He smiled, hefted his bag and started walking away.
Belly gave a soft bark, making Zack turn around and smile at his friend before he turned and continued on his way.
I turned from watching Zack walk away to find both Silas and Sebastian watching me with varying degrees of surprise etched on their face.
“What?” I asked, concerned.
Silas went back to his phone call that I hadn’t realized he was on, turning around without saying a word.
Sebastian, though, smiled.
“Never seen Zack give up Belly. He’s usually the one to do the searching and rescuing with her,” Sebastian said.
I nodded.
“I’m a little confused as to why he did it myself,” I answered.
He shrugged.
“He blames himself. While he was searching the building that’d caught on fire for survivors, it’d started to shift with him and Belly in it. He stayed, and Belly ended up paying the price for that decision. He thinks he’s not worthy of leading her anymore,” Sebastian said, ushering me over.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“H-he thinks that I’m going to be better at that?” I asked a bit shrilly.
Sebastian’s eyes met mine. “He must see something in you that makes him believe in the trust he just gave you. Don’t let him down.”
It sounded like a threat, and I had to fight the urge to take a step back.
“I’ll need you right here. We haven’t had a chance to search these houses yet. What we’ll have you do is just circle the houses as best as you can. Belly should do the job from there,” he said, pointing to a road on a real life map.
“Can you, you know, tell me how to get there?” I asked.
Sebastian nodded.
“Dad!” Sebastian called over his shoulder.
My eyes moved from the map and the point he wanted me to search to the man whose attention he’d wanted.
My breath caught in my throat when Silas turned, said a few words into his cell phone ending the call.
“Yeah?” He asked shortly.
Sebastian waved his hand in the universal sign of ‘come here.’
Silas, annoyed, came.
My eyes fell to the girl he was holding.
The closer she came, the more my breath caught in my throat.
She looked just like him.
But when Sebastian reached forward and pulled the girl from Silas’ arms, I realized that the girl belonged to Sebastian, not Silas.
My heart felt a little lighter, but I couldn’t help the pang of longing that went through me at seeing the little girl in his arms.
“My papa,” the girl said, reaching her arms out for Silas again.
“No, Blaise. Papa has to show this woman where to go. You can have him when he gets back,” Sebastian gently chastised his little girl.
Blaise then turned her baby blues on me, and I was struck speechless by how beautiful this little girl was.
She was going to be a heartbreaker when she grew up, and the two men that were currently looking at her with such adoration were going to be busy keeping up with her.
Someone called Sebastian’s name, and I was left alone with the man who’d held me all night long.
“Hey,” I said nervously, twirling Belly’s leash in my hands, intertwining it with my fingers.
He smiled at me.
Those beautiful eyes of his drinking me in.
“Didn’t think I’d see you so early,” he said as he took hold of my arm and steered me out of the command tent.
I was slapped upside the head once again by the devastation all around me.
From here, you could see the exact path the tornado had blazed through this little town.
Buildings sat untouched on either side of the path of destruction, making the devastation within that path all the more remarkable. Within the path that the tornado took, you could barely make out a single distinguishing feature of the buildings that used to be there.
Up ahead I saw a sign for the high school.
My breath caught when I saw how the tornado had traveled right through the center of the high school.
“God,” I breathed. “God.”
Silas’ eyes turned down to me. “Yeah, it’s pretty fucking bad. I’ve been a part of a lot of search and rescue operations due to natural disasters, but this one being so close to home is really fucking with my head,” he said almost absently. “I mean, I volunteer on this fire department. A fire department that’s now gone.”
He pointed to something that was nothing more than a pile of rubble.
Brick, mortar and wood.
Sticking straight up the very middle of the pile was the fire pole. I was stunned that it was still standing.
“Shit,” I breathed. “Where were the fire trucks?”
My question was answered moments later when we turned the corner.
The fire truck in question was currently on its tail end, resting against a building.
“Right there,” he said.
I shook my head.
“How are y’all going to get that down without damaging it even more? Is it safe to be around that?” I asked worriedly, sinking my hand into Belly’s scruff at the base of her neck.
She ran her wet nose along my arm in silent reassurance.
“There’s a car beside it keeping it in place,” he said.
“They’ve already checked all this?” I asked, holding my hand out to indicate the street we’d just passed.
Silas nodded. “Yeah, the fire station was the first place we came to, and everything in about a three block radius has been checked.”
He waved his hand to someone, and I turned to find Trance with his own dog.
“Find anything?” Silas yelled.
Trance shook his head. “No.”
Silas nodded and continued walking, still keeping a hold of my arm.
It was surprisingly comfortable, despite the way he gripped it like I was a criminal.
I doubted he even realized he was doing it.
“We’ve found more alive than dead. Six casualties so far. Twenty-four rescues,” he said.
Six deaths.
Holy shit.
