I think he could say something that would make all the difference in how I felt? Did I think he could somehow reunite me with Ranger in a way I couldn't expect? It was stupid, and I told myself to get over it. Maybe I should say something tomorrow, but then I didn't want to make things awkward with Javier in future interactions. I told myself to stop worrying about Ranger and Javier and to go home and relax for the evening.

I was watching The Great British Baking Show on Netflix while I petted Veronica and drank a glass of wine. Cakes and pies, Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry would surely take my mind off Ranger. Except it didn't because all I could think about was how it was his birthday, and on your birthday you should have a cake. But Ranger didn't eat dessert. How does someone not enjoy life enough to eat dessert? It still boggled my mind. Did he think he couldn't control himself and stop at one piece of cake?

"You aren't doing a very good job at keeping my mind off Ranger," I told Veronica. "Do you need a picture of him to growl at?" She just continued to purr, her life man-free and uncomplicated.

I didn't sleep well that night as I continued to toss and turn, thinking about Ranger and Javier having dinner together. I woke up in a bad mood the next morning and was tempted to call in sick, but I thought about Javier and our planned lunch and knew I couldn't pass it up. The food at Rosa's was really good.

I pulled into the lot at eight on the dot. I saw vehicles in the lot belonging to Mara, Javier, Darren, and Tomás. There was a silver car parked on the other side of Javier's truck, but I couldn't tell whose it was.

I slung my messenger bag across my body and put my work bag on my shoulder. I had purchased a second cup of coffee on my way to the office, since the one I'd had at home hadn't done the trick of waking me up. I had just taken a sip as I walked towards the office, when some sudden force lifted me off my feet and threw me backwards. It felt like everything was going in slow motion as I realized parts of the office were flying past me in the air. I had realized with a second to spare that I was about to land on the concrete really hard and was able to put my hands over my head as I hit the ground. Pain filled my body and I saw bright lights flash in front of my eyes as I hit the ground and felt myself roll. I think I must have blacked out because I never felt myself stop rolling. I opened my eyes to find that I was face down on the ground. I tried to push myself up, but an agonizing pain ripped through my left shoulder and I cried out. It felt like my shoulder might be broken or dislocated. My forearms were bloodied messes from where they had scraped the ground. There was a ringing in my ears and the world spun around me as I rolled over on my back. I felt pain in my upper abdomen that might suggest broken ribs. But I wasn't a doctor, so maybe I was dying.

I took a minute to sit up, trying to catch my breath as I did. It felt like all the wind had been knocked out of me. What I saw was horrifying. There was an enormous hole in the side of the office. Brick, drywall, and other debris were strewn across the parking lot. I had been thrown about thirty feet from where I had been originally, which was right behind my car. I was now behind Javier's truck and had a better view of the car next to it. It was the silver Honda Accord I had seen Mark driving weeks earlier. I'd been worried he would shoot up the place and Javier had said he hated guns. I guess he didn't hate bombs.

I used my good arm to work on pulling myself to my feet. I felt wobbly and grabbed on to Javier's truck awkwardly as I stood. I walked gingerly forward, feeling as though my entire body was screaming in protest. It just wanted me to lay down and wait for help. But there were people in there.

I was almost back up to my car when I saw Mara come walking out the open side of the building. She was bloody from what looked like a head wound. Her eyes were wide and her face pale.

"Mara!" I shouted, wincing in pain as I did. "Mara, come sit down," I told her, indicating a spot by my car.

"I think –think Tomás is d-d-dead," she whispered when she reached me. "He's –he's–he's not moving."

I looked over at the building and tried to focus my eyes. The hole had exposed one of the bathrooms and part of Tomás's office. I thought I could see his arm under some rubble. I was about to get closer when I heard someone yelling from the back of the lot. It was Darren, who was barely staying upright as he clung to the building. Mara walked over to him like a zombie and grabbed hold of him.

"Where's Javier?" I managed to ask. I could hear sirens in the background, but couldn't tell how far away they were.

"I don't know," Mara said, as though she didn't even know who I was talking about. She and Darren sat down on the ground behind Javier's truck and shook with pain and fear. I looked back at the building and walked closer.

"Javier!" I yelled, wincing again. "Javier, can you hear me?"

I could see Tomás more clearly as I reached the building. He was definitely dead, considering his head was about five feet away from the rest of his body. I felt a wave of nausea roll over me and I fought it back as I climbed through the rubble.

"Stephanie, don't!" I heard Darren said. "It's gonna collapse."

I held my left arm close to my body as I walked across the room, trying not to fall. The door had been blown off the hinges, which allowed me walk directly into the hall and across to Javier's office. The chairs and pictures on the wall had been scattered everywhere. I was still having a hard time focusing my vision and it had taken me a minute to realize that what had looked like a pile of ceiling debris was actually Javier. He was covered in dust and drywall. I walked across the room, nearly breaking my ankle on something and used my good arm to catch myself on the corner of the desk. I yelled out in pain and thought I might black out as I righted myself again.

