Inside the vehicle, the dark sky and rain pounding hard on the roof created an intimacy, closing them off from the outside world.
“Jesse?”
He felt her hand on his forearm, a thousand longings in the feel of her fingertips alone. She’d said his name too softly and with too much question. He feared to turn and look into those blue-green eyes that he had dreamt about for fourteen years, afraid that if she asked, he would not lie. He would tell her the truth and damn the consequences.
He looked down at her small hand on his arm. The ripple of a scar on his own flesh returned him to his senses. If she asked, he could say he was not the Jesse Boone she had known fourteen years ago. Nor was she the young girl he’d taken in his arms and loved with every ounce of his soul. Too many years had passed, too much time and too many changes had come between them, conspired to keep them apart.
He raised his gaze to her. She searched his face.
A dispatcher’s voice over the radio interrupted.
“Fire reported in the old fertilizer warehouse over by the railroad station. Pickup truck traveling at high speed skidded off the highway. The truck was carrying kerosene and exploded on impact. County emergency vehicles en route.”
Jesse switched on the lights, the siren and punched the gas pedal.
Disaster had begun.
CHAPTER THREE
THEY SMELLED the smoke before they saw it. One pumper truck was already on the scene. Another arrived. Six men jumped out and started unwinding the hose. The building, a two-story barn built before the newer fabricated steel structures came into favor, had been abandoned three years ago when the business closed down. Flames, fueled by the kerosene and the warehouse’s debris, raged through the lower floor.
Amy pulled out a vinyl poncho from the back of the van, grabbed her bag and moved through the rain toward the scene. Any advantage provided by the rain was cancelled out by the wind feeding the flames. Deep, terse voices sliced the air. A man in a heavy slick coat, boots and helmet took the first folds of the hose; others followed. The white snaking hose grew fat with pressure. Water streamed from the nozzle into the building, the crackling of the fire now joined by the steaming and hissing of wet wood falling.
“Give me some more line,” a man yelled. Amy saw Jesse grab gear off the hook-and-ladder, pulling boots to thighs, clipping coatrings closed as he cornered the truck. Then he disappeared among the others, identical in their protective uniforms. The fire surged in its fight.
“I’m Dr. Amy Sherwood with the Courage Bay emergency team that came in this morning,” she shouted above the wind and rain to a squad member. “Where’s the driver?” She indicated the blackened pickup.
“Ambulance already took him to County,” the man shouted back.
“Any other passengers?”
“No, just the driver.”
A series of explosions inside the warehouse blew out windows. The hoses blasted the building full force.
Amy looked at the fireman. “Nitrate,” he explained. “It’s used in fertilizer. Must be some old bags still stored in there.”
She turned to where the men leaned into the hose to relieve the pressure straining their arms. A fireman, head bowed against the falling, flaming chunks of the warehouse, ran from the back of the building with a body in his arms. The body was long, a man easily six foot but lean, and the firefighter had the width of a powerful man.
Amy rushed over, recognizing Chief Kannon as he threw off his helmet and mask. Mitch laid the man down on a portable stretcher in the back of an SUV, out of the rain. The man was unconscious, late fifties, unshaven, malnourished. His skin, like well-worn leather, had a blue-gray ashy cast.
“Bring the resuscitator,” Mitch yelled.
Amy bent over the man, tilted back his head, and breathed into his mouth, checking for chest rise. Nothing. She placed one hand over the other on the chest and pumped lightly like a heart. Sixty beats per minute.
“Don’t recognize him,” Mitch said. “He might have come in on the trains, holed up in the building. I found him not far from the back door. He must have been trying to get out when the smoke overcame him.”
Amy leaned in to the man’s tilted head, breathed. Nothing. “The airway passages are too swollen. No oxygen is getting through.”
A firefighter ran over with the mechanical resuscitator. The chief began fitting the facepiece connection into the regulator.
“We’ve got to open the airways first.” Amy reached into her bag for an emergency trach kit. With swift, precise movements, she sliced into the windpipe at the base of the throat, being careful not to touch muscle or vein. She inserted a thin tube, leaned down, breathed, watched the chest inflate.