“This is where we’re searching right now. The white X indicates the property has been searched. Red circles mean the property is unstable and don’t go near it. Okay?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Call me if you need me,” he said. “If you find something, or Belly finds something, just holler and they’ll come running, okay?”
I nodded again, suddenly very nervous to be left alone.
“You’ll be okay,” he said. “Promise.”
Then, with a kiss to my forehead, he was strolling down the street, and I was left with a dog that looked very eager to get started.
“Alright, Belly, let’s do this,” I said, giving her a pat on the rump.
She licked my hand in response, and we got started.
***
It was forty-five minutes into my search that I found my first victim.
Or, I should say, Belly did.
She started barking like crazy at a pile of rubble, debris and dirt.
“I need help!” I yelled, walking forward until I was standing directly in front of the pile.
I didn’t know what to do, though.
So I gingerly started to pull off pieces of wood that I could reach without actually standing on the pile.
If there was a person under all that, they probably wouldn’t appreciate me standing on it to help them get out.
As suddenly as Belly had gone crazy, I was surrounded by huge, hulking men.
Some of them wore official-looking clothing, but most of them were in what I assumed they had most likely been wearing the night before.
“Back up, sweetheart,” one burly old man said softly.
I blinked and looked up at him.
He wasn’t ‘old,’ but
he wasn’t young, either.
He was huge, though, so I took his direction and backed up to let the men work.
It was ten horrible minutes later that a shoe was uncovered, followed by the foot that shoe was attached to.
But that foot wasn’t moving.
Fuck.
Please be alive, please be alive, I chanted in my head.
My wish wasn’t granted, though.
By the time they had fully uncovered the man’s body, I known that he was dead.
No doubt due to the sheer volume of debris that was lying on top of him. Crushing him.
Then my eyes narrowed in on the bottle that the man still held, even in death.
“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “There’s a baby in there. There’s a baby!”
I hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding so scared, but it did.
One of the men turned to me, the big one with brown hair styled into a mohawk. The same one who served me at Halligans and Handcuffs.
He was wearing a Benton Fire Department shirt and was looking at me like I’d grown a second head.
“He has a baby’s bottle in his hand,” I said desperately.
He looked down, and the explicative that was propelled out of him spurred the rest of the men around him into a frenzy.
I walked around them with Belly, heading through a small path between debris piles.
I wasn’t sure how it was made, but I was going to use it.
Belly sniffed and sniffed, walking this way and that, until she came to a stop beside smaller pile of what resembled wood shavings and splinters.
She started barking.
“Over here!” I yelled, bending down to grab a piece of wood.
I was pushed back once again by the older burly guy and the Mohawk guy.
It still wasn’t the baby. I could tell that the moment they pulled off what looked to be half of a wall.
It was the mother.
She had what looked to be a teddy bear clutched tightly to her chest.
And she was dead, too.
I could tell that when Mohawk Guy pressed two very large fingers against the woman’s throat, just under her chin, and then shook his head.
“Shit,” I hissed. “Let’s go, Belly.”
Two dead people in one day.
How positively horrible.
Tears clogged my throat, and it took everything I had to stop them from leaking out and running down my cheeks.
Once again we started searching the house, but found nothing.
Belly and I, reluctantly, moved on to the next house.
Or some semblance of what was once a house.
We found two more who had perished before we found our first live one.
I’d just given the signal, and this time Trance and Mohawk Guy, as well as the big burly guy, showed within seconds of my call. Immediately, they started searching, getting down to the bottom of the rubble and unearthing a police car.
The guy inside was alive.
I could see his chest moving.
“Yes,” I exclaimed, practically jumping up and down.
My excitement garnered the attention of Trance, and his eyes were much more amused this time than the last time I’d seen him over by the dead mother.
“Keep going, girl,” he ordered, pointing in the direction of more destruction.
I smiled brilliantly at him, giving him a pat on the forearm before escaping through yet another small parting in the debris.
Minutes quickly turned into another hour before I decided to take a little break.
Although Belly didn’t look tired, I knew she was hot and most likely needed a drink.
“Come on, old girl. Let’s get you something to drink,” I said, petting her head lovingly.
She gave me a doggy grin, pushing her head into my hand and closing her eyes in bliss as her tongue lolled out the side.
I passed Mohawk Guy and said, “We’re going to get a drink of water.”
Mohawk Guy looked up and smiled. “10-4.”
As I walked back to the command tent, where I assumed there would be water, I realized just how far we’d walked today.
“I guess I should’ve gotten you water earlier, eh?” I asked my companion.
“Dogs are resilient creatures,” the burly guy said as he caught up to me.
I smiled at him.
“Oh yeah, I know. I used to work with them during my…old job,” I said. “I know they’re tough.”
I didn’t really want to ruin the mood by telling him I used to be in prison.
That was an instant mood breaker, and I probably had to work with him the rest of the day.