"Javier," I said, reaching over to pull stuff off him. "Javier, wake up."

I heard a small noise and he stirred slightly. I pulled more stuff off him, and he opened his eyes.

"Come on," I said. "We have to get out of here. The building might fall in."

He winced as he tried to move. He put a hand to his abdomen, where I saw a piece of wood sticking out of his right side.

"Don't try to pull it out," I warned. "Just get up. I can only use my right arm, but I'll help you."

He took my hand and we both yelled in agony as he used the leverage to pull himself up. It was then that I could see that the piece of wood going into his abdomen was coming out through his back. I wanted to vomit, but I didn't have time for that. I needed to get him out.

"It's my fault," he whispered as I put myself under his left shoulder. "They did this."

"Don't worry about that right now," I told him. "We have to get out."

It felt like we were moving even slower than I had as we retraced my steps. I could hear him saying the names of his wife and children under his breath as we walked. I was thankful that he practically had his eyes closed as we walked through Tomás's office so that he couldn't see what had happened. By the time we got back to the hole in the wall, there were two police cars in the parking lot. One of the officers saw me with Javier and helped get him over to behind my car, where Javier leaned his head against the trunk.

"EMS is on the way," the police officer said. "Is there anyone else inside?"

"No one alive," I whispered. I could feel myself starting to shake. I could feel hysteria working up inside me as I sat next to Javier. I reached over with my good hand and held his.

"Stay awake," I told him as he closed his eyes and stopped his mumbling. "You have to stay awake, Javier."

"I'm awake," he mumbled. "I don't–I don't think I'm going to make it, Stephanie."

"No, you are," I insisted, squeezing his hand although that would save him. "You are going to make it. They'll get us to the hospital, and we'll be okay."

The words had no sooner left my mouth when the upper floors of the building started to collapse into the first. More dust flew through the air and debris spilled out into the lot.

"If I-I-I die, please tell my wife I love her," Javier said, his voice filled with emotion. "T-t-t-tell her I tried to come home to her."

"I'm not going to have to tell her, because you're going to be fine," I told him, crying as I said the words. "You have to be. Think about your family. They need you. Stay awake. Don't go to sleep."

I felt Javier squeeze my hand slightly. "You–you are a good p-person," he said. "I'm sorry C-Car-Carlos hurt you. I would be very proud to have you as a daughter," he whispered.

His words sent me over the edge and I burst into painful sobs. "Javier, you have to stay awake," I cried, trying to scoot closer to him. "Talk to me. Tell me about your dinner," I asked, but he was losing consciousness. More sirens had been getting closer as we had been talking and an EMT rushed up to his side.

"Come over here," a second EMT said to me. "Tell me how you're feeling," he said as he shined a flashlight in my eyes.

"Everything hurts," I said through tears. "My shoulder and my body and my head. You have to help him," I said to EMT working on Javier. "Please."

"We're going to help all of you," my EMT said. He put an oxygen mask over my nose and told me to breathe deeply. I winced as I did.

"It hurts," I told him, pointing to my ribs. I was starting to hyperventilate and watched as another EMT helped load Javier into the back of an ambulance. "Where are they taking him?"

"To University Hospital," the EMT told me. "You're going to the same place," he added, seeming to know that was my next question. I looked over at Mara and Darren, who were both being loaded onto gurneys. Someone brought a gurney over to me and I climbed onto it gingerly.

I was given a shot of something in the ambulance that seemed to help me stop sobbing by the time I was wheeled into the emergency room. I was rushed through to a room where a doctor and a couple of nurses were moving around, getting an IV put in my arm and taking my blood pressure. I was asked a million questions about what hurt, was I allergic to any medications, and was I pregnant. I felt dazed, my head was splitting, and everything in my body hurt. A nurse told me she would have to cut my shirt and bra off since I couldn't lift my left arm. I was quickly undressed and put in a hospital gown while a doctor continued to shout orders.

"I'm going to send you for a CT scan to make sure you don't have any internal bleeding," he said. "Once we've cleared that, we'll get your shoulder set." He hurried out of the room before I could ask anything else.

"How's my friend?" I asked one of the nurses in the room. "His name is Javier Manoso. He was with me at the office. He's Latino and in his sixties."

"I don't know, but I can find out," she reassured me.

I was rushed off for a scan of my entire body, which felt like it took forever. I would slide through the machine, which would move around taking pictures, then I'd be moved forward little by little and the process repeated. It was agony to have to lie flat on my back with my bad shoulder. I begged for some pain medication. The tech doing the scan told me that the nurses could help me once I was done.

I had no sense of time in the emergency room. My head was killing me and I felt like vomiting. After being wheeled back to my exam room, a nurse came in to give me something for the pain.

"Can the doctor sedate me to put my shoulder back?" I asked her. "I'm afraid to be awake for it."

