Except, as he came closer, he saw how she gripped her leg, her whimpers turning to moans, then all-out tears as he moved the light over her.
Oh…no.
Her hand curled around a thin metal pipe, its jagged end embedded into her leg, in her lower thigh, right above her knee. Blood pooled around it, but it acted like a plug, keeping the leg from bleeding out.
“Hey, Tori,” he said, fighting his voice. “I know you’re hurt, but you can’t pull that out, okay?”
Dust covered her hair and grimed her wet face, her eyes betraying terror, but she nodded.
He ran the light up the bar and saw that the angle ended at the broken joint of an electrical conduit that ran under the counter. It had broken off on one end and stabbed poor Tori when the counter fell.
“Stay still now,” he said and reached over her to the joint. He held the conduit steady with one hand. With his other hand, he gave the metal connector that held the conduit to the wall a good wrench, and it broke free.
Tori cried out, but mostly from fear, as he hadn’t moved the conduit. But now the conduit hung loose, two feet protruding from her leg.
He had to stabilize the impalement, keep it from ripping out of her leg before medical help came.
If it came.
Certainly, Rafe and Katherine knew where Tori had gone. They just had to hunker down and wait, right?
He flashed the phone around, and the light crested over the debris of the costume rack, tangled in metal and crushed under the cement. Reaching his hand through the opening, he yanked out a blouse.
This could work.
“Tori. This might hurt a little—” No, actually, a lot, but he didn’t want to scare her. “I’m going to just wrap this around your leg, okay?”
Tori’s wide eyes clung to him like he might be a superhero. But he felt like a villain as she cried out, as he wrapped her leg tight with the body of the shirt, cutting off some of the blood supply, then securing the bar with the arms, coiled twice, then also around her leg.
Please, let this hold. Because her breathing was shallow and fast, and she might be going into shock. He placed his big hand on her little cheek and bent his head close to hers. “I’m going to get us out of here. Just hang on, honey.”
She nodded.
“I’ll be right back.”
He wanted to weep when she pressed her hand over his. But he scooted away and back to Kelsey. She had replaced her hand over her face, and he leaned to her ear. “Kelsey, I need you. Tori is really hurt. Wake up, please. Come back.”
She didn’t move, and he blew out a breath. Maybe she, too, was in shock. Which meant he had two people to rescue, and pronto.
He couldn’t wait for the dogs or the SAR teams or whoever might be digging through the rubble to get to him sometime in the next twelve hours.
Knox shined the light up the falling ceiling joist to the floor above, then taking a breath, shimmied up alongside it so he could make out the damage.
When the joist fell, it had left a crawl space, and when he flickered his light into it, he made out the hallway. Beyond that, to his recollection, lay the expanse of the arena.
“Hello! We’re in here!”
His voice echoed into the darkness.
He crouched back down. Closed his eyes.
Could use a little help here, Lord.
At least he wasn’t hurt.
He took a look at Kelsey, then over to Tori.
Tori first.
He’d have to climb the ceiling joist. It was girded by smaller crisscrossed beams, almost like a ladder, but if he found a way to secure Tori, he could probably hoist her up to the next floor. Drag her out through the crawl space.
If the beam didn’t collapse.
He crawled under it to Tori. Took her hand, his heart thumping.
“Okay, listen. You’re so brave, Tori, and I need you to be braver. I’m going to get you out of here, but I need to figure it out, okay?” He needed a board, or something—
A scream filled the room and he jerked, slammed his head on the counter.
Kelsey.
She had begun to thrash, her screams ricocheting around the rubble. “No, no—”
He let go of Tori and scrambled back to Kelsey, not sure what to do—
He lay down beside her and pulled her back against him, his arms pinning her tight, his legs around hers, his mouth in her ear. “Kelsey, breathe. Breathe. You’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”
He kept his voice low, like he had with Hot Pete, but mostly because he, too, wanted to scream, to unloose the coil of panic in his chest.
But if he did, he might never tuck it back inside. So instead, he began to rock her, to hum the first tune he could find…
She stopped screaming, as if listening, her breaths hitching, her body twitching in his embrace.
“Shh,” he said. “You’re going to be okay…”
Please, God, let us be okay.
She wasn’t lying in a bloody pile of soggy loam, the night lifting around her, leaving its moist tongue on her grimy skin. Wasn’t broken, shattered, wounded, and violated. Her head wasn’t spinning, throbbing, and coaxing her back into the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.
Kelsey wasn’t fourteen again, a victim of a terrible, random crime.
“Shh. You’re going to be okay…” A low tenor slid over her, something familiar enough to reach in and tug away the confusion. To yank her back from the abyss, to silence the screaming inside.
The voice settled into her ear, her bones, and found the tremor inside. Clamped down on it. A hot, solid hand of safety that gripped her from the inside out.
Knox. Of course it was Knox—and now everything rushed back to her. The thunder that shook the building, him lunging at her, his arm snaking around her waist. Falling.
Then she was lying in the forgotten tangles of Central Park, fighting for every breath through cracked ribs, a broken wrist, her body torn, her blood saturating the earth. Trapped underneath the echo of her own screams.
