“But don’t you see, Heath? I don’t need your help. I need—” She stopped right there.
“What, Harper? What do you need?”
An explosion ripped the air.
Shook the ground.
Reverberated through Harper’s bones.
Then . . . a whoosh.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Harper’s heart pounded. Her eardrums throbbed. Fear would choke her to death.
Heath’s body pressed over her, protecting her as glass and debris showered them. The throbbing turned to sharp ringing in her ears and seemed to circle her whole head.
She couldn’t move. Was it dead weight? Was Heath—
Oh, Lord, please . . . no . . .
Pressing her palms against the rough concrete, she pushed, but he was immovable.
“Harper, wait.” His voice was raspy. Was he hurt? “Stuff is still coming down.”
As if on cue, a chunk of wood slammed onto the pavement next to them.
Harper screamed.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she sent up a hundred desperate prayers for safety and protection. Several more seconds passed before Heath moved from his sheltering position, then assisted her to sit. No standing for either of them yet.
Waves of dizziness washed over her. Over and over. Comprehension eluded her. What? How?
“Are you okay?” Heath’s words broke through her confusion, his tone gentle, raw. “Hurt anywhere?”
“No. Are you?”
He shook his head as he looked her up and down.
“Heath. Someone could need help. Others must be hurt.” From between the two trucks, she couldn’t see where the blast had occurred.
Sirens screamed. He hauled her to her feet. How come the blast hadn’t seemed to affect him as much? Dizziness swept over her as she leaned against his truck.
“Are you guys okay?” Liam rushed up to them.
“I think so.” Heath looked Liam over. “You?”
“Only because I hadn’t gotten into my truck yet.”
Harper glanced across the street. A large, flaming chunk of metal had crushed the cab of Heath’s extra truck that Liam had been using.
“I’m going to see what I can do to help.” Liam took off.
Heath grabbed Harper and urged her toward the sheriff’s department building. “I need to get you somewhere safe.”
She resisted. Down at the end of the block, flames devoured what was left of the old train depot. “Heath, that building was locked up and empty, wasn’t it?” Empty like Heath’s cabin, though not nearly as remote. “So that would mean no one was inside during the blast. No one was hurt.” She hoped and prayed that was the case.
“People who were standing anywhere nearby could be injured. The shockwave or shrapnel could have hurt them. We need to get checked out too.”
“They need our help though.”
The same crippling anguish she felt was reflected in his face. “Promise me you’ll stay here.”
He didn’t wait for an answer but rushed off to assist a woman limping in the parking lot, tugging along her crying little boy.
Harper hurried to aid a man in his sixties who stood over a woman sprawled on the ground. A gash in her forehead oozed blood. Harper leaned over to assist. “Let’s get you out of here. Away from the building.”
“No, I’m okay.”
With the man’s help, the woman rose to her feet and leaned into him. “We’re okay,” he said to Harper. “I’ll get her to the hospital. Don’t worry about us.”
Harper rushed to help anyone she could find. A crying woman. Two teenagers sitting stunned on the ground. She could do nothing more than make sure they weren’t seriously injured, and reassure them.
She let her eyes scan the scene. The glass windows in the closest vehicles were shattered. Bystanders sat next to each other holding hands. Law enforcement and staff exited the sheriff’s department building. People poured out of the burger grill across the street. Someone handed out plastic gloves to protect against glass. Employees from the local hotel only two blocks away were wrapping blankets around people. Volunteer fire trucks approached and emergency crews arrived.
A little girl cried. “My mommy. I can’t find my mommy!” Harper lifted the girl into her arms. “Shh. It’ll be okay. We’ll find your mom.”
Her heart pounded in rhythm with the girl’s sobs.
She searched the tragic scene for a young mother. Harper spotted a woman lying next to a vehicle across the street. Unconscious? Not wanting to scare the little girl, she approached the woman cautiously. What if she was dead? Holding the child, Harper crouched at the same moment the woman moaned and opened her eyes.
“Mommy!” The girl scrambled from Harper’s arms.
“Careful now. I’m guessing your mommy has a concussion.” Harper waited with them until a paramedic rushed forward to assist.
Harper made sure the woman was gripping the child’s hand before she retreated to give the paramedic space to work.
Black smoke obscured the sky as a fire raged at the depot, joining the darkening clouds of the impending storm.
Huffing, Sheriff Taggart stepped in her path. “Harper, get your camera. Take as many pictures as you can. Take pictures of everything. The building, the flames, and the smoke. Everything. The people. Understand?”
“But I can’t be impartial. I was near the blast.”
“You’re pulling that now? Come on, we were all near the blast in a manner of speaking. Everyone is going to be taking pictures, but I want the professional shots. It’ll be hours before other agencies get here. Maybe not until tomorrow. I’ve contacted ATF as well as the Cody Bomb Squad, which is much closer. They’re part of Wyoming Homeland Security Regional Response.”
“What if it was only a gas leak or something?” she asked. He was scaring her.