But the moment the command tent and Silas came into sight, the man was gone.
One second I was having a conversation with the man, and the next he was nowhere to be found.
“Weird,” I said aloud.
Silas spotted me the moment I came into sight.
“Who was that with you?” He asked when I was within ten feet or so of him.
I shrugged. “A man that I’ve been working with all morning.”
He smiled.
“It’s about two in the afternoon now, Sawyer,” he said chidingly, lifting his finger to run it down the bridge of my nose. “You’re burned.”
I shrugged. “Not the first time and won’t be the last.”
He shook his head slightly, wearing a little grin, as I grabbed a water bottle from the table in front of him. I picked up a bowl full of Band-Aids that had been sitting under the table, dumped them out, and filled it up with water for Belly.
Belly gulped it down quickly, and I felt even worse for neglecting her.
“Stand up,” Silas ordered.
I blinked and looked up at him to find him holding a bottle of sunscreen with a good amount already squeezed out on his extended palm.
I stood, trying not to smile as he rubbed the lotion into my face.
It burned as his fingers met the already sun kissed skin, but nonetheless I stayed still until he was finished.
Then his hands started on my neck and arms.
I shivered slightly as he took his time rubbing the lotion into my skin, dipping past my shirt to run along the swells of my breasts.
I was panting when I finally looked up into Silas’ eyes.
Leaning forward, my hips met the distinct bulge of his cock, and his eyes flared as we came into contact.
My mouth opened, and I started to speak when I was interrupted.
It was like a dousing from a cold bucket of water in the middle of a desert.
“Silas!” A distinctly familiar voice called. “Help me!”
I closed my eyes and looked around Silas’ large body to see my mother barreling down on us with a box of food filled to the brim.
“Sawyer! What are you doing here?” My mother asked.
Silas stayed where he was while I skirted around him, stepping over Belly who’d laid full out on the grass in shade the command tent’s shadow.
“Hi, Mom,” I said. “I’m here helping Dr. Zack.”
She smiled.
“Awesome. It’s good to see you out here,” she smiled, blissfully unaware of what she’d just interrupted.
“Reba,” Silas said as he turned around.
He had a clipboard he’d picked up off the table held in front of his erection, and I turned my face down so my mother wouldn’t see my satisfied smile.
I felt a pinch on my ass and whirled around to see Silas glaring down at me.
My head whipped around to stare at my mother, but she was so busy pulling food out from the box that she never even noticed our little interaction.
I widened my eyes at Silas, who only smiled and walked to the table.
“Whatcha got?” Silas asked, pulling out a couple of Styrofoam boxes.
“Barbeque,” she smiled. “I got your favorite!”
His favorite?
And w
hy, if they were only neighbors, did she know his favorite?
I didn’t know his favorite anything, and I’d had sex with him multiple times!
I knew how he liked his cock sucked, though.
Which I guess was better than knowing he preferred chopped brisket to sliced brisket.
“I also got you pickles like you like,” she continued. “I brought you a Coca Cola but also brought a couple more bottles of cold water just in case.”
Silas took the package she handed him and tossed me a weird look.
One that oddly appeared almost calculating.
I wasn’t sure if he was watching me to gauge my reaction to my mother, or if he was watching me to make sure I didn’t say anything in front of her.
“I’m sorry, baby. But I didn’t know you would be here,” my mother continued. “I only brought Sebastian, Silas, and Blaise something to eat.”
So she knew them all on a first name basis.
Well now, that was interesting.
“That’s okay, I’m not hungry,” I lied.
I’m starving.
I hadn’t realized that it was two. I’d missed lunch and I skipped breakfast because I wanted to do other things this morning.
Things that involved Silas’ massive cock and my vagina.
Which was better than breakfast any day.
“You’ll have some of mine,” Silas ordered.
I gave him a look which clearly said, ‘You can shove that food up your ass.’
He gave me one right back that said, ‘If you don’t eat some of my food, I’ll spank you in front of your mother.’
Clearly that wasn’t an option, so I reluctantly sat down.
He handed me one of his sandwiches, and I reluctantly took it.
It was massive, and I really couldn’t see how he’d get one in his stomach, let alone two, but who was I to judge?
I could eat an entire bag of potato chips in one single sitting.
Something I’d only just discovered that I could do the day after I’d gotten out of prison.
Then my mind sobered, and unsurprisingly, I wasn’t very hungry any more.
I’d done a good job these past few days forgetting about the reality that was my life.
Silas was a good distraction.
Actually, he was a great distraction.
I hadn’t had to drink myself to sleep for a good four days straight, thanks to Silas’ and his skills.
“So how have you been, honey? You haven’t stopped by lately. I’ve been worried about you,” my mother said, picking up a small container of coleslaw and digging into it with a plastic fork.
Counter To My Intelligence (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 7) Page 12