“Give him oxygen,” she told the chief. She looked up, saw a firefighter nearby whip off his helmet, and vomit on his boots.
The mechanical resuscitator forced pure oxygen into the man’s lungs until they expanded and built up enough pressure to push the air out. The machine breathed for the man. His color stayed gray. She looked up and saw Jesse unstrap his helmet, his face colored with the heat of the fire, streaked with soot and his own sweat. He breathed deeply, taking in fresh air. Behind him, she saw the worst of the fire had been contained. Only one line was needed now to give the building a last bath to make sure no embers waited for the wind. The warehouse stood, hollowed and charred. The blackened truck wasn’t far off, as if part of a matching set.
The resuscitator breathed. A quick, clicking sound of air in, out, in, out. “He’s still not breathing on his own,” Amy told Jesse and the chief. “He needs to get to a hospital.”
“The rescue squad is on its way to Beeville with the burn victim—the truck driver. He belongs in Houston, but the storm has grounded the Flight for Life. We could call County.”
Amy shook her head. “There’s no time.”
“Put him in the Bronco,” Jesse said. “We’ll take him to Beeville.”
He and Mitch lifted the blanketed body and carried it to the sheriff’s vehicle, Amy moving in unison, linked by the machine. All the while, the wind and rain tried to thwart them. Once Jesse flattened the back seat, they eased the man onto it. Amy propped herself by his side, and Mitch headed back to his crew. Jesse stripped off his gear, the rain washing him down.
“How far is the hospital?” Amy asked.
“About thirty-five miles north.” Jesse climbed behind the wheel and turned on the lights and siren, heading toward the interstate.
The winds had gotten stronger. Amy could feel them playing with the van, pushing against the sides while the rain battered the roof. Her patient’s pulse was weakening. “Come on, come on,” she urged in the rhythm of the breathing apparatus.
“Move.” Jesse’s order was directed at the heavy traffic slowing their progress. He took to the shoulder where necessary. After about ten miles, the lanes began to clear. The vehicle gained speed.
Jesse radioed ahead to the hospital, and emergency personnel were waiting for them with a stretcher. Amy walked beside the stretcher, reporting on the man’s condition.
“Thanks, Doc,” an intern told her.
Amy nodded, then stepped away as the patient was wheeled through the hospital’s double doors. She turned and found Jesse waiting for her. Their eyes met, and Amy knew the grimness in his gaze was mirrored in her own.
“C’mon,” he said, the strength in his low voice calling her. “I’ll buy you an herbal tea.”
She shook her head and smiled wanly. “Coffee.”
They opted for a convenience store over the hospital cafeteria. Both filled tall cardboard cups with black, steaming liquid, Amy adding cream and sugar. Jesse drank his black, she mentally noted. The Jesse Boone she’d known hadn’t drunk coffee at all, but then again, neither had she fourteen years ago.
They moved to the cashier, their gazes drawn to the portable television behind the counter, its screen filled with mesmerizing concentric circles of blue, red, yellow. The image changed to an aerial view of traffic he
ading in from the coast area, then to empty store shelves.
Jesse glanced at Amy, her gaze intent on the television report. Years ago, he had resigned himself to the fact that he’d lost her forever. Now she stood beside him. He looked at the fury filling the screen. The gods were having a field day today.
Tropical-storm-force winds extending more than 100 miles out from the hurricane’s eye could cause torrential rainstorms and inland flooding as deadly and disastrous as storm-surge flooding. Tornadoes possible along the northern side of the hurricane’s spiral.
“They upgraded it to a Category Four,” the cashier told them as he handed them their change. The severity of hurricanes was measured on a scientific scale. Only a Category Five was worse.
A shot of the coast filled the screen. The waves rose like twenty-foot walls, rolled onto themselves, breaking into sheets of blowing white spray. Others even larger and more powerful followed. The camera panned to a plywood sheet protecting the windows of a beach shop. A black bull’s-eye had been spray painted in the center, the message Hit me with your best shot, Damon…Fire away painted beside it. Neither Amy nor Jesse smiled.
