12 hours earlier
Simon’s Warehouse
Nikki and D had just dropped Simon off at the boat to do some maintenance while they headed over to the warehouse. D had to deal with Tango and Nikki had some reports she wanted to upload to the server at work through the secure connection at the warehouse. Simon was in the process of moving their computer equipment to the farm and had yet to finish getting everything set up. Nikki showed D what she wanted to take back with them to the farm and she had him load everything in their SUV that they had pulled into the first floor garage in the warehouse. Nikki had finished with her reports and after making one more loop through the apartment to see if there was anything else she wanted to take back with them, she was satisfied that they had everything they would need. She called down to Dante to let him know she was going to run out to grab them some sandwiches and when she got back, they would go have lunch with Simon on the boat before heading home. Home, Nikki thought with a smile, after all of the years on her own, she finally felt at home with the 2 men in her life and the little bundle of joy that has taken up residence on her bladder at the moment.
Dante was still loading the SUV so Nikki decided to take Simon’s chase car, the nondescript electric vehicle that had all of his surveillance equipment in it. The vehicle hadn’t moved from its space at the corner of the warehouse lot since Simon quit driving several months ago so she was glad it was going to get some use. The vehicle was plugged in so the batteries were fully charged. She was just about to hit the fob to unlock the door when the back door to the warehouse opened and Dante came out and asked her if she wanted him to pack the boxes still in the kitchen. After telling him they would get them on the next trip, Nikki turned back toward the car and hit the unlock button…. everything went dark….
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Dante just finished loading up the equipment that Nikki had asked him to load and had gone upstairs to get a soda when he noticed the boxes in the kitchen. Not sure if she wanted those as well, he ran back downstairs to try and catch her before she left so he could find out if he should load them. Once she told him that they weren’t going to take the boxes this trip, he turned to go back inside when, suddenly, there was a blinding light and then everything went dark.
Dante blinked several times, trying to clear his vision and figure out what happened. He couldn’t hear anything other than a buzzing in his ears. He was coughing and there was smoke everywhere and he felt heat that he realized was coming from a small fire right next to him, next to where the door used to be at the back of the warehouse. He pushed debris off of his legs and as he was trying to remove something from one of his legs, he realized that it was a body. He quickly rubbed his eyes and saw that Nikki was crumpled into a heap across his lower body, both of them half way through the doorway. Dante pulled his legs from beneath Nikki as gently as he could and laid her back down. She was not conscious and had blood coming from her ears, nose, and there was a big gash across her head. Dante couldn’t see any other injuries, but there was smoke everywhere and he couldn’t see much. He quickly pulled his shirt off and pressed it to the wound on Nikki’s head and was trying to figure out what happened and what he could do when he heard the first sirens. Thankfully, they belonged to an ambulance and a few minutes later, the EMT’s had Nikki bound onto a stretcher and had taken her from the scene shortly after arriving.
Dante’s training kicked in and before the police arrived and began poking around, asking questions, Dante quickly grabbed the rest of their stuff from the warehouse and loaded it into the SUV. Once loaded, he backed the SUV out of the warehouse and punched in a code on the panel just inside the garage area. By the time he was a block away he could see the glow from the fire that was consuming the warehouse. Simon had rigged the warehouse so there would be no trace of anything left behind, Tango included. Within 30 minutes there wouldn’t even be a structure left, just a smoldering pile of ash that was once Simon’s Op Center. Dante steeled his nerves and drove directly to the marina.