But for that heartbeat that lasted forever, she was frozen. As she looked up. She watched death approach. The drum—easily three hundred pounds of processed ore, tipped. Its center of gravity shifted past the point of no return.
The barrel dropped.
Instinct finally kicked paralysis’s ass. Riley threw herself backward, her boots losing grip in the loose gravel, and she landed on her butt. Still, she scrambled away from ground zero. Her clipboard lost, safety glasses tumbling from her face, and hard hat bouncing on the ground behind her, she rolled as fast as she could.
The drum hit the concrete pad where she'd been crouched, and the impact sent a shock wave through the ground that she felt in her bones.Roll, keep rolling!
Dust exploded in a choking cloud, and somewhere in the chaos, she heard the snapping crackof concrete being obliterated under the weight of the falling drums.
Riley rolled into a stack of barrels and curled into the fetal position, covering her head with her hands. She waited for the impact of the drums, but it never came. She carefully lifted her head, trying to see through the chaos. The forklift operator was screaming. She couldn’t tell if he was yelling curses or apologies. Her ears were ringing too loudly to tell. The forklift engine finally stopped. The sudden silence felt more deafening than the noise had been.
"Jesus Christ!" someone shouted. "RILEY!"
Workers came running from every direction, hard hats bobbing as they converged on the accident site. Steel-toed boots pounded across concrete, voices calling out questions and instructions that blended into an indistinct roar of human concern.
"You okay? Are you hurt? Can you move?"
Riley pushed herself up to sitting, her hands shaking as she brushed dust and gravel from her clothes. Everything felt distant, muffled, like she was experiencing the world through thick glass. The taste of copper filled her mouth. She wiped her lips with her hand. Blood. She moved her tongue andrealized she’d bitten it somewhere in the process of falling and rolling away from the barrels.
"I'm fine," she managed, though her voice came out as barely more than a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. "I'm fine."
But she wasn't fine. Her hands were trembling so badly she could barely button her shirt, which had come undone in the scramble to safety. Her pulse was frantic and trapped in her throat. When she accepted a hand and tried to stand, her legs felt like limp noodles.
Mal, from the safety station, was suddenly beside her, his newspaper forgotten, his face pale with the kind of fear that comes from nearly watching someone die on your watch. "Don't move yet," he said, surprisingly gentle for such a gruff man. "Let me check you over. Sometimes the adrenaline masks injuries."
Riley let him examine her for cuts and bruises, his weathered hands surprisingly gentle as he checked her pupils and asked about pain. Around them, the other workers were offering help or dealing with the aftermath. People were securing the remaining drums, calling for the incident response team to ensure the barrels weren’t leaking. Riley would have to investigate every detail of what hadgone wrong. But she couldn’t think about that right now. Her mind could barely grasp what had just happened. Good, God. She could have been killed.
It was Mal who voiced what they were all thinking: "Shit, Riley. If you hadn't moved when you did …"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to. They all knew what three hundred pounds of steel would have done to human bone and flesh.
It was an accident. It had to be.
Equipment failed. Hydraulics gave out. Restraints wore down and snapped at the worst possible moment. Incidents occurred in industrial facilities and had happened since humans first learned to use tools to perform tasks too dangerous for bare hands.
Except …
As Riley finally found the strength to stand straight without leaning against the hot barrels, she brushed the concrete dust from her shirt. Her gaze cut automatically toward the edge of the yard. Toward the shadow of the warehouse where she'd seen Mauro Delgado deep in conversation just minutes before her world had nearly ended.
He was still there.
Still watching.
But now, instead of the casual observation she'dgrown accustomed to, there was something different in his gaze. Something that looked almost like disappointment.
That evening,the sun hung low and orange beyond the small restaurant. Tallon had picked her up at her office, but she didn’t want to be anywhere near the mining operation. Riley sat on the edge of her seat, her hands still trembling faintly as she recounted the incident for the third time, each retelling making it feel both more real and more surreal.
"It could have been nothing," she said, though the words felt like lies even as they left her mouth. She stood abruptly, needing movement, needing to burn off the nervous energy that had been building all day. The space between their table and the edge of the outside patio wasn’t wide enough for pacing, but she made it work, three steps each direction. She’d felt like a caged animal all day, so the small area seemed appropriate.
"Equipment fails all the time in a facility that size. Hydraulics blow out, restraints wear down, and operators make mistakes. The forklift was due for its routine maintenance next week. I checked. Maybethe timing was just …" She gestured helplessly, searching for the right word.
"Convenient?" Talon suggested, his voice carefully neutral.
Riley stopped pacing to look at him. Though he sat perfectly still in his chair at the table, there was a coiled tension in his posture that reminded her of a snake preparing to strike. His dark eyes tracked her every movement. With no one else on the patio, she felt comfortable talking about the morning’s events.
"Mauro was there. Again. Talon, every time I look up, he's within thirty feet. Every. Single. Time. And today …" She swallowed hard, the memory hitting her again with physical force. "If I hadn't moved when I did, if my reflexes had been a split second slower?—"
"You'd have been crushed," he finished. Anger filled his voice.
