“I won’t be long,” her father promised.
“It was a pleasure meeting you, Governor Haskel.” She turned and fled the office before the politician could shower her with more patronizing platitudes.
She left the governor’s anteroom with a worried frown. Her father was the typical absentminded professor, totally absorbed in his work. Without her reminders, he wouldn’t rest, would forget to eat and probably rarely change his clothes. She hoped he would remember now to refer to the request they’d worked up together for more state grant money. He also needed to persuade the governor to use his influence with ranking members of his party in Congress to cough up more federal funds. Josiah’s research team was on the brink of a breakthrough, a safe vaccine against a particularly virulent and nasty biological weapon, but they’d need money to push the project to completion.
With a shake of her head, she shrugged off her concerns. Her father’s passion for his work spoke for itself. If the governor didn’t respond to that, nothing else Josiah could say would convince the man. She checked her watch. In the meantime, she had about a half hour to kill before meeting her father for the drive back to Livingston and the nearby research center.
Haskel had suggested she tour the capitol building, but neither architecture nor government had ever been one of Laura’s interests. She was much more fascinated by people. Finding a comfortable chair in an alcove where two main hallways intersected, she settled in to engage in people watching, one of her favorite pastimes.
The first person to pass by was a young woman in a FedEx uniform, who sprinted past with a package and an electronic clipboard tucked beneath her arm. Another woman, clutching a stack of overflowing file folders, tottered by in too-high heels. Following close behind the secretary, two men, apparently legislators, argued loudly over an upcoming increase in the gasoline tax.
A billowing noise floated up the hallway like the chattering of dozens of tiny birds. Laura glanced to her left to see a beleaguered teacher leading a line of children toward her. The students, who looked about first-grade age, walked in pairs, hand in hand.
Laura’s heart melted at the sight. She adored children. Just five years ago, she’d wanted children of her own more than anything. A blond-headed boy and girl with big blue eyes, just like their father, babies to cuddle and love. While most of her friends avidly pursued high-powered careers, she had wanted nothing more than to stay home and bake cookies, welcome her children when they returned home from school, drive them to soccer games, help with their homework and attend PTA meetings. She had wanted to be a mother. Her career could wait until the nest was empty.
But Curt, blast his cheating heart, had smashed her dreams of motherhood—and marriage. He had played the ardent husband so skillfully, his affair with his old college flame had caught her completely by surprise. And worst of all, when she’d confronted him, he’d shown no remorse. Her faith in men shattered, she had filed for divorce. After that, she had devoted herself to her father and his work, the two things in life she knew would never let her down.
With a longing heart, she watched the children pass in front of her, many waving with shy smiles and giggles. She waggled her fingers at them. But their smiles suddenly vanished when an alarm blared through the halls. Several clapped their hands over their ears to block out the screeching signal. At the head of the line, the teacher stopped, panic in her eyes, and took a quick head count.
“What’s that noise, Miss Walker?” a small boy near the front of the line asked.
Before the teacher could answer, a member of the capitol police force rounded the corner and announced in a booming voice, “It’s just a routine fire drill, folks. Please proceed to the nearest exit as quickly as possible and keep moving away from the building.”
He continued at a run down the hallway. Laura pushed to her feet and thought immediately of her father, then dismissed her concern. Josiah was in the governor’s office, probably the first place the police would evacuate in case of trouble.
The teacher completed her count and whipped her head from side to side, craning up and down the hall.
Laura approached the troubled woman. “Something wrong?”
Miss Walker’s eyes were wide with fear. “I’m three students short. My aide’s taken a sick child to the bus, and I can’t leave the rest of the class to look for the missing ones.”
Laura patted her arm. “Take your class outside. I’ll find the other students and bring them to you.”
The teacher practically wilted with relief before anxiety filled her eyes again. “It is just a drill, isn’t it?”
