Torn Apart by Sharon Sala Page B

sandwich?” Newt asked.
    Bobby leaned onto the table, hid his face in the crook of his arm and began to sob—deep, gut-wrenching cries that should have pierced the hardest heart.
    Newt’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He hesitated briefly, then reached toward the boy. But instead of patting him on the shoulder in a gesture of comfort, he grabbed the cheese sandwich and began eating it as casually as if they were at a picnic, instead of the wake it had become.
    The way he figured it, by the time the kid had cried himself out, the pain pill should have kicked in. It would be an easy trip to walk him back to the bedroom and tie him up again.
    Hell. Maybe by the time they woke up the power would be back on. Despite his damned burns, things were already looking up.

Six
    Wednesday evening
    T he hurricane had long since passed. The drilling crew that had been evacuated was back. Unfortunately, the new crew chief had yet to arrive, which meant J.R. still wasn’t going home.
    He had just come off a long shift and for the umpteenth time tried to call home, only to get a busy signal. He knew any calls to his home phone would have been forwarded to his cell. The inland storms must have been worse than expected. Usually lines that went down were fixed before this. He couldn’t imagine what the hell was happening, but he knew he didn’t like it. Frustrated, he crawled into his bunk, but he had been there less than an hour when he was awakened by a thunderous noise. For a moment he thought he was hearing waves pounding against the rig; then he realized someone was pounding on his door and shouting frantically.
    What now? he thought, as he swung his legs off the bed and ran to the door.
    It was Charlie Watts, the day crew chief, and he was bleeding from a cut on his forehead and holding an even bloodier towel to his nose.
    J.R.’s pulse kicked. A dozen different scenarios were going through his mind as he grabbed Charlie and pulled him into his room.
    “Charlie! What the hell?”
    Charlie mopped at the cut on his forehead, then poked the towel back up under his nose.
    “There’s a damn riot in the mess hall. I tried to stop it and got this for my trouble. There are so many fighting now, it’s out of control. I need help.”
    “You need to get down to the med station,” J.R. said, as he grabbed his jeans and put them on, then began pulling on his boots.
    “No, no, I’m all right,” Charlie said.
    J.R. reached for a T-shirt. “Who started it?”
    “Blalock, of course. He has his backers. You know that. Someone said something about Blalock being canned. Someone else laughed. One thing led to another and—”
    J.R. pulled the T-shirt over his head.
    “Let’s go,” he said, and ran out the door, with Charlie right behind him.
    Long before he reached the stairs leading to the lower level, he could hear the racket. His belly knotted as he took the stairs two at a time, then skipped the last four in a running leap. As they rounded the corner leading to the mess hall, a chair came flying out the door, followed by the man who’d been sitting in it. No sooner did the man hit the floor than he was on his feet and running back inside.
    “Shit,” J.R. muttered, then dashed into the room. Inside, chaos reigned. With only seconds to assess the situation, he got an idea.
    “Charlie, do you have your cigarette lighter?”
    Charlie slapped it in J.R.’s palm, then ducked as a plate came sailing past his ear.
    “Whatever you’re gonna do, do it fast or we’ll be eating off the floor,” Charlie yelled.
    J.R. grabbed an overturned chair, shoved it beneath a sprinkler head and then leaped up onto the seat. Dodging flying crockery and airborne furniture, he flipped on the lighter and held the flame close to the sprinkler.
    The ensuing fire alarm blasted in a earsplitting shriek as the sprinkler heads in the ceiling began to spew. Between the piercing alarm and the cascades of water now pouring down on the men, the fight ended as