Chapter 17
The force of the explosion ripped a huge hole behind the visitor’s bench, glass shattering, chairs mangled, destroyed. For a moment, Jo was frozen. The debris thrown out had reached as high as she was, and large chunks of concrete and metal had fallen to the right of her. Where was Alex? Was he okay? Had it been a bomb?
She couldn’t think, gripped her hair tight and attempted to get her thoughts in order. She didn’t have time to think about anything other than what had happened in front of her.
Instincts and training kicked in, and she pulled out her cell, cursing at the shitty signal, and hoping to hell someone else could call 9-1-1. Then she moved down the stairs as swiftly as she could, finding the most solid path.
“My son!” a woman was screaming, gripping a chair, her hair matted with blood.
“Ma’am, where is your son?”
The woman looked at her blankly, but she stopped screaming and pointed into the gaping hole.
“He was right next to me,” she sobbed.
Jo looked around for something to steady herself so she could get a proper view into the hole. The woman moved closer, and the structure shifted.
“You need to stay where you are,” Jo snapped. “Stay back.”
Gently, she eased herself to the edge, tightly gripping the mess of concrete, the undersides of chairs and the twisted rebar that was exposed. She looked over and down. She didn’t know what was under there. There was water gushing from a broken pipe, and two floors exposed. She couldn’t see anything, no sign of the woman’s son. And then she heard it—a low, thready call for help—and just that enabled her to pinpoint where he was. About three feet below, his jersey caught on protruding metal.
She could try to climb down, or maybe get underneath him? Whatever had exploded had taken away most of the rooms below; she couldn’t see a door.
“I’m going to lean over,” she announced to the mom, who nodded frantically. “I’ll see if I can get him loose and he can climb back up. Can you hold my legs?” The mom let go of the metal that was the only thing supporting her, but managed to stop her slide with a foot hooked to the stand.
“Stay back, ma’am. I’ve got you, Jo,” said a voice from behind.
Jo looked behind her. Dennison and the rest of the guys who’d been at the game were at her side.
“Ma’am you need to move back now. We’ve got this.” Dennison hooked his solid weight and gripped Jo’s ankle. “Is this the only ingress?” he asked as they settled their position so she could lean right down.
Jo hesitated. What if she was wrong? What if there was an easier way to get to the boy? One that didn’t involve the possibility of him falling into the crater below? But no, there was nothing, right? This was the only way.
“Jo?” Dennison snapped.
“This is the only way,” Jo said.
“Let’s go, then.”
With Dennison holding her weight, she managed to reach far enough down that she could touch the boy, who didn’t look much older than ten or so.
“Hi,” Jo said, thankful that the kid had his eyes open, and apart from a cut on his head didn’t seem to have any injuries.
“Help me,” the boy said, his knuckles white where he was gripping the exposed metal.
“Hold my hand,” Jo said.
“I can’t. I don’t want to let go.”
The structure creaked again, and Jo knew she didn’t have time to hesitate. With a firm tug on the boys wrists, he let go, and she had her hands around them.
“Pull me up!” she shouted, and Dennison, along with others, did just that. She deposited the kid with his mom. A paramedic was there, helping them away.
“What the hell, Jo?” Dennison asked. He didn’t need an answer, because he was focused and organizing teams to spread out and work the scene. “We’re looking for survivors. Someone get me the office. I want an estimate of who’s still gonna be here.”
“Sir,” Mitch said, and sprinted up the stairs to the back wall, vanishing through the door.
“Support is two out,” Dennison said to Jo. “You’re with me.”
Jo followed Dennison, the same as Mitch, but at the top the two of them went right and down to the next exit doors.
They met on-duty firefighters in the lobby, the lieutenant from that engine shouting orders, asking for schematics, setting up a cordon.
The team. Where would the team be?
“Give us something to do,” she demanded of the acting scene officer, and he looked at her and Dennison, recognition flaring in his eyes.
“Denny?”
“We were at the game,” Dennison explained. “At the bar on the concourse level post-game.”
“Issues?”
“None. All civilians from that level evacuated. All damage appears contained to player benches and the front twenty rows of seats. Big hole; minimal civilian presence, paramedics on site. We were here, so I have personnel assessing. Tunnels below have collapsed.”
The lieutenant unrolled the emergency plan. “Let’s get them back. I want eyes on everyone’s positions.”
Then it was a blur.
“The team is trapped,” someone called, and Jo’s chest constricted painfully. Trapped by debris? Injured? Where was Alex?
She couldn’t do anything about it. She wasn’t allowed back there. Other firefighters and paramedics swarmed the corridors to the player’s area, and she had to stay where she was.
“No one’s hurt!” a voice called out.
The relief was short-lived as one by one the players emerged, some in uniform still, others in suits, and there was no sign of Alex.