“That’s what the man said,” Laura assured her, but she’d seen the sweat on the policeman’s forehead and the tight white line around his lips. Something was up.
Miss Walker clapped her hands. “Let’s do what the nice policeman said, class. Just like a fire drill at school. Follow me, and no talking.”
The teacher and her class headed toward the exit. Laura turned the opposite way to retrace their steps, hoping to find the stragglers quickly and shoo them out of the building behind their teacher.
No such luck.
She sprinted down corridor upon corridor in the warren of offices, moving against the tide of evacuees, but found no sign of the missing children. She had almost decided to abandon this portion of the capitol and move to another area when she heard a young boy’s shrill voice.
“I know you’re in there. You can’t fool me.”
She raced around the corner to find a little boy with shaggy brown hair standing with his hands on his hips in front of a door that read Women.
“Come out of there right now, Jennifer and Tiffany. Miss Walker’s gonna be mad.”
Giggles sounded behind the rest-room door. “You can’t come in here, Jeremy. This is for girls only.”
“Need some help?” Laura asked Jeremy.
He nodded solemnly. “Miss Walker’s gonna be mad, but they won’t come out.”
Laura walked to the rest-room door and pushed it wide. Two little girls with impish grins hovered just beyond the threshold. “You hear that noise?” Laura asked.
Their grins dissolved. Both nodded.
“That’s a fire alarm. It means we have to leave the building.”
“Told you,” Jeremy taunted his classmates behind her back.
“Miss Walker has already taken the rest of the class outside. Everyone else in the building has left. You’d better come with me.”
The girl with a halo of red hair and a rash of freckles folded her arms across her chest and shook her head. “No way. My mama says I can’t go anywhere with strangers.”
“You dumbheads!” Jeremy screamed. “C’mon. It’s a fire drill.”
“You have to go,” Laura said calmly. “The police have ordered everyone out of the building. Once we’re outside, we’ll find Miss Walker and the rest of your class.”
The second girl, her blond hair plaited in a long pigtail, looked at her companion dubiously. “Maybe we better do what she says, Tiffany.”
“Un-uh. Mama says bad people always make up stories to get you to come with them.”
Jennifer glanced up at Laura, then back to her friend. “But that is the fire alarm.”
“I won’t touch you,” Laura pleaded. Her heart pounded, remembering the apprehensive look on the policeman’s face. She hadn’t smelled smoke. Not yet. But something was wrong, and she had to get these children to safety. “Just follow me out of the building. When you see Miss Walker, you can run to her.”
“Well—”
She could tell Tiffany was wavering. “Come on, hurry now. We don’t have much time.”
Tiffany looked to Jennifer, who nodded her consent. In the hallway, Jeremy hopped from one boot to the other. “Hurry up, you dumb girls.”
Laura motioned the girls past her. Just as they crossed the threshold, the floor heaved beneath them, throwing them off their feet.
A concussive blast pierced Laura’s ears.
Th
e world around her turned black.
“FOUR MINUTES to the capitol,” Frank announced over the chopper’s intercom. The suburbs of Helena were visible below them through the helicopter’s Plexiglas bubble.
Kyle sank back in his seat and willed his tensed muscles to relax. It looked as if he would have a shot at that bomb after all. He focused his concentration on the details the Helena bomb squad had provided about the device, keeping his mind on the intricacies of its construction, the sequence of contacts to disconnect, the possible permutations of design that could trap the unsuspecting.
With bombs, he was in his element, for the first time since coming to Montana. Not that he wasn’t an outdoorsman. He’d grown up on his parents’ farm in southern California, working the citrus groves that provided their livelihood. But when he’d arrived at the Lonesome Pony last month, he hadn’t known a damn thing about ranches or horses. Hadn’t known an Appaloosa from a lalapalooza. Had never settled his butt in a saddle, much less spent the day in one. He’d had to work hard to master enough knowledge to pull his share of the load, but Daniel and Court had been good teachers—
A strong current buffeted the chopper, interrupting his thoughts.