“I wish I could believe that. In the meantime, we have work to do. Now I have to get busy setting up a command center. It’s going to rain soon, so you’d better get busy. Are you with me?” Fury and desperation twisted his expression.
“Yes.”
Shame at making him waste time infused her. She shook off the emotions, jogged over to Heath’s truck and opened the door to grab her camera.
Harper came around the truck and began snapping pictures. She started by photographing the people, which she usually did last. Those helping and those injured. Those who were merely spectators. Sometimes the criminal returned to the scene of the crime, more often in arson cases, so the perp could be in the crowd. Did an explosion that ended in fire have the same dynamics as arson?
Had this been caused by a firebomb? Flames continued to raze the building as firefighters exited empty-handed.
Through her camera lens she could also search for Heath. Where was he? What was he doing?
Was he okay?
Liam jogged up to her, breathless.
“I don’t know where Heath is,” she said. “He was helping people, but now I don’t see him.”
Harper pulled her gaze from the viewfinder to look at Liam.
Soot covered his face. “Heath. He’s inside,” he said. “He went inside the building to search. Someone told us they’d seen a woman go into the building to search for her child. I went in after him and tried to find him.” He leaned over his thighs to catch his breath. “A fireman pulled me out.”
Of course Heath would be driven more than most to save someone trapped in a fire. Harper almost crumpled at the news.
Instead, she propelled herself toward the building.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
THURSDAY, 10:42 A.M.
BURNING BUILDING
Flames licked the walls around Heath. He had precious minutes, if not seconds, left. The heat and toxic smoke could kill them both if he didn’t get her out of here. They’d survived a second explosion near the front of the structure, but who knew if something else in this death trap would explode?
“I got you. You’re okay.” Heath hefted her up, bolstering her with
his arm. She collapsed against him. He lifted her up over his shoulders like a firefighter is trained to carry survivors. Like Dad had shown them when they were kids.
The way he’d entered the burning structure was now an inferno. He’d have to exit the building through the back. He took the path of least resistance, praying this wasn’t the road to death.
Images of the day a fire had razed his childhood home and taken his mother from him fought for space in his mind. He couldn’t let those memories shut him down, paralyze him, or he wouldn’t make it out. This injured woman depended on him.
Lord, please let her live. Please let it not be for nothing. Please let us escape!
A door hung open at the back of the building. A break in the smoke gave him a window, literally. He could see through the window. Grass. Sky.
Freedom.
He felt a rumble in his legs. A portion of the ceiling collapsed, blocking his way.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
THURSDAY, 10:44 A.M.
DOWNTOWN GRAYBACK
“Heath!” Harper couldn’t escape Liam’s strong arms. “Let me go. What are you doing? That’s your brother in there.”
“Stop, Harper. I can’t let you go inside.”
“Don’t you care about him?”
“He’s my blood! Of course I care. But he would kick me to the other side of the state if I let you go in after him. You watch. Heath will be okay. He always is.”
How could Liam believe his own words? How could he be so convinced as he said them? Her body refused to cooperate with her mind and her limbs went limp against him.
She couldn’t help but think of the story Heath had told her about how he’d tried to go in to save their mother, but his father had prevented him.
Heath. There was so much she had yet to say to him. She’d been about to lay it all out there when the explosion had changed all their lives forever.
While some firefighters held on to hoses and doused the flames, four others rushed from behind the depot, giving it a wide berth. Two carried a woman. Two practically dragged a coughing Heath.
Liam released her, and they both ran across the parking lot toward Heath. She could feel the heat from the flames. The men ushered Heath and the woman to an ambulance waiting nearby, and Harper and Liam followed.
Heath shrugged free and stood on his own. A fireman pressed an oxygen mask against his face. Heath sat on the edge of a gurney.
Heart pounding, Harper slowly approached. She wanted to berate him. To flail her fists at him. What had he been thinking, running into that burning building?
From the gurney where she lay, the woman he’d pulled from the burning building turned her head, her eyes blinking at Heath. Gratitude filled them.
A man approached, holding a child. The child she’d been looking for?
Harper ran her hand through Heath’s soot-covered hair. She finger-combed it, black dust flaking onto his shoulders. Much too personal, but affection for him brimmed inside and it needed to go somewhere. His eyes smiled up at her.
“You’re some kind of crazy,” she said. A hero.
Liam—the one who had proclaimed that Heath would always be okay—stared at his brother as if contemplating the grief he would have experienced if Heath had not escaped. Her eyes burned with unshed tears.
“Harper!” Taggart called her name.
She turned to find him rushing toward her. “Glad to see Heath’s okay. Now I need those pictures.”
A raindrop plopped on her forehead. “Right.”
The rain would help the firefighters as they battled what burned like it must have been napalm or an incendiary type of bomb. But the rain could be destructive to evidence, how well she knew.
