Countdown Page 16

  “Got it.”

  Kim braced one more cushion in place, then picked up the candlestick, and counted aloud. “One! Two! Three!” She threw the candlestick in a hard arc, ducked backward and pulled the pillow over her head.

  The bomb exploded.

  Chapter 17

  The explosion was louder than anything she’d ever heard. The sound was physical, carried in shock waves through her condo, slamming into walls, ceilings, rooms, reverberating at a decibel that threatened to shatter her eardrums. And it wasn’t fast, as she’d expected, but seemed to vibrate through her head, arms, chest, teeth, a sound sucking everything else out of the world, for a very long time. A sense of pressure squeezed her body, all of it, and something slammed down overhead with a hard crack. The desk buckled over her, slamming into the sofa cushion over her head and shoulders, shoving her into an even tighter ball. Her head and face squeezed into a pillow, and for a second she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and she thought with panic that it would be so ironic if she escaped being crushed or blown to bits but then was smothered in a pillow.

  Don’t panic.

  Deal with the facts.

  Can’t breathe.

  Why?

  Pillow.

  Move it.

  Can’t get my head turned.

  Use your hands.

  Arms are trapped, too tight.

  Move your knees a little.

  She tried pushing her knees down and the pillow shifted infinitesimally, enough that she could wiggle her head to the side, and slide her nose and mouth into a breathing hole in the dark, tight spot, and gulp in some dusty air.

  “Lex?” she cried as loud as she could. “Can you hear me?”

  The tinny sound of the phone came through the darkness, but she couldn’t really hear it. With fierce effort, she tried to move her right arm against whatever was trapping it. She’d put the phone down right beside her knee—surely she could move that far.

  But although she could move her fingers, the arm was smashed hard against her side. “Lex, I can’t make out your words, but I’m safe. Stuck, but safe.”

  It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two before she heard noises beyond her tight dark world. A dog barked distantly, and she heard a shout, then others farther away. A siren howled.

  “Here!” she cried. “I’m in here!”

  She realized in the dense darkness that her ear was really hurting again. Damn it. Her knee was getting a cramp.

  Shouldn’t she be able to see some cracks of light somewhere? Was it only that the pillows and cushions were blotting everything out, or was the darkness a sign of something more ominous? She thought of earthquake victims, buried in rubble for days.

  Breathe.

  Not that she was afraid of that happening now. The whole of the NSA knew exactly where she was. The complex had been surrounded by police and rescue personnel before the bomb even blew. She would not be here longer than ten minutes, a half hour at the outside.

  Still, it was sobering to imagine.

  Something dripped on her shoulder. Water? Where was water coming from? Oh, probably fire hoses. There was probably fire from the explosion. Of course they would have to put it out.

  A sense of tightness grew in her chest and she focused on taking a long, slow deep breath, letting it out very slowly and easily. Stay calm. There was plenty of oxygen. She was not buried under tons of rubble. It was just the desk and maybe some house debris. She was not, as far as she could tell, injured.

  A sound came from the phone, a tinny faraway sound. “I’m okay!” she tried to cry out, but it came out as a croak. Her throat was dry. “I’m okay!” she tried again.

  Now her knee was really cramping and she tried to ease her position a little, pushing it to one side, moving her shoulders, trying to see how much movement she could get. Very little. She was in a more or less fetal position, with her knees bent, her arms gripping the cushion, her face sandwiched between the cushion she’d placed on her shoulders and the one in her chest. By easing the knee to the left slowly, she managed to get a little more space for breathing. A centimeter at a time, she eased her head to the right, pushing as hard as she could toward the faintly less-dead air space. She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and there was still no light.

  A dog barked more urgently, and she heard an identifiable voice that didn’t seem faraway. Maybe they’d made it to the back room finally. “Here!” she cried.

  “We know you’re there, Kim,” a man’s voice said. It seemed very close. “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes! I’m fine.”