“What the hell was that?” Frank fought to maintain control of the whirlybird.
“God help us!” Court’s awe-filled prayer echoed through his headset, and he pointed straight ahead.
Kyle leaned forward between the two front seats for a better view, and his heart stuttered at the sight. A cloud of smoke and dust rose from Helena, precisely over the spot where the capitol building stood.
“Damn,” Kyle swore. “If we’d moved a few minutes faster, I might have prevented that.”
Court turned in his seat to face Kyle. “Or been blown up with the rest of the building.”
Kyle shuddered at that possibility and glanced back over at Daniel. “I’m sorry. We’re too late.”
The older man’s face had gone pale beneath its weathered tan, and he seemed to fight to regain his composure. “Not too late to help. Frank, put us down as close as you can. We have to make sure everyone’s out of there.”
Like the pro he was, Frank set the helicopter down smoothly on a swath of capitol parking lot that had evidently been cleared before the explosion. One side of the building was in ruins, office walls blown away, furniture hanging from the floors slanting at precarious angles. In stark contrast to the devastation, the other side of the building appeared unscathed. Police cars, fire trucks and ambulances, sirens wailing, were converging on the scene. In a far corner of the lot, paramedics were setting up a triage station.
Kyle was first off the chopper. The stench of cordite and burning electrical wires filled his nose, and plaster dust choked his lungs. Despite the clamor of emergency sirens, he could hear the shouts and screams of onlookers. A quick survey of the area revealed shock and disbelief on everyone’s faces.
Roger Jordan, head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Helena office, strode across the debris-littered pavement toward Kyle.
“Everyone out?” Kyle asked.
Jordan shook his head. “We’ve got a hysterical teacher over there.” He wagged his head toward the capitol mall. “Claims she lost three kids inside. Some woman volunteered to look for them before the blast. They didn’t make it out.”
Daniel approached. “The governor?”
Jordan set his mouth in a grim line. “Haskel and his secretary are unaccounted for.”
Daniel turned to his agents. “Looks like our work’s cut out for us. Let’s find those folks.”
“We’ve got extra hard hats with headlamps at our command post.” Jordan jerked his thumb behind him. “You’re welcome to them.”
Kyle and his fellow agents followed the ATF leader and soon were fitted with headgear and additional flashlights.
“Tread carefully in there,” Daniel warned them. “What’s left of the building is unstable. I don’t want to lose any of you.”
With grim determination, the agents headed toward the devastated section of the building. Dust and smoke still billowed and swirled. Firefighters sprayed high-pressure hoses where flames continued to rage. Taking a deep breath, Kyle stepped into the ruins.
It was like plunging into hell.
LAURA STRUGGLED to her feet, coughing and choking on dust and smoke. Her first thoughts were of her father, and she prayed he had been safely evacuated with the governor. Her head throbbed, and although her ears rang from the concussion of the blast, she could hear the children crying around her. Her eyes ran so thick with tears, she couldn’t see the youngsters in the dim light.
Dear God, if she was this scared, how terrified were they?
“Kids?” she called. “Where are you? Are you all right?”
A pair of tiny arms snaked around her hips. “I’m scared. I want out of here.”
It was Tiffany’s voice. Laura stooped down and hugged the child. “Hear those sirens? The firefighters are coming. They’ll get us out.”
A scrambling noise sounded in the wreckage beside her. “Jennifer?”
The other little girl, her body racked with sobs, threw herself at Laura. “I wanna go home. I want my mommy!”
Laura gathered Jennifer against her side. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. Jeremy, are you out there?”
A low moan answered her call. It seemed to come from a few feet in front of her.
“Hold on to my skirt, girls, and stick together. We have to find Jeremy.”
Falling to her hands and knees, Laura crawled toward the sound of the moaning with the two girls close beside her. Debris scraped her knees and tore at her stockings, and she was operating almost blind in the suffocating dust. “I’m coming, Jeremy. Hang on.”