Until Knox. Until he reached through the nightmares and pulled her against himself, solid, warm, safe, and held her body until she stopped shaking.
Shh.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him. Light splashed across a girder, the chaos of broken cement, glass, and debris.
“What—?” Her voice emerged weak, and the arms around her tightened.
She curled her hands around the forearms, thick and muscled, and the warmth of him holding her shucked away the last of her shaking.
“There was an explosion, I think.” The arms loosened, and she just wanted to hang on for a moment longer, but he moved away. “Are you hurt?”
She lay for a moment, assessing. She hurt, but nothing deep and slicing, nothing fractured, and the pain throbbed low, as if her body might be rebounding from a body slam.
But she wasn’t shattered. Wasn’t wishing to die.
“I don’t…I don’t think so.” Bruised, for sure, but she knew what hurt felt like.
No, definitely not.
He held a cell phone, the light flashing on the debris, then turned it up so it reflected down upon them.
Dirt layered his face, white eyes around grime. A fine layer of sweat slicked his brow, his eyes thick with concern as he met her eyes. He seemed to be testing her words.
And why not? Seconds ago, she’d been screaming, ungluing right before his eyes. If he didn’t think she was crazy before, she couldn’t imagine what he thought now.
It didn’t matter what he thought of her.
Right now, she just needed to stay alive.
She cupped her hand around his wrist. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head. “No. And I promise I’m going to get you out of this. But Tori is really hurt, and I need your help.” He swallowed and glanced past her, then back to Kelsey. “She was impaled by an electrical conduit. I stabilized it, but we need to get her out of here before she goes into shock, or worse, starts to bleed out.”
; She let those words settle in, the worry in his tone painfully haunting.
“I know you’re freaking out, and I get it, but…I need you to hold it together long enough to help me get her out. I need you to dig deep, Kelsey. I need you to be that girl I saw on stage. Can you do that for me?”
She didn’t want to acknowledge any of his words—the fact that he probably knew that her nightmares had crawled into her brain to take hold. Or that he knew she was fighting the tug to sink back in.
Or even that he’d noticed that she became someone else onstage, someone who could probably keep it together. So, she took a breath, reaching out through the horror to nod.
You are more than you expect of yourself. Her counselor’s words in her head, and Kelsey set them like a stone in her heart. Yes. Or she could be, right now.
“Where is she?”
He let her go and she untangled herself from his embrace. Followed the shine of his light.
Oh no. Tori lay in the shadows, crumpled, shaking. Broken, bloody from a metal rod protruding from her leg, her eyes huge with fear.
Breathe. Because the hand of memory had the power to scoop her up and yank her under.
“How are we going to get out of here?”
“The ceiling girder—we can climb it, as long as it holds. But we need something to carry her, like a table or a—”
“Guitar case?” She glanced over at him.
“Brilliant. But where—”
She grabbed his hand and directed the flashlight to Glo’s backup guitar caught in the rubble near her costumes. Hard sided and made for rough handling, little Tori could probably fit in it.
“I’ll get it.” Kelsey didn’t wait for him to respond, just took a breath, turned around, and climbed over the girder, heading toward the rubble.
Knox kept the light pointed in her direction, and she climbed over a chair, broken wood, and cement and found the case.
Miraculously intact. She grabbed the neck and wiggled it out free, pulling it onto herself, grabbing the handle, then unsnapping the latches. Glo’s pretty mahogany Gibson lay inside. She pulled it out and left it in the wreckage, then closed the case and turned back to Knox, handing the case through the spaces.
He took it, then as he scooted to Tori, she climbed back to her space.
He laid it beside Tori, opened it. Considered it.
Then he took the two halves and yanked.
The hinges ripped from the case, first the ones at the neck, then at the back. He made a trough for Tori to lie inside, her body in the widest part, her legs along the neck. He ripped out the support for the neck to give Tori more room.
Kelsey shimmied under the girder and came out just as he bent to lift the little girl.
“No—no—” Tori gasped, both hands on her wound.
“Shh,” Knox said in that same tone he’d used on Hot Pete. “I’m just going to lift you inside this case. I won’t touch the pole, I promise.”
“I’ll get her shoulders,” Kelsey said, and he looked up at her.
His eyes glistened, and he nodded, and her heart gave a lurch. This man.
But now wasn’t the time to consider her wounds, the what-ifs and never-could-bes.
She gripped Tori’s shoulders. So little, so breakable. Knox leaned over the guitar case to slip his arms under Tori’s body.
“On three,” he said and counted.
They moved her in one smooth transfer into the body of the case.
“We need to slide the case up the girder.” Knox’s gaze seemed to be calculating the how of his words.
“You could get on top, and I’ll push her up to you?”
She wasn’t sure where she’d dug up the words, but she nodded in the wake of them, as if trying to convince, well, herself.
He took a breath. “Okay. Help me get her on the girder. I’ll climb up with her, and you push. Stabilize.” He shined his light on the angled supports that braced the inside of the girder, then on a hinge at the top of the girder.
It hung half torn from its bracing.
She got up, considered the ten-foot rise to the next floor. “Maybe—”
“She could go into shock. We can’t wait for help.”
