Suddenly Julia saw Paul racing over with a cadre of uniformed police. “Paul, the bomb’s in the BBQ truck! Get everybody out of here!” she shouted, but the police were already in action.
“Leave the area immediately!” The cops shouted, fanning out in theparking lot and picnic area. They gathered people and rushed them from the scene.
“Everybody, run!” Paul bolted to an older couple and hurried them from the lot.
“Run, run, run!” Julia yelled, hurrying a panicked woman away.
BA-BOOM!The BBQ truck exploded with a deafening blast. A percussive wave propelled Julia backward. An orange fireball burst into flame, throwing off heat and light. Metal chunks of the truck flew into the air.
Julia looked up from the asphalt, dazed. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t hear. A fireball raged a super-heated orange. Smoke billowed around her.
She couldn’t catch her breath. She gasped, coughing. People lay on the asphalt around her, bleeding. She tried to scramble backward.
Another food truck exploded, then another and another, igniting each other. Debris flew from the trucks, shooting splinters of wood and shards of metal.
Julia raised her arms to shield her face.
In the next moment, everything went black.
56
Julia wondered if this was heaven. She felt suffused with good feeling, lying somewhere soft. She couldn’t see anything but she didn’t mind. She knew whitish light surrounded her because she could see it through her eyelids. She couldn’t hear anything except for a sweet sound too far away to identify, but she listened as if it were music, feeling its notes comforting her deep inside, so profound they could be heard only by her soul.
Her thoughts wandered, and she could feel her brain trying to puzzle out what was going on and where she was and what had happened, but none of that seemed pressing. She felt herself floating along in a channel of spiritual flow, a pristine and peaceful river that led to another world, a place of joined spirits.
Thoughts crossed her consciousness like birds flying in a clear blue sky, on their way to somewhere else. She remembered Kay Patterson and Helen Davenport, who connected with her and through her, and she began to understand that she was among them now, a spirit freeof her physical self, disembodied, at one with the ether, truly ethereal. She had become her own breath, then air.
Suddenly her thoughts seemed to darken, like the sky before a thunderstorm. An image of Kay popped into her mind, but this time the woman was lying on the floor, having been shot to death. Courtney was crying over her grandmother, screaming in shock.
No, no, no!
Julia didn’t know if she was asleep or awake. She didn’t know if she was alive or dead. She flashed on an image of Samuel, bleeding to death at the wheel of his car, a sight that she’d never seen but came to her as if she had.
Julia felt herself turning this way and that, trying to get away from the images in her own mind, and she didn’t know if she was really moving or dreaming, but her entire body pulsed with adrenaline, wanting to flee but unable to.
Crack!went the gunshot, and Julia was reliving the horrific scene at the farm. McKenna was taking brutal aim at Novak and firing a bullet into his head. Novak collapsed to the ground, the bonfire raging behind him.
She tried to scream but no sound came out. She was trapped in a nightmare that showed no signs of stopping. She braced herself for what was to come, filled with a sense of dread that she couldn’t stop something horrific that was about to happen, then the world exploded in a deafening combustion of flame and smoke.
Julia saw people running for their lives, and she was screaming and screaming, and blood was everywhere, and cries of sheer terror.
She begged God to let her wake up.
57
Wake up!” said a child’s voice, and Julia opened her eyes to see Leni, smiling at her.
“Leni?” Julia whispered, confused. Her mind reeled. She didn’t know if it was her daughter or a vision. She didn’t know what was going on. She couldn’t collect her thoughts.
“Mommy, you’re okay!” Leni smiled sweetly, laying her head on Julia’s side.
Julia blinked. She felt oddly frozen. Her body was in some residual state of fear. She couldn’t leave terror behind yet. It wasinher.
“Cara.” Gianluca took her hand, which was bandaged, and Julia looked into the rich brown of her husband’s eyes, his tanned, handsome face, and his rich brown hair, all of him so darkly vivid against the pale white around him. She felt herself come back to herself, as her mind and heart eased, and she returned slowly into the present, to her husband and daughter. Julia realized she was in a hospital, and Gianluca and Leni were here with her, at her bedside. She was awake,alive.
“Gianluca,” Julia said hoarsely, amazed. “How did you get here… so fast?”
“I was already on my way, darling. All’s clear with those allegations, I’ll explain later. I love you.”