  “Good. Don’t do a lot of moving, all right? There’s a logistical problem with a roof beam and we’re trying to get you out, but everything is pretty delicate. We don’t want to get too much movement until I tell you to, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “It might take a little while, but you’re safe. Trust me.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good. Hang in there!”

  The sense of panic rose again. A roof beam. Don’t move.

  Breathe, she told herself. Just breathe through it.

  Don’t panic.

  It was hard to say how long she stayed crouched there. There was comfort in hearing the voices of the men on the other side of her darkness. Hearing the scrape and rattle and shouted directions, some of which she could make out and some she could not. There was discomfort in the tightness of her position, and an annoying drip of water coming through some crack she couldn’t identify, and the pain in her injured ear.

  And it was very difficult not to panic when she could not move a muscle. She didn’t like closed places. Never had. Everyone had their difficulties, their weak spots. This was hers.

  It was like a coffin. The most horrifying thing she could imagine was being buried alive. She hated the stories of people who’d been buried by mistake, not dead—

  Stop.

  —and they died there, the wood of the coffin scraped raw by fingers that could do no good.

  Breathe.

  She forced herself to bring her attention back to her breath. In. Out. She was not dying. She was not buried alive. There were people right on the other side of the wooden desk who knew she was there and were working to get her out.

  Breathe. In. Out.

  In the darkness, she thought of her brother Jason. It seemed she could almost smell him. Was he afraid at the end? Was he in some awful little prison cell before they decided to kill him, knowing what his end would be, or had they just grabbed him out of his truck and killed him?

  “Don’t get all dramatic, Sissie,” Jason said in her ear. She felt his hand on her back, right between her shoulder blades. “It’s all good. It’s all good.”

  “We’re in!” said a voice—a real voice—outside her enclave. “Kim, can you hear me?”

  “Yes. Yes!”

  “We’ve got to get a winch over here—there’s a beam sitting right on the desk and we’ve got to drag it off. All right?”

  She wanted to scream. She didn’t. She swallowed hard and said, “Okay.” Better than being dead. Better than being a hostage. Better than being an earthquake victim, buried beneath a thousand tons of debris in South America or Indonesia.

  The oddly warm sense of a protective hand between her shoulder blades came back. “That’s it, honey,” said her brother’s voice. “You’re doing fine. Think of good things. Think of that day we found the frog palace at the pond behind Muller’s store.”

  “Good idea,” she said aloud. She called up the day—bright gold and green; summertime, leaves making dappled shadows on the grassy ground behind a small grocery. It was a waste area in the midst of the city, filled with trees and junk and the secret pond. Teenagers went there at night to have sex, and children chased tadpoles in the daytime. That afternoon, it was only she and Jason, humidity and heat enveloping them like a suit of armor. The frog palace was sitting at the end of the pond, beneath the trees—a little building some eccentric had built, with
open rooms and puddles of water through it, and pagoda-style towers and roofs. It was freshly painted, the tips bright red.

  “I thought of the frog palace whenever things got hard,” he said, and his hand moved, easy and smooth, on her back. “Love ya, Sissie.”

  With the comfort of that hand, she drifted. It wasn’t sleep, exactly, but it was a place of softness and no fear, a release of all things dark and sorrowful. It could have been moments or hours when she heard a new voice.

  “Kim. Kim! Kim, can you hear me?”

  “Lex?” she croaked. Then again, louder. “Lex?”

  “I’m here. We’re going to pull the beam off now. You should be outta there in a hot second, darlin’.”

  “Thank God,” she said, but wasn’t sure if he could hear her. Her throat felt raw. Dry.

  There was a sound of engines, and a groaning. Shouts. And suddenly, the pressure over Kim’s body eased. She couldn’t see any lights, but she could suddenly breathe.

  And move. She straightened, and kicked the pillow by her leg, and a sharp light blasted into her little cave. She winced, put a hand up to block it, but she didn’t wait for anyone to pull her out, she fell forward into the air, sucking in a huge lungful, grateful to move her limbs.

