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“Oh, fuck. Shayna. Oh, fuck.” His heart in his throat, Billy switched over to his text app and fired off a message. His hands were shaking, making it hard to hit the right keys. Then another. Then another. They all showed as Delivered but not Read.
Shayna are you ok?
Just saw the news about the explosion. Let me know you’re okay.
I’m sorry, please call or text me. Worried.
“I’ll call her,” Mo said, but he shook his head. “Straight to voicemail.”
Billy slammed his laptop closed. “She’s there. She’s there, goddamnit. And she might be hurt. Did you see her colleague?” One heartbeat passed, and then another. Jesus, how was it possible that she’d been at the scene of an explosion? Nausea rolled through his gut. “I’m going over there.”
He took the steps two at a time. Shirt. Shoes. Keys. Phone. Then he was back downstairs.
Mo stood in the middle of his living room. “It’s going to be a mob scene, Billy.”
He met the other man’s dark gaze. “She thinks I want her to move out, Mo. She’s probably rattled and possibly hurt, and she think’s I want her gone.”
“Then it’s going to be a mob scene plus two,” his friend said. Just like that.
It took forever and a fucking day to get anywhere close to the scene of the incident, at least that was how it felt. And then Mo and Billy were forced to park and hoof it the last four blocks. Of course, there were barriers everywhere once they arrived, and a crowd ten deep of looky-loos wanting to watch as the disaster unfolded.
And, of course, there was the fucking fire, which made Billy’s skin absolutely crawl with the desire to flee. Which, hell no. Not without Shayna.
“We’ll find her,” Mo said. “The angle of that Facebook feed was from over there.”
Billy followed Mo’s hand signal and nodded, and they made their way around the crowd, close to where the majority of the emergency vehicles had parked.
“That’s Riddick’s company,” Mo said, pointing at one of the trucks. They made for it, and Mo flagged someone down. “Can you tell Sean Riddick that Mo’s here and needs to talk to him when he has a sec?”
“Sure, man,” the guy said with a wave.
“Look,” Billy exclaimed, his heart suddenly in his throat. “That’s Shayna’s car and her colleague.” And, Christ, she’d been parked so close.
“Billy.” Mo grabbed his arm and hauled him a few steps to the right such that they could see around the back of one of the hose trucks. On the grass just beyond, black tarps were laid out on which sat dozens of patients. EMTs moved among them administering first aid.
And that was when Billy saw her.
She was at the edge of the group—just out of frame, as it were—taking pictures. He remembered imagining Shayna as a war correspondent, and it was exactly what she looked like as she skirted around the edge of a disaster scene littered with scattered debris, discarded bandage wrappers and water bottles, and other detritus.
“Oh, Jesus,” he managed, his hand grabbing at his heart. He called her name.
But of course she couldn’t hear him over the rumble of the fire engines or the still crackling flames or the spraying of the hoses, not to mention the voices of onlookers, the crying of children, and the occasional voice through a bullhorn.
&
nbsp; And then Sean Riddick came around the back of the firetruck, his face sweaty and grimy and his turnout gear smelling like smoke. He took one look at Billy and said, “Shayna’s here. She’s injured but she won’t let them take her to the hospital. Then again, she was the first one on the scene and almost all the initial images and the live stream video are hers. I get why she doesn’t want to walk away.”
Billy’s stomach dropped and his heart squeezed and his chest swelled with pride. “How badly injured?”
Sean looked to the right and left and then lifted the yellow tape. “Come on back,” he said. Billy and Mo followed him through the gear and people and around the triage area. “She’s got an impaled object wound in her arm. They wrapped and cushioned it, but they don’t want to take it out here because they don’t know how deep it is. And she’s got a head lac that needs stitches. Everything else is superficial, though there’s a lot of it. She was standing pretty much right where they set up their camera.”
Right. So, ground-fucking-zero. Billy was shaking—for her and for the memory of what’d happened to him.
“Somehow, though, she still looks better than you.” Sean smirked, and Billy didn’t even mind the jab when the guy pointed Shayna out. “Catch ya after,” he said, already backing away.
“I owe you, Sean.”
The guy shook his head. “No, you don’t. Just take care of her.”