They ran to the SUV, heads bowed against the force of the rain, hands curved protectively over the tops of their coffee cups. Inside the vehicle’s cab, they hauled off their raincoats, spraying the interior and themselves with fat drops of water. Outside, the winds caught the rain, sweeping it hard horizontally so that the water seemed to be running up the windows instead of down. Latest predictions were the storm would hit around midnight. It was now 4:00 p.m.
They drove in silence, sipping their coffee. Lightning flashed bright as day, slicing through the rain’s curtain. The vehicle trembled with the weight of the storm. Jesse set his coffee container in the console’s cup holder and held the steering wheel steady with two hands.
“Traffic heading north seems lighter,” Amy noted.
“Most who evacuated have got to where they were going and settled in,” Jesse said.
“The storm could still bend or even weaken before it comes ashore.”
He nodded, but the way the scar stretched thin along his jaw showed anything but optimism.
“You think it’ll be as bad as they say?” Amy asked.
“Hard to predict with a storm this size. It’s already shifted twice. Like you said, it could shift again, veer south. A change in air patterns over the next few hours, and Damon could end up being no more than a tropical storm with heavy winds and rain.”
His eyes on the road, Jesse overreached for his coffee cup and mistakenly brushed Amy’s arm. Frowning, he glanced across at her. “Sorry.” He wrapped his hand around the coffee cup and raised it to his lips, his gaze returning to the road. His other hand clenched the steering wheel, the emotions rising inside him as strong as the storm outside the windows. Her flesh had been soft, warm despite the lingering dampness. He set his coffee back down and took the steering wheel with both hands, struggling for control. Fourteen years later, and she could still take him with one touch.
They had left the interstate and were on a county route close to Turning Point when they saw a garbage can in the middle of the other lane. Trash bags were strewn around it, and its lid lay several feet away. Jesse pulled over to the shoulder. “I’ll be right back,” he said, reaching for his raincoat in the back. Amy started to do the same.
“Where you going?” he asked her.
“I’ll get the lid. You get the can.” She pulled on the vinyl poncho. “We can both get the garbage.”
“I can handle it, thanks. You stay here.” He looked up and down the road, waited for two cars to pass, then jumped out of the Bronco. He paused as a truck came too fast around the corner, steered around the trash. He was about to start across when he heard a car door slam closed. “Damn stubborn woman,” he muttered, his heart growing warm. He erased his small smile before she reached his side, replacing it with a stern gaze as she fell into step beside him.
“I came here to help, Sheriff.”
“You’ll have plenty of opportunities for that, Doc. But if you enjoy standing out in the pouring rain, don’t let me stop you.”
He crossed toward the garbage can, now spinning in the wind. Amy ran to grab the lid.
“I don’t enjoy standing out in the pouring rain, Sheriff,” she shouted. “But I’d enjoy even less having to patch up your sorry butt if a car came around that corner too fast and struck you down.”
He bent to pick up the remaining bag of garbage and hide the grin he let himself enjoy. He straightened, his features mirroring his posture until he saw her standing, arm outstretched, palm out, signaling any oncoming cars to stop. Only there weren’t any cars in sight.
“What corner would that be, Doc? That treacherous one there?” He indicated a slight bend in the road that offered no possibility of obstructed view as he took the lid from her and locked it onto the trash can.
“Exactly.” She stood straight, arms still outstretched to halt any cars should they come. “Not to mention impaired visibility from the rain,” she yelled after him as he carried the can to a house at the side of the road. Finding the garage open, Jesse secured the garbage pail inside. “Put the two together and there’s a high possibility you could be roadkill in a matter of seconds.”
He headed back to her.
“Then I’d have a hell of a time explaining to the whole town what happened to their beloved local law enforcement officer,” Amy shouted, “and would go down in the annals of Turning Point history as Dr. Amy Sherwood, sheriff-killer.”
“Doc?”
“What?” she snapped, having worked herself up into a righteous, rain-soaked bundle of indignation unhappy about being interrupted.