  Pinpricks of pain rushed through her arms and legs, her feet and hands, as the feeling came back. She tried to stand up, stumbled as her legs refused to hold her, and then there were hard, strong arms around her. “Hold on there, honey,” Lex said. “I got you.”

  She leaned on him, grateful for the solidity, and gritted her teeth. “I am so claustrophobic,” she whispered. “Excuse me.” She stumbled away, and threw up. It was impossible to say what she threw up on, since there was nothing recognizable around her.

  Lex stood beside her. “I think we need to get you to the hospital and get you checked out.”

  Kim scowled at him. “Don’t be ridiculous.” She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “I’m nauseated because I’m so relieved to get out, but I feel fine.”

  He smiled, his hands on his hips, and nodded in a funny way. “I appreciate that, Valenti, but you’re at least gonna need a couple of stitches. You’ve got a few cuts, you know, just here and there.”

  “Do I?” She touched her face. Felt the smear of blood. “I had a pillow on my head.”

  His nostrils flared. “Good thing.” He held out his arm, as if he were coaxing a small child. “Come on. Let’s get you to the hospital. There’s an ambulance over there.”

  Kim felt dizzy, and put her hand on his arm. “Okay. I guess that would be good.”

  He made a soft noise and gently cradled her head, kissed her temple. There was fierceness in the gesture, restraint in his strong palm and fingers. “God,” he whispered.

  For one minute, she just let herself rest there, leaning on the hard rectangle of his forearms, his hand on her head, his breath warm on her face. Finally she said, “I have a headache. Do you have any ibuprofen?”

  He made a noise between exasperation and a laugh. “Here’s your ride, honey,” he said, and helped her into the ambulance.

  Chapter 18

  When Kim finally emerged from the emergency room, where she’d been x-rayed and stitched and washed up, Lex was sitting in the waiting room. He was slumped against the wall, his head back, his eyes closed. A magazine was open on his lap.

  Kim halted for a moment, stung by the coyote beauty of his lean face, the high cheekbones and strong nose. He probably had been a very gawky teenager. The thought made her feel tender.

  “Hey,” she said, touching his knee.

  He startled awake. “Oh! Hey!”

  She smiled gently. “We gotta stop meeting like this, Luthor.”

  He peered at her with concern. “How are you?”

  “No great damages. A few stitches.” The ear—which had been torn open again, along with a six-inch gash along the top of her scalp from a sword of metal that had just missed her temple—was definitely sore. She had a headache still, but they’d given her some drugs to take before she went to bed. “Nothing broken. No concussion.”

  “Good.” He stood. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starving. I haven’t had a meal since—” she frowned, thinking back “—a tuna sandwich at lunch.”

  “Can you hold on for about a half hour?”

  “Sure, what’s up?”

  He raised his brows, took her hand. “The reason I knew there might be a bomb at your house is because—”

  “They got Scott.” Her stomach dropped. “Is he dead?”

  “No. He’s in critical condition, in intensive care. I thought you’d want to see him.”

  “Yeah.”

  In silence, they rode up in an elevator. Lex reached for her hand, but Kim couldn’t bear it. Slid her hand out of his grasp.

  “It’s not you,” she said.

  “It’s okay.”

  The hallway they entered was deeply hushed. Somewhere, someone wept quietly, and Kim could hear the soft beeping and breathing of machines. A guard sat outside Scott’s room, a paperback novel in his hands. Lex flashed his badge. “This is his partner.”

  “Only one of you can go in at a time.”

  Kim opened the door. A nurse in a pale blue scrub suit was recording vitals on a clipboard. She looked up as Kim entered, and gave her a grave smile. “He’s resting right now,” she said very quietly. “He won’t know you’re here.”

  “I’ll know,” she said, and moved to the bed.

  Scott was nearly unrecognizable. His face was black-and-blue and swollen, with cuts and scratches and stitches. One hand was bandaged in a way that made the bile rise in her throat. “Did he lose his hand?”

