The Secret Truth

CHAPTER ONE

IN JUST A matter of hours, chaos would break loose.

Jake Scott’s day started under control, albeit differently from the usual routine. He had awakened for the third of five days in a Bed and Breakfast apartment in an area called Westboro in Ottawa. The community Jake had called home his entire life lay on the west side of downtown, in Canada’s capital.

Construction on the hardwood floors at his home precipitated his stay at the B&B. The owners listed the apartment as a self-contained, modern one-bedroom with Netflix in a house they called Sweet Dreams. Cleanliness and a private bathroom mattered to Jake, and the apartment fit the bill. He hadn’t stayed in a room anywhere but at his home for a long time, so he had enjoyed talking to four other renters and the owners over the morning meal. Well, three of the renters. The other wasn’t overly friendly.

Jake planned to spend the day killing time. After breakfast, he returned to his rented apartment, opened the drapes, and read an Agatha Christie novel. He stopped at the end of a chapter and examined his surroundings. The room featured a four-poster bed, floral wallpaper, one comfortable wingback armchair that Jake occupied, and an antique white nightstand. A decorative white bowl and pitcher with a rose emblazoned on the side sat on a round crocheted doily on the nightstand. While the bowl and pitcher appeared to be vintage, Jake suspected someone had made them in a ceramic class. A blue rectangular woven rug with a medallion pattern in the middle covered the center of the dark hardwood floor. It looked expensive. He saw a similar rug through the open door of one of the unused rooms down the hall and an identical but larger one in the dining room. Maybe the owners took advantage of a volume discount, he thought.

He remembered an article about rugs written by a colleague at the newspaper office where he used to work. From his recollection, it was a great article describing countries known for their rug-making. He seemed to recall Iran and Turkey, among others. He mulled over the fact that Turkey had changed its name to Türkiye somewhere along the way, but it had been Turkey his entire life.

The vintage motif in his room didn’t carry over to the modern ensuite, which featured a shower with a glass enclosure and spray nozzles from top to bottom. It was like walking from the early 1900s into the future with a few steps. Even though he was by himself, Jake wasn’t sure about the lack of privacy offered by the clear glass enclosure shower. Another nod to a crumbling civilization, he thought.

After reading a few pages, Jake’s eyes blurred, and his head lolled on his neck. He snapped awake with a start when his neck muscles stretched and creaked as his head fell forward again. He gave up and allowed himself to doze off with his chin resting on his hand. When he woke an hour later, he walked to Brew and Buns, his favorite restaurant on Wellington Street, where he enjoyed a leisurely lunch.

The day continued to unfold routinely. He had left his temperamental cat, Oliver, at his friend Daniella Perez’s condo, so he paid the feline a visit. Jake confirmed with Dani, as her friends called her, that her teenage daughter, Emilie, was home so the cat would enjoy her attention.

The seventeen-year-old greeted Jake at the door. She wore a broad smile and a trendy pale yellow top that stopped above her midriff, faded blue jeans, and bare feet. She padded across the room and flopped into an upholstered chair while folding her legs underneath her in one fluid motion.

Jake marveled at the flexibility of youth.

“How has he been?” he asked as he nodded toward Oliver, who approached from the hallway.

“He’s been great. No problem. He’s just looking for hugs.”

Oliver confirmed the sentiment as he leaped onto Emily’s lap and acknowledged Jake’s presence with a sleepy glance.

Jake killed more time chatting with Emilie before dropping by his house to check the floors, which looked fabulous. He grabbed a sandwich at Brew and Buns before heading off to a pickleball game with new friends. In his never-ending quest to shed a few pounds, pickleball seemed like an enjoyable way to accomplish his goal while meeting new people. Some members of the group loved to win, while others just enjoyed the outing, but they all sat around a table relishing beer and chicken wings after the game. Jake suspected the post-game activity might defeat the purpose of losing weight, but he enjoyed it, nonetheless.

He had left his car parked in the driveway at his house, as everything he planned to do that day was within easy walking distance. Now, he savored a gorgeous June night as he sauntered back to the B&B from the pickleball courts around eleven o’clock. No bugs. Warm air, but not muggy. His shadow, cast by the streetlights lining the other side of the street, tagged along to his right, lagging behind but tracking his every step. The leaves whispered in the gentle breeze. Even with the glare of the streetlights, a planet he couldn’t identify glowed like a brilliant marble in the night sky. The street remained quiet, spooky, as if aliens had swooped down from the shiny marble planet and made off with the local inhabitants. Occasional signs offered proof that life might still exist. A Toyota parked in the driveway here, an imposing black Ford F-150 over there, matching white Audis in a third. The dim glow of a table lamp filtered through one curtained window while the telltale blue light of a TV set glimmered through another. A flame flickered for an instant at a house across the street, followed by the glowing embers of a cigarette, which a man carried to the yawning doorway of his open garage. It all confirmed life still occupied the planet.