Her outstretched hand touched a boot, and she quickly lifted the little boy in her arms. “I’ve got you now. You’ll be okay soon.”
With Jennifer and Tiffany clinging to her for dear life, she headed back the way they’d come until she felt a solid wall ahead of her. She turned, braced her back against the wall as she sat, and settled Jeremy on her lap. The dust was beginning to settle, and she could make out the outlines of his stark white face.
And the nasty, bleeding gash across his forehead.
Wriggling out of her suit jacket, she took off her white silk blouse and tore a strip off the bottom. She tore a second strip, folded it into a pad and placed it against the gash on Jeremy’s head.
“Be a brave boy,” she murmured to him as she pressed the pad against the wound and tied it firmly with the other strip. “This may hurt.”
Jeremy only whimpered, and she prayed he didn’t have more serious internal injuries. She held him in her arms, crooning reassurances to him, and the girls huddled on either side of her. “We’re going to be all right. They’ll come for us soon.”
As the dust settled, she began to comprehend their situation. The explosion—a gas main, perhaps?—had trapped them in the short access corridor to the ladies’ room. The framing of that alcove must have protected them from falling beams and debris, but their approach to the main hall was blocked. There was a hole large enough to lift the children through, but she had no idea what pitfalls lay on the other side. She didn’t dare send them out alone, and she feared the whole structure might tumble if she tried to clear her way out.
She could still smell smoke, but she could also hear the sirens of the fire engines, the distant shouts of firefighters, and the splash of water from their hoses. If Miss Walker and the rest of her class had escaped the building, the teacher would have alerted the authorities that Laura and the children were still trapped inside.
The only thing to do was wait.
And keep the children calm.
Jeremy lay still in her arms, but his pulse was steady and his breathing even. Jennifer and Tiffany sniffled on either side of her, and her hearts went out to the terrified little girls. She’d be crying herself, but she had to keep up a brave front for the children.
“Miss Walke
r knows we’re in here,” she reassured the girls, “and she’ll have the firefighters looking for us. We’ll have to make some noise to lead them to us.”
Tiffany wiped her nose on her sleeve. “I can scream real loud.”
“Screaming isn’t a good idea,” Laura suggested with more calm than she felt. “We don’t want to frighten anyone.” Or get you more worked up than you already are. “How about a song we could all sing?”
Jennifer gazed up at her through soot-rimmed eyes. “I know ‘This Old Man.’”
“Me, too,” Tiffany said.
“Good,” Laura said.
In the far distance, blending with the noises of sirens, she could hear people moving through the ruins, shouting to one another. “If we sing real loud, the firefighters will hear us and come find us. Ready?”
Their voices were raspy and thin as they began to sing, and little Jeremy lay entirely too quietly in her arms. But as the singing cleared the dust from their throats, their song grew louder and more steady. They continued gamely, verse after verse.
“‘This Old Man, he played eight—’”
“Hello! Where are you?”
Laura and the girls broke off midphrase at the call. The voice that hailed them was rich and deep and coming from where the main hall had been before the blast.
“We’re in here,” Laura called.
She heard the sounds of debris shifting and someone approaching. A beam of light shone through the small opening that led to the main hall.
Laura blinked in the glare and felt Tiffany and Jennifer cling tighter to her.
The light beam withdrew, and another light, more powerful and widespread than the flashlight, filled the crevice. A big man with wide shoulders thrust his head through the small opening.
Laura caught her breath. He looked like an avenging angel with a hard hat for a halo. Even with smoke and dust smearing his face, she could discern the strong lines of his jaw, the classic slope of his nose and the intense green eyes that glowed with compassion and concern. His expression radiated kindness and a virile gentleness, and she realized with a jolt that there was resolution and incredible strength there as well. His smile melted the icy knot of fear in her stomach and hope surged in its place.
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