Concern for Heath had distracted her, but now she had to leave him. “I have to get back to work.” Harper leaned over and planted a kiss on Heath’s forehead, then backed away. Behind the mask he protested her move to leave—he didn’t want her to get hurt, she was sure. Maybe if he wasn’t wearing the oxygen mask, she’d full-on kiss him in front of God and everyone.
She walked away and forced herself to focus. The scene was chaos at the moment. She knew how things went down. The sheriff’s department would secure the scene. Scour the area for fragments. They would mark the fragments with numbered evidence markers. All of them working together, not just one or two techs. All this they would do while they waited for the ATF or the bomb squad or even the FBI if their involvement was warranted.
In the meantime, Harper would give her best. Her all. She hoped her photographs could be used to find the person behind this and convict them in a court of law.
Another drop plopped on her head, and then another, until the rain beat the pavement and sounded like sizzling bacon.
Again, she took photographs of the crowds. Despite the storm, few had left the scene—other than to be herded back as crime scene tape was put in place. The raw grit of destruction hit her in waves, but she remained strong, as if an invisible force stood with her.
She photographed the sheer relief and joy, capturing the emotion on camera. Her heart skipped a beat. That she was emotionally compromised would be all over these photographs. Harper hoped her photographic documentation would remain admissible in court.
In her peripheral vision, Harper caught a man laughing with tears of joy as he squeezed his teenage son to him, so she swung the camera to capture them. She needed the reminder that life existed everywhere around her too. Not only death and destruction. She’d come full circle in her journey to free herself from survivor’s guilt. She had survived again. And that left her to pick up the pieces.
But this time, she wouldn’t run away. She wouldn’t turn away. She would embrace being a survivor because she could make a difference for the victims.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
All right, already.
He could breathe fine now. Heath shoved the mask away and sat up on the gurney. They’d pushed him inside the ambulance when the rain had started, but he wouldn’t allow them to take him to the hospital. He needed to stay there.
“Thanks for your help. I’m good now. You guys go on and assist someone else.” Heath read the EMT’s name tag. Vince Saunders.
“The injured have already been assisted.” Vince took the mask. “Most are on their way to the hospital or already there.”
“Good. That’s good. What about . . . did anyone . . .?”
“So far, no one has died as a result of the blast.”
“Also good.” Relief rushed through Heath. He was proud to be part of this community that had responded so quickly and efficiently.
“You should see the doctor later,” Vince said. “Get your lungs checked. Your ears too. I didn’t see anything, but I’m no otorhinolaryngologist.”
Heath stared at the man. “That’s an awfully big word for this rancher deputy.”
“Ear, nose, and throat doctor. The shock wave could have caused damage.”
“I feel fine.” He breathed in a pungent odor. “I smell like soot and ash. I can hear just fine now too, but I’ll keep that in mind.”
He hadn’t been as close to the explosion as others. He would make sure Harper got checked out too. He left the ambulance to find the rain had paused, but thunder still rumbled as the storm moved through. He made his way to stand outside of the crime scene tape, letting his gaze roam the tragic scene. Where was Harper?
There. He spotted her. She was standing inside the tape taking pictures, her camera now on a tripod. They’d marked off an entire block. Maybe they should tape off the entire town.
He glanced up as a bolt of lightning struck a mountain peak in the distance as if cracking open the sky. A mere two seconds later, thunder confirmed the crack. Much too close for comfort. The storm wasn’t done with them yet.
And the criminal behind the bombs? Was he done?
The abandoned building had been an eyesore. The Grayback town council had argued over repurposing it or establishing it as a historical site.
A chil
l crawled over him.
If the criminal responsible had truly been aiming to kill, he would have targeted a busy building. Why had he taken out the old depot?
What was happening to his town? To this valley? Acid could have burned a hole through his gut. He wanted to find whoever was behind this, but he’d have to get in line behind a lot of people, including Taggart.
He worried about Harper taking pictures. What if another explosive device was set to go off?
And Liam. Where was he? Heath figured he was assisting law enforcement or searching for answers in his own way.
Heath found his way to the command center set up beneath a big canopy where Taggart was in a heated discussion with a couple of deputies and first responders. Detective Moffett stood next to him. Grayback contracted with the sheriff’s department for a dedicated law enforcement presence rather than allocating funds for a police department.
Taggart noticed him approaching. “What are you doing? You need to go to the hospital.”
“They took care of me already. I’m good. What happens next?”
“We’re going to tag evidence while we wait for the ATF. Nobody touches or moves anything. The FBI is watching. They may show up too. It’s going to take them time to assemble and haul their mobile units to this valley. It’s my job to contain the scene until the feds get here and decide it’s their problem.”
“You sound confident it will be,” Moffett said.
“I have no theories right now. The fire chief is in charge of putting out the fire. Everyone has their jobs. Now get out there and photograph everything, video if you think it’s important. Interview witnesses. Get to work.”
Heath listened to Taggart rattle off instructions—this was every town’s nightmare. Every county sheriff’s worst-case scenario.
He once again spotted Harper in the distance, taking pictures. She wiped at her eyes.
Always Look Twice Page 23