The only noise other than the whispering leaves was the sound of his gym bag slapping against his thigh with every step and his labored breathing. As if the pounding in his chest and the rivers of sweat he produced at the pickleball game weren’t enough, the slight incline toward the intersecting street that beckoned in the near distance reminded Jake how out of shape he was. The post-pickleball game stiffness would arrive in the morning. He thought he should have taken the car, but his apartment lay only two blocks away now. He could crawl the remaining distance if he had to.

The sound of a car engine starting in the distance interrupted the calm of the night. Warm rubber on pavement chirped as the car pulled away. A dog barked at the sudden sound. Oblivious to the revving engine, Jake jaywalked to the other side of the street about halfway down the block at exactly the time the car careened around the corner. The headlights bounced off the corner of the house and veered in Jake’s direction. A giant spotlight might as well have turned on him. For a split second, Jake stopped mid-stride, staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed as the two brilliant headlights bore down on him at lightning speed.

Only instinct saved him. He leaped for the grassy area bordering the street as the car roared past, its engine screaming. Jake swore the driver’s front corner bumper grazed the heel of his shoe an instant before his body thudded on the unforgiving ground. First, his knees, followed by his arms, and then his face completed the maneuver. The gym bag he launched during his dive landed with a dull smack on the sidewalk.

Jake turned his head to watch the car from his prone position, but all he could tell as the vehicle raced around the corner at the end of the block was that it was big and dark. For a second, streetlights glinted off the wheel disks and reflected off the passenger side windows. Then it disappeared. He moaned and, without moving his extended arm, raised his middle finger in the general direction of the car’s path. While the car and its driver had vanished, the gesture gave him a measure of satisfaction.

He pulled himself upright, and, as everyone does at a time like that, Jake glanced up and down the street to see if anyone had observed his clumsy headfirst dive into the grass. Even the smoker had disappeared from the garage doorway. Jake spit gritty dirt from his mouth, wiped his face, and dusted the turf from his bare knees. His body quivered from the sudden shock of what had just happened. Blood trickled down his leg from a scrape on his kneecap, and his chin throbbed. When he dabbed at the pulsating spot on his face, the streetlight overhead reflected blood on his fingertips. He retrieved his gym bag from the sidewalk, unzipped the compartment, and removed a towel to dab at the wounds before zipping up the fabric duffle and hoisting it over his shoulder.

The quivering subsided, and, deciding everything still worked, although a little stiffer, Jake continued toward the B&B. He stumbled on numb feet with his first steps, but the sensation soon disappeared.

Once the full sensation returned to his feet, Jake continued to hobble down the street on his throbbing knee, but his troublesome night had not ended. The second he rounded the corner onto the street toward his temporary residence, the building housing the Bed and Breakfast erupted into a fireball of flames and flying debris.

CHAPTER TWO

GROUND TREMBLED UNDER Jake’s feet, and streetlights and trees rocked as if a sudden fierce wind grabbed them by the throat and shook. The entire street shimmied for interminable seconds, and the pavement seemed to heave toward the heavens as if from an earthquake before settling back to earth. The sound of the blast echoed off the surrounding houses, and a car siren bleated nonstop. Jake’s muscles wound themselves into knots for the second time in minutes. Goosebumps popped on his arms and the back of his neck, and his stomach twisted. Once again, his gym bag thudded to the ground from his unclenched fist as fiery roofing materials rained down onto the street and the cars in the B&B’s driveway. As Jake’s mouth hung open, a tree in front of the house burst into flames.

For the second time, instinct took over. People lived in that house! Jake shook himself from the shock gripping his body and leaned forward to rummage through his gym bag for his phone. He unzipped one end of his bag but located only his running shoes. He tossed the now bloody towel into the bag and fumbled with the zipper at the other end, hands shaking until he brushed against what he looked for. His heart sank when he held his phone in the brightness of the overhead streetlight to reveal a jagged crack snaking across the length of the screen. It must have cracked when the bag flew out of his hands during his earlier dive for safety. He recognized a man running past as the smoker from the garage.