  The nurse glanced toward the door. “You look like you were with him when it happened.”

  “Not exactly. Two different bombs.”

  The nurse had kind blue eyes and sturdy shoulders. “He lost the hand.”

  “What else?”

  “Skull fracture, broken ribs, crushed pelvis.” She paused. “Internal injuries.”

  “Such as?”

  “Lacerated liver, lost spleen…we had to induce a coma to keep his brain from swelling too much.”

  Kim asked, “Is he going to live?”

  “It’s a good sign that he’s made it this long,” the nurse said levelly.

  “Thank you.”

  The nurse hung the chart at the foot of his bed. On the way out, she squeezed Kim’s arm, just above the elbow. “Don’t stay long.”

  When she’d left, Kim bent over him and pressed her lips to his battered face. “I’m here, Scott,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing, giving credit where credit was due.”

  The monitors blipped steadily. Heart rate, respiration, blood pressure. Something dripping from an IV attached to his arm. The stump of his arm lay against the white blanket, somehow obscene.

  “You better not die. I’ll be back here in the morning to read to you. We’ll get these bastards, Scott, I swear it.”

  Behind her, Lex said, “C’mon. Let’s go get some sloppy fast food and get you off your feet.”

  Kim squeezed Scott’s hand, and let herself be led away.

  Instead of fast food, however, they went to a hotel, where their floor was heavily guarded. “Orders,” Lex said. “We can get room service.”

  “We’re not in the same room, are we? Do you know what that would do to my reputation?”

  “Not the same room.” His nostrils flared as he pushed open his door, and pointed. “But I made sure they were adjoining.”

  “You don’t expect sex, I hope.”

  “Not even.” He opened his side of the door, and gave her the card key to her room. “Go round and open that.”

  When Kim went to her room and opened the connecting door from her side, he said, “I won’t sleep if I don’t know you’re safe.” And very gently, he touched her face. “Are you all right?”

  Kim ducked her chin. “Fine. I keep telling you I’m fine, ex
cept that I’m starving and I want a shower to wash off all the crud.”

  “Let’s order and then you can have a shower.”

  “Did anyone think to get me some clothes to change into?”

  Lex grinned, and pointed to a suitcase placed before the dresser. “One of the female officers went shopping for you.”

  She shrugged out of her coat, flung it on the bed. “Is my condo completely destroyed?”

  He hesitated. Then nodded. “’Fraid so.”

  “At least I’m not dead.”

  “What do you want to eat, darlin’?” He picked up the phone. “Cheeseburger? Fries? Pizza?”

  “Food. I just want some food. With meat. Fat. Cheeseburger is probably excellent.” She was practically swaying where she sat, and made herself stand up and open the suitcase. As Lex asked for room service and started ordering food, she picked out a simple turquoise T-shirt and some sweats. No bras, but there were panties in several small sizes. Bless her, whoever she was. Good job.

  The shower helped. As the dirt and sweat and stickiness washed away, she could let the day go, too. In the shower she could cry a little, let flow the tears for Scott and the trauma of being trapped and the loss of her home. She could do it privately in the shower, where no one would feel compelled to make her feel better or tell her it was okay.

  It wasn’t okay.

  When she emerged she didn’t bother to wipe the steam off the mirror. She didn’t want to know what she looked like. She simply pulled on the clothes, brushed her teeth and towel-dried her hair, then combed it so it fell in ringlets.

  Lex had obviously not heard her emerge. She saw him through the open connecting door, sitting in the chair by the window, bent over with his head in his hands—a posture of utter despair or exhaustion.

  She went toward him, padding quietly over the rug in her bare feet, and was nearly upon him when she somehow gave herself away. He raised his head. Met her eyes.

  There was no need for words. Kim went to him, put her arms on his shoulders and sank down on his knee so he could wrap her up, pull her close to him. “That was bad,” he said hoarsely, and pressed his face into her shoulder.