“We have three team members missing.” Ryan was there, shouting at Dennison. “Cody, Connor, Alex—they weren’t in the main room.”
“Where were they?” Dennison asked, gripping Ryan and dragging him toward the scene commander.
Ryan was wild-eyed. “They left the locker room. No one saw the twins go, but Alex went through the doors to the corridor. We tried to get to them, but there was a mountain of rubble. You have to go the other way to get to them.”
“Sir!” a firefighter shouted, “We have a survivor here.”
A team of three headed that way, and all Jo could do was watch. Where was Alex? What if he was dead? What if somewhere in the building the man she loved was crushed, or dying at that moment? Every particle of her training left her, and her legs were unsteady. Dennison gripped her before she fell and eased her back against the wall.
“Breathe, probie,” he ordered.
Breathe? She couldn’t; her chest was too tight.
Then she saw Alex, covered in dust and debris, blood on his hands, and she’d never seen anything so perfect. He saw her at the same time, and somehow they met in the middle of all the chaos, holding each other tightly for a brief instant.
Then he turned from her. “Connor and Cody James—they’re trapped between home and visitors, near the skate room. Cody is badly hurt.”
Alex didn’t move while they waited for news, and Jo stood next to him. Over and over, she thought, they’ll be okay. Once she said it out loud, but Alex looked so broken and fearful that she didn’t speak again. She moved a little closer, needing to feel he was there and well.
When Cody was lifted out on a stretcher, paramedics already working on him, Alex left her side. And when the paramedics headed to the ambulance with Cody, Alex pulled the team together, and one by one they said they were going to the hospital.
Alex sent her a look of confusion, like he wanted to stay, but he couldn’t. Torn.
“You have a job to do, captain,” she said. “Just like I do.”
He nodded. “I love you,” he whispered. “Stay safe.”
“I love you,” she responded, and stepped back and away.
Within ten minutes of leaving, the news that an explosive device had been responsible for the destruction was relayed through the ranks of officials on site.
“The same as the one at the Ferris wheel?” she asked Dennison.
“Bomb squad is on site. Looks that way. Source is the hydrotherapy room right between the two locker rooms.”
Jeez, she’d only just been down there with Abby and baby Izzy. There’d been that maintenance man she’d seen, and for a moment she thought about actually saying something, and then stopped herself. A lot of people probably had access to that space, and one maintenance guy wasn’t worth mentioning. Only… it niggled, and she imagined people dead in the rubble and the pain and suffering that the bomb could have caused, and without real thought, she found the first cop she could.
“I need to make a statement,” she said. The cop listened, made notes, and called for her to be formally interviewed so they could ascertain how much the information mattered.
Probably not at all.
No one had died. The only person injured enough to need the hospital was Cody, they were lucky the bomb had gone off after the arena had emptied of all but the stragglers. All but the staff and team and a few die-hard fans.
Only on the way back home did she realize two things. The first was that she could have lost Alex tonight, and a future without that man was impossible to imagine. And secondly, without thought, she was going to Alex’s place, because she needed to be where he would go when he was finished at the hospital.
He woke her up from where she’d fallen asleep curled up on the sofa wrapped up in one of his Dragons jackets. When he’d given her a key a few days before, it hadn’t been a big thing, but now seeing her in his home, he realized giving the key had meant as much to him as giving her a ring.
It meant she was part of his life.
The TV was still on, still running the news that someone had planted a bomb at Sweetings Arena, and that Cody James, right wing for the Dragons hockey team was still under observation in the hospital. Alex was still in uniform; he looked exhausted and wrecked. He kicked off sneakers that were clearly too big for him.
“Hey,” he murmured, and kissed her, then gathered her in to him and held her tight. “I didn’t know where you were,” he said. “If I’d lost you…”
She didn’t need to say a word. She just held him hard and pressed kisses to his neck and face. He clearly hadn’t showered since the game, that hockey player funk not even enough for her to let him go.
“I need a shower.”
“Later. How is Cody?” she asked between kisses.
“His wrist is fractured, but his leg will be okay.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Stay here; I’ll be back.” She trailed him into the shower, but he waved her away, asking for coffee, or anything, and that he just needed a moment.
She knew what that was like, that single precious minute where you attempted to get your thoughts straight.
“Sorry.” He apologized like he expected her to be pissed. She pressed a kiss to the end of his nose.
“Get in the shower,” she said with a smile. “I’ll see to the coffee.”
After the shower, Alex, in loose sweats and a Dragons T-shirt, relaxed back on the sofa and pulled her with him, so she sprawled over his chest. She braced herself, but he tutted and knocked at her arms.
“Stop doing that,” he murmured. “I want you lying on me.”
“But—”
“No buts.”
