Chapter 6 - Ashes and Gears
"My father is in there!" Hannah cried out, wrestling desperately against the officer's heavy grip.
"Nobody's inside, Miss Keene!" the officer barked. "He was at the diner down the street when the alarm went off!"
Hannah stopped struggling, her knees almost buckling beneath her from pure relief.
From around the corner of the brick building, Elliot Keene came shuffling forward, wrapped in an orange emergency blanket. His face was smudged with black soot, his silver hair wild and soaked.
"Hannah," he choked out, his voice cracked with smoke and shock.
She broke free from the officer and threw her arms around her father’s narrow frame. He smelled of scorched cedar and damp ash, his hands trembling violently against her back.
"The clocks, Hannah," the old man wept softly against her shoulder. "The grandfather clocks... the water and smoke got into the movements."
Hannah pulled back, looking past him into the blackened doorway.
Caleb stood twenty feet away under the streetlamp, his dark coat soaked through, watching the wreckage with a hollow, devastated look in his eyes.
He knew what this was.
This wasn't an accidental electrical fire caused by an old wire. It was an arson job disguised as faulty wiring—the final push to force an eviction before the public hearing.
Elliot caught Hannah’s gaze and looked over her shoulder, seeing Caleb standing alone in the rain.
"Is that him?" Elliot asked, his voice hardening into gravel. "The corporate boy?"
"Dad, don't," Hannah pleaded softly.
Elliot stepped forward, pushing past the emergency tape, his hand pointing an accusing finger through the smoky air. "You did this! You couldn't buy us out, so you set fire to eighty years of history!"
A crowd of neighbors and onlookers turned to stare at Caleb.
Caleb didn't defend himself. He didn't step back, and he didn't look away from Elliot's furious gaze. He stood under the cold streetlamp, taking every drop of the old man’s fury with his head held high and his jaw set like iron.
"I am deeply sorry, Mr. Keene," Caleb said, his voice carrying clearly over the thrum of the fire truck engines.
"Get off my street!" Elliot bellowed. "Get away from my daughter!"
Hannah looked at Caleb.
His amber eyes caught hers through the drifting smoke. There was no corporate polish left, no clever banter about garlic bread or freight logistics.
May you like
There was only a silent, desperate promise.
Caleb gave her a single, resolute nod, turned on his heel, and walked away into the dark rain, his silhouette vanishing into the shadows of Mercer Wharf.