“There’s a car passing the one coming up in the lane behind you, so I suggest you move your butt.”
Amy glanced over her shoulder, said a word she rarely used and marched back to the sheriff’s vehicle.
Inside the cab, she whipped her poncho off. She unfastened her hair and wrung the wetness out of it before she twisted it up again.
Jesse slipped his own rain gear off and brushed his fingers through his wet hair. “That’s okay. You don’t have to thank me for saving your life. All in a day’s work, ma’am.”
She swung her head toward him with a restrained precision that he knew cost her. A murderous look deepened her turquoise eyes to navy. “What I’ll thank you for is to leave my butt—” her teeth snapped together on the word “—out of this.”
The urge to kiss those firm, full lips came so swift, so strong. He leaned toward her. Her dark eyes clouded, searched his face, looking for a man who no longer existed. He forced himself upright and put the vehicle into gear. Steering onto the road, he ignored the desire that would not go away. “It wasn’t exactly a politically correct comment, was it, Doc?”
Amy sank back into the seat as if the round were over. “I started it, Sheriff.”
“What would be the politically correct term for ‘sorry butt?’” he teased. “Please move your genetically-uninspired gluts? They say that in California?”
He watched her face light up as she smiled. The urge to take her in his arms, press his mouth to hers spiked. His gut twisted.
“Why are we talking about butts?” she asked him.
“You’re talking about butts. I’m talking about genetically—”
“Sheriff Boone,” a voice interrupted over the radio. Amy stopped smiling. They both leaned forward.
“Sheriff Boone, over.” Jesse replied.
“Your cousin Clare’s youngest has been calling the station, asking to speak to you. He sounds upset but he refuses to talk to anyone but you. I told him I’d get the message to you, have you contact him. You can reach him at home.”
“Thanks,” Jesse said to his dispatcher. “I’ll give him a call.”
“Better do it fast. Storm’s even interfering with mobile reception.”
After he signed off, Jesse pulled out his cellular phone.
“
Worth a try,” he told Amy.
“Would you like me to dial for you?”
“I got it. Thanks though.” He punched the numbers. “Shane? Shane?” he repeated, louder. “This is your Uncle Jesse. What’s wrong, kiddo?”
Amy heard the tenderness come into Jesse’s voice.
“Shane? Shane?” Jesse tried twice more, then snapped off the phone and dropped it into the console, about to mutter a phrase he never used in mixed company when he stopped himself. “I lost the connection.”
Amy released an expletive equal to the one he’d suppressed. “Here.” She twisted over the seat into the back, and rummaged in her bag. “Use mine.”
Jesse shook his head. “The winds are too strong. I’m almost to Granger’s garage. I’ll go in and try the phone there.” He pressed on the accelerator.
He left the van running as he sprinted into the gas station. A few minutes later, he came out, the customary grimness on his face covering concern.
“What’s wrong?” Amy asked as he opened the door.
“Michael, my cousin Clare’s oldest boy, skipped football practice and went down to the seashore with some other boys to take advantage of the high waves coming in from the storm. He told Shane he’d beat the tar out of him if he said anything, but it’s been a few hours. It’s getting late and Michael should have been back by now. Shane’s been watching the weather reports and is scared big-time.”
“Where’s your cousin?” Amy asked.
“Clare’s at work. She’s a cashier at the Smart-Mart over in Driscoll. Her shift ends at five, but she just called home to say she’d be a little late. Everyone’s scrambling to stock up and the lines were stretching out the door. Shane didn’t want to worry her about Michael, but with the rain and the wind and the reports on the TV, he’s getting nervous.”
“Where’s the boys’ father?”
Jesse dragged a hand across his face, rubbed his forehead. “Clare’s husband left her about a year ago for a younger blonde and moved to California. It’s been tough on the boys, but Michael especially has been giving her a hard time. Their father had both boys out for about a month this summer, bought them surfboards. Ever since Michael’s come back, he eats, sleeps and dreams surfing. Damn kids.”
Hard Rain Page 4