Jake left the bag in a heap on the sidewalk and limped behind the smoker toward the burning house, jabbing at the numbers on his phone’s keypad with his index finger as he went. At least it still worked as a 911 dispatcher answered and informed him someone had already called in the explosion. Sirens in the distance confirmed it. He hoped he might save the people inside, but his trembling, scratched legs and ragged breathing slowed his progress. When he arrived in front of the scene, the flames reflected off the anxious faces of the neighbors who gathered across the street, some of whom wore pajamas or housecoats over their night attire. One man wore only his jockey shorts. A woman held a towel over a cut, while blood streamed down her dazed face. Jake scanned the crowd as he leaned forward, gasping for breath with his hands on his knees, but saw none of the people he chatted with that morning. Two young men ran toward the house but shielded their faces with their arms as intense heat drove them back.

This can’t be happening!

The scene was one of complete and utter devastation. Bricks and smoldering materials lay on the street as flames from the building lit the night sky. Jake thought a shriek came from inside the remnants of the building, but the sirens and screeching tires of the fire engines drowned out the sound. Was it his imagination? He couldn’t be certain. He stared at the area where the B&B sat. His eyes saw the pile of rubble, but his brain refused to accept the message. As his mind came to grips with the impact of the scene, he realized nobody could have survived. Roaring flames licking from the windows and smoke curling from the remains of the house spoke of what happened. It would soon look like a bulldozer came onto the property, knocked everything down, and left a pile of burning construction material behind. The shriek he thought he heard had to be his imagination or something related to the fire engines and police cars arriving.

The building was a renovated three-story brick structure converted to a Bed and Breakfast by the owners. Smaller than some, Jake considered it to be comfortable enough. Now that he paid attention to the houses on either side, he realized that builders had constructed them of bricks like the Bed and Breakfast. Each of the three houses featured large yards by city standards. The rooftops of the neighboring houses immediately right and left of the devastated building also burned. The explosion had caved in the side of the house on the left as if a giant wrecking ball struck it. Windows in both houses had disappeared, or the glass had been spider-webbed from the blast. A large, ragged hole in the windshield belonging to the vehicle in the righthand driveway suggested that a brick might have sailed through it. The cars parked in the B&B driveway lay under piles of smoldering debris. They parked two-by-two and end to end, but it was difficult to tell where one ended and another started now. Smoldering branches from the burning tree lay on top of the mess.

Jake scanned the street on both sides to see several houses had been affected. The explosion had lifted roofs and crumpled garage doors. Looking over his shoulder, he noticed damaged windows in houses across the street from the B&B. People still emerged from homes, some wide-eyed and confused.

The true impact of the devastation slowly sank in for Jake. Two police officers, who had somehow arrived without him noticing, pushed the crowd back. Jake heard the officer who appeared to be in charge mention “gas” to two other cops while telling them to “control the onlookers.” Many in the crowd held up phones, hoping to capture lightning in a bottle for a viral social media video.

Jake hadn’t smelled the odor before, but now the police officer mentioned it, he could almost taste it. He didn’t know if it was gas or propane. A mixture of fumes and acrid smoke hung in the air. The officers pushed the gathering farther down the street more brusquely now, their determined faces suggesting concern that gas migration could cause additional explosions. Other police officers established a perimeter with yellow tape in front of the Bed and Breakfast and houses across and down the street. Jake thought there had to be at least twelve houses that people wouldn’t return to tonight.

A firefighter rushed to the front of the group. He stalked up and down in front of the gathering, making eye contact and shouting, “Does anyone know anything about that house? How many people lived there?”

Unintelligible murmuring rose from the crowd. One man shouted, “I suspect they used it for short-term rentals.”

The firefighter nodded as if he already knew that and repeated his question. “Do you know how many were in the building? Anybody else know anything?” He gestured with his arms at the crowd. “Come on, hurry. We need answers, and fast!”

Jake realized he might help, so he pushed his way to the front of the crowd and caught the firefighter’s attention.

“I stayed there. I was walking back from a pickleball game when I saw the explosion. At least six people besides me were in the house this morning. The owner and his wife, a couple, a young woman, and another man.”

Some in the crowd within hearing distance gasped at Jake’s count. A utility truck slid to a stop among the gathered vehicles, and as the driver hurriedly approached, the firefighter turned to him to explain that it could have been a gas explosion. At the firefighter’s urging, the truck’s two occupants hustled off to shut off the main valve.

Jake’s phone vibrated in his pocket, but before he had time to check it, the firefighter turned back to him. “Okay, so you say six or more people were in the house?”

“This morning, yes, but I don’t know who checked in or out today. I was out all day.”

The firefighter locked eyes with Jake for a few seconds, processing the information. He turned on his heel and ran toward the front of the trucks, where men and women in yellow helmets and black and yellow coats with reflective stripes aimed a mix of chemicals and water at the burning structures. The firefighter who questioned Jake gestured down the street and around the corner. Two firefighters ran in the direction he pointed. Presumably, Jake assumed, hoping to gain access to the back of the house to save anyone who might be alive inside.