Chapter 16 - Smoke at Riverside
By the time Naomi reached Riverside Towers, firefighters had sealed the block. Orange flames flashed behind a ground-floor window. Glass broke somewhere inside. A crowd gathered on the opposite sidewalk, watching smoke climb the same brick walls where Rosa had died.
Naomi stopped so suddenly Maya almost walked into her.
"I can't do this again," Naomi whispered.
"You don't have to go closer."
Then a worker emerged through the loading entrance, coughing hard. Another man followed, carrying a small steel document case. Glenn Pike appeared behind them, shouting that they had to put it in his truck.
A firefighter blocked him. "Leave it. Back away from the building."
"Those are company records!" Pike yelled.
"Then the company can request them after we put the fire out."
The firefighter handed the case to a police officer for safekeeping. Naomi saw a red sticker on its side: RIVERSIDE—ORIGINAL INSPECTIONS.
Ed arrived beside them, his face pale in the flashing lights. "That cabinet was rated for fire," he said. "If the seals held, the papers may be okay."
But then someone cried out across the street. An elderly man had collapsed at the edge of the crowd. Naomi recognized Mr. Henley, a former Riverside tenant who had come to watch. She knelt beside him, checked his breathing, and asked a bystander to call for a medic. Years ago, Rosa had taught her how to keep a frightened person talking while help came.
"Tell me your name," Naomi said gently.
"You know my name."
"Then tell me again so I don't get it wrong."
"Walter. And I hate this building."
"I know, Walter. Help is right here."
Paramedics took over, and Naomi stood with soot blowing against her cheeks. She realized her hands were steady. Not because she wasn't frightened. Because fear wasn't the only thing inside her anymore.
Investigators said the fire began near a locked storage area, but its cause remained under review.
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Then Naomi saw Daniel Sterling behind the barricade, still wearing a hospital wristband.
He walked straight to the officer holding the steel case and said, "Before anyone opens that, you need to know what my father sent those men there to do."
