Were You Trying to Kill Him
Chapter 01 - Were You Trying to Kill Him
Dust hung thick in the morning air over the Meridian Tower construction site, the kind of fine gray powder that got into your throat and stayed there for hours after a shift ended.
Nathan saw the scaffold sway before anyone else did, a wrongness in the angle that made his stomach drop before his mind had fully processed what he was looking at.
Frank was standing on the lower platform, checking a coupling, completely unaware.
Nathan didn't think. He ran, closed the distance in four long strides, and wrapped both arms around Frank's waist, hauling him backward off the platform with everything he had.
They hit the dirt together, hard, rolling once. Behind them, the scaffold groaned and gave way entirely, steel pipe and plywood crashing down exactly where Frank had been standing three seconds earlier.
Dust exploded upward. The sound of it, metal on concrete, echoed across the entire site.
Frank stared at the wreckage, chest heaving, understanding slowly settling over his face that he'd come within seconds of dying.
That was when Victor Cole arrived, moving fast for a man his size, expensive dark suit and yellow safety vest incongruous against the site's dust and grit.
He didn't check on Frank. He didn't look at the collapsed scaffold at all.
He walked straight up to Nathan and slapped him across the face, hard, the sound cracking sharp through the settling dust.
"You caused this!" Victor bellowed.
Nathan staggered sideways but didn't fall, and didn't swing back. He stood there a moment, jaw tight, something cold and furious building behind his eyes.
Victor kept pointing at the wreckage, already building whatever story he intended to tell, and Nathan finally turned back to face him, lips pressed into a thin, controlled line.
He pulled his phone from his jacket pocket, thumbed it open, and held the screen up toward Victor.
"Then explain this," he said.
The video on the screen showed Victor himself, crouched at the base of that exact scaffold before the shift started, glancing side to side before deliberately loosening and removing a critical support bolt.
Frank's eyes went wide, staring at the screen, then at his employer.
Victor's fury drained out of his face in an instant, replaced by something bloodless and afraid.
Nathan's hand shook as he shoved the phone closer, his voice finally breaking loose from whatever control had held it until now.
"Were you trying to kill him?!" he shouted, the words tearing out of him raw and furious.
May you like
Somewhere deep in the site, a tool clattered to the concrete, and both men turned toward the sound, understanding, all at once, that someone else might still be out there.
Victor's mouth opened. No answer came.