That’s not what she was going to say. And the suggestion that she climb the girder nearly escaped anyway. But he had already moved the case into the girder, balancing it as he stepped onto one of the spokes.
It groaned, and she straddled the girder, securing the case. “Go.”
He climbed fast, threw his leg over the top of the girder, turned to look down at them, and started to inch his way up, climbing backward as he tugged her up.
It was working. Kelsey stretched out, climbed up on the spokes, and tried to ignore the shuddering of the girder.
“I’m almost…there,” Knox said, his hand white-gripping the case as he reached out for something above him in the darkness.
The metal groaned. “Hurry!” Kelsey shouted.
He slid onto the lip of the floor above, turned, and lay on his stomach, grabbing for the case.
In a second, he’d pulled Tori up and into the darkness beside him.
Voices echoed above, and she heard Knox shout back.
“Over here!”
They’d found them. She closed her eyes.
And in a moment, the past rushed up, light scraping over her body, nearly frozen through, a dog barking, warm hands on her. Someone draping a coat—
“Kelsey, c’mon!”
Knox was holding out his hand to her, lying on his stomach. She started to climb, hooking her feet on the spokes.
The metal shook, twisting with her exertions.
“Knox—?”
She reached out for his hand, brushed it.
The metal snapped off its mooring and in a second, she was falling, her footing sliding free.
A scream cut through her and she wanted to brace herself for impact—
Except a hand clamped onto her wrist. A vise that halted her midair as the world crashed around her. She dangled there, looked up.
Knox held her, his jaw tight, eyes in hers. “I got ya. I told you, I’m going to get you out of this.”
4
The ambulance lights splashed the parking lot blood red, and Tate just wanted to hit something. To add a little pain and violence to the chaos inside.
Please, just give him something to do. Something productive, something that might stop him from unraveling.
He’d nearly lost his brother. And that thought had Tate by the throat, nearly suffocating him since the moment Tate had watched the back of the arena crumble under the shock of the explosion.
He’d been working security near the far exit, far away from the impact. Thankfully, the damage centered on just the area backstage, probably one particularly placed explosive. Why, he hadn’t a clue, but he’d left his cohorts to control the screaming masses pushing to exit the auditorium and ran toward the smoke, flame, and cloud of debris.
Tate had sprinted through the center of the arena, leaping onstage and barreling to the back where other grounds security were already gathering, calling in for help. People had switched on their cell phones, tiny spotlights skittering over the wreckage of the explosion.
Miraculously, the explosion hadn’t taken out the entire back area, hadn’t left people with sheared limbs, burned and shattered.
From what Tate could tell, the explosion occurred a level below, caving in the mezzanine level, specifically the dressing rooms.
The sprinklers had switched on and bathed everything in a soggy wash. Smoke billowed up from a tangle of metal, cement, and debris.
From the first moment, he knew Knox had been buried. Because big bro had sent him a text telling him he was going backstage to meet the pretty Yankee Belles, that they’d catch up later.
And stupid him, he’d actually been jealous. Knox got all the good stuff—the reputation, the girl, even everything their father owned.
Knox was the Midas boy. Everything he touched turned to gold.
By the time Tate reached the backstage rubble, a crowd had gathered, some holding each other, crying. Others had started to move debris, and he joined a man on his knees, peering into the darkness of the crater.
“My daughter is in there somewhere,” he said as he glanced at Tate, eyes reddened in horror.
It just took a second—it would have been faster without the smoke and screaming—but yeah, Rafe Noble, PBR champion, worked beside Tate to rip away the cement debris that crushed his daughter. Tate had seen him perform on television, back in the day when Knox rode in the juniors.
Rafe was on his knees, feeding his phone light into the darkness, when a shout lifted from deep in the bowels of the rubble.
“That’s Knox!” Tate said and dropped down next to Rafe.
More lights, voices, and Tate got on his stomach, trying to dissect a way through the mess.
But he didn’t have to. More hands appeared, digging at the rubble, reassured by Knox’s voice.
Which, frankly, was normal. Knox knew how to reach out and hold people together.
Even when they didn’t deserve it.
Maybe that’s why Tate barreled into the wreckage, pulling out twisted metal, lugging out cement blocks, and finally unearthing a passage inside. Why he pushed Rafe back, got on his belly, and shimmied inside, a flashlight clamped between his teeth.
Why he nearly wept when he called out and Knox answered.
Because Tate simply couldn’t lose the one person who never gave up on him.
Now he stood outside in the parking lot, pacing as the medics gave Knox a twice over. He’d sliced his arm diving over the edge of the platform, grabbing onto the brunette from the Yankee Belles. Had hauled her up as if she weighed nearly nothing, holding in a grunt and saying nothing about his wound until he climbed out after her.
Blood saturated his shirt, and Tate had taken off his own shirt to wrap it. Knox must have nicked an artery, because blood pumped out in a rhythm high under his arm. Tate had hooked his arm around his brother’s shoulder and despite his protests, hauled Knox outside.
He heard Knox growling at the EMT, demanding something stupid like they give him a Band-Aid so he could—
Knox Page 5