She nodded. "Yes, he'll do that. This should help you relax," she said as she pushed a syringe into my IV. "The doctor will be in as soon as we know the results of your scans."

No one had given me an update on Javier. I asked every nurse who came into my room. All of them promised to find out, but none of them ever told me anything. I couldn't sleep because I was in too much pain, even with whatever they had put in my IV, but I wasn't shaking and crying. I reached for my messenger bag, which was on a small table with my destroyed clothes. I winced as I stretched, grabbing handle and dragging it towards me. I needed to call Ranger, to make sure his family knew about Javier. My heart sank when I saw my phone. The screen was shattered and black. I tried touching it, but there was no response.

There was a knock on my door and it opened a second later to reveal a man in a polo shirt with a Newark Police Department logo and khakis.

"Miss Plum? I'm Detective Lucas Rodriguez with Newark PD. Can I ask you a few questions about what happened today?"

I nodded. "Have you heard anything about Javier Manoso? Has anyone called his family?"

Detective Rodriguez nodded. "He's in surgery right now. I was told his wife was contacted because she used to be a nurse here. I'm going to speak to her later."

I sighed. "Thank you. What do you need to know?"

He asked me about how long I had been working at the office and I explained about the buyout and my work to transition the office over, how today was my last day. He asked me about everyone who worked at the office and I told him what I knew.

"Was it Mark?" I asked him as he took notes.

"Who?"

"Mark. I don't know a last name. He used to work there in accounting, but was let go because Kowalski runs the accounting out of Trenton. He came the office about three weeks ago, very upset because he said he couldn't find a job and that his life left because of it. I thought she'd probably left him because he seemed unstable. He wanted Javier to hire him back, but that couldn't happen. I'd told Javier I thought should report the interaction to the police. I was worried Mark might come back and shoot Javier, but he didn't seem worried. Mark's car was in the parking lot today."

Detective Rodriguez flipped through his notes. "Mark Evans. He was one of the bodies found inside the building. We're waiting official identification, but his driver's license was in his pocket and his car was outside. You think he placed the device?"

"Yes. Javier mentioned feeling responsible when I found him inside. He felt guilty about having to let Mark go, but hadn't had a choice."

Detective Rodriguez asked me to recall everything that happened from the time I woke up that morning until I was taken away by the ambulance. I tried to remember details and he would occasionally ask a clarifying question. He was eventually forced to stop asking me questions when the doctor came back into the room.

"Your scans came back clear of any internal bleeding, so that's good," the doctor told me. "You do have a concussion. I didn't see any major tissue damage with your shoulder, but you'll need to follow up with a specialist and they may order an MRI to see how things are once the joint is back in place and some of the swelling as gone done. You'll be taken back to X-ray where your shoulder will be put back into place and x-rayed to be sure it's where it should be. The nurse told me you want to be sedated and that's not a problem. We'll get that started once we can get you back there. But I would like to admit you overnight for observation. You've been through a lot and we would also be able to better manage your pain. Are you agreeable to that?"

I nodded. "Thank you,' I said, noticing that Detective Rodriguez hadn't left the room. The doctor left and the detective made a note in his book.

"Just one more thing to ask you and then I'll leave," he said. "Do you think anyone else could have done this besides Mark Evans?"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm just keeping my options open. We will obviously be getting a search warrant for Evans' home, but we have to avoid tunnel vision and assuming he's the culprit just because he was angry. My understanding is that this buyout made a lot of people angry. And if anyone knew Evans had made threats, they could have tried to set him up."

"I can't think of anyone else," I told him. "When I first got there the whole office was on edge, but things have gotten a lot better in the last few weeks. They all seem to like me now and are realizing that the buyout hasn't changed a lot in their day-to-day work."

The detective nodded and stood up. "If you think of anything else that might be important, please call me," he said giving me a business card. "And I'll get your number."

"Well, my phone's busted right now, so you'll have to just leave me a voicemail until I get a new one," I said, providing the number after it.

"Can you–," I stopped, debating if I wanted to go down that road, but decided it was the right thing. "Can you give my name to Mrs. Manoso? I know their son Carlos, but I don't know if Javier's family was aware that I was working with him. I just want to be able to find out how he is. And I obviously I can't call right now since my phone is broken."

"Sure, I can do that," he said. "Take care."

I sat for what felt like an eternity in the exam room, waiting for someone to take me back to get my shoulder set. It was painful, but as long as I didn't try to move it wasn't too bad. My head hurt and I was starting to feel foggy again. The adrenaline was starting to let down and I was feeling achy all over. I knew I'd feel like hell for a few days, and even though I had no desire to stay at the hospital overnight, I would probably regret it if I didn't.

When the nurse came in to start my sedation, she moved the curtain enough so that I could see the clock. It was a little after three. It was hard to believe it had been over seven hours since I'd headed to work like any other day. But I didn't have much time to think about that before I drifted off.