She huffed, and relaxed her hold until he was taking her weight. She’d always been the tall one, the broad one, the girl who was too much of a tomboy to be a serious artist, or too big to be the cute one. But Alex didn’t care; he loved her just the way she was.
“Breaking news…” the TV announcer intoned in that excitable way they sometimes did. “An arrest has been made in connection with the bombing tonight of the Sweetings Arena.” Jo looked at the screen, and what she saw made her scramble up and away from Alex.
“That’s him,” she said, and pointed at the screen. “The man I saw when we went skating.”
The announcer added more. “In a standoff with the police, Miles Crawford claimed he was responsible for several fires and explosions that have been plaguing the city, including that of the New Year Ferris wheel incident. There is no news as to why he carried out these attacks, and no evidence of a connection with organized terrorism. We will keep you up to date here on…”
Jo hunched in on herself. Everything was linked; one man had destroyed so much. What about the fire at the cinema? And the car accident that had been caused by the same explosive device?
“Why?” she asked, but she wasn’t really asking for a response. Alex took her hand and tugged her closer, and she willingly went with him, curling a hand into his long blond hair.
“Let’s go to bed.”
They didn’t make it to the bedroom. When the overload of emotion hit Jo, all she could do was cling to Alex, and he wasn’t going to let her go.
“You could have died,” Jo murmured, cradling his face.
“Stay with me,” Alex said.
“I am,” she said, and kissed him, taking her time to memorize every moment as she tasted him, and deepened the kisses, and moved to dig her fingers in his hair.
“No,” Alex said, serious and focused, breaking the kiss and holding her at a distance. “Marry me. Stay with me. Forever.”
Her answer was a kiss, and a smile, and then a whispered yes.
He groaned into the word, kissed her, pressed her against the wall, and then with a noise of frustration he put his hands on her ass and lifted her, walking back toward the bed and pulling her with him onto the mattress. She sprawled over him, and that time she didn’t move.
“I love you, captain.”
“I love you, probie.”
They kissed, and he moved her so that she could feel the length of him, fat and hard against her clit. The eroticism of that, grinding down on him, plus the emotion of the night—probably including one big proposal—had her coming with his name on her lips and their hands grasped.
So much emotion.
And so much love.
It was her cell that woke her, and Jo extricated herself from Alex’s hold to look at the display. It couldn’t be her mom; she’d called and reassured her mom and her sister that she was okay. She connected the call when she saw Mitch’s name come up on the screen.
“He got passed over for a professional career in hockey,” Mitch said without any context.
Next to her Alex stirred, and rubbed his eyes sleepily.
“Who did?”
“Not only that, he’s related to the dad and kid in that car accident. He’s the kid’s fucking uncle.”
“Mitch… Wait… The accident.”
“The guy who set the bomb at the arena is the same one who blew up his brother-in-law’s car and set the bomb at the Ferris wheel. You want to know why? So he could gauge first responder reaction times ready for the big job, the arena. He was assessing burn times and radius destruction. Fuck, you should see this wall in his house—it’s full of pictures and schedules. There’s images of the hockey guys with families at the New Year fair…he was planning to kill kids.”
“But—”
“I’m looking at it now. He wanted to attack a hockey team. That was the endgame of this whole fucking thing. If the bomb had gone off when it was supposed to, if it had been in a dry room and not the hydrotherapy room, hundreds would have died. Jesus, Jo.”
“Mitch—”
“I’ve got to go. I wanted to let you know, the cops have him and he’s crying like a fucking baby.”
Jo looked at the dead phone.
“What is it?” Alex was up on his elbows peering at the same screen.
“He wanted to kill you all.”
“Who?” Alex was only half awake, blinking at her.
“The guy who set the bomb. It was his end game to hurt the Dragons because he was passed over for a hockey team.”
“What the hell?”
“It doesn’t make sense, but the bomb at the arena, if it had been in a dry room, it was set to hurt a lot more people.”
Alex held her tight and cursed under his breath.
Jo shivered at how close it had been to killing so many people. And how close she’d come to losing Alex.
She cuddled into him.
“You want to go check the news?” Alex murmured.
He opened his iPad and scrolled to news one-handed. The picture of the suspected perpetrator of the Sweetings Arena bomb was front and center. He looked familiar, and with a wrench Jo realized it definitely was the maintenance guy from the afternoon of their skate-date. Had he been carrying the bomb then? How had he even got through any kind of security? She buried her face against Alex’s chest.
“I don’t want to see it,” she whispered.
“Are you okay?”
Jo didn’t want to move; she wanted to stay where she was. Alex squeezed her when she gave a silent shake of her head. “There’s no sense in this world sometimes, Jo.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight, and for a short while the world and all its horrors were put aside.