She wanted to tell Deputy Foster to go where it was safe. But the fact of the matter was, Alyssa was putting all the energy she had left into not passing out.
* * *
CALEB WAS SWEATING BULLETS.
He split his focus between Charlie trying to fool the bomb by thinking Alyssa was still sitting on top of it and the woman herself. Since the water and fan hadn’t worked, she’d spent almost forty-five minutes being drained, and now he wasn’t sure if she’d make it past another minute.
Her head was leaning back against the headrest, and her eyelids seemed to be fighting gravity. Caleb wanted to touch her, to remind her he was there, but he couldn’t. Not just because of the bomb. While he was starting to get an idea of her character, she still had no idea about his.
And he wanted to keep it that way.
“Okay. Here we go. Get ready to grab her,” Charlie commanded. “I think I’ve—What the hell?”
Alyssa must have really been out of it. She didn’t look alarmed in the slightest at the sharp tone the man trying to disarm the bomb beneath her took on.
But Caleb did. “What’s go—”
Click.
“Damn,” Charlie interrupted. “Grab her!”
Click. Click.
“Grab her now,” Charlie yelled again, struggling out of the back seat in his uniform.
Caleb didn’t have to be told a third time.
He threaded his arms beneath Alyssa’s legs and back and hoisted her out in one quick move.
Click.
Charlie was already yelling, “Now run!”
Caleb tucked Alyssa against his chest and ran faster than he’d ever run before.
“Eight seconds,” Charlie yelled out to anyone who could hear.
Like ants in the rain, everyone in front of or behind the blocked-off perimeter of the parking lot scurried this way and that, trying to get as far away as they could. The crowd that had formed was yelling while deputies and bomb squad alike were barking orders to each other and bystanders.
Two members of the squad in particular stood out. Instead of running away from the car, they were running toward Caleb, Alyssa and Charlie with two dark blankets. When the five of them finally collided, Charlie yelled to hit the ground.
Caleb dove onto his side so he would take the brunt of the fall, and then just as quickly rolled over to cover the woman in his arms. The bomb squad men positioned themselves on either side of Charlie and Caleb and threw the blankets—which Caleb now realized were bomb blankets, made from layers of Kevlar—over each of them.
Caleb felt like he was being pulled every which way in the moments that followed. What-ifs sprang up in his mind like flowers in the spring—What if they hadn’t cleared the blast area? What if the bomb blanket didn’t help them? What if he never got to take Alyssa out for that drink of sweet tea he’d offered?—while his body seemed to be running on instinct. It created a cage around the woman, trying to make itself as big as possible to protect her at all costs. But then another part of him, one he didn’t know where it was coming from, was looking down at her face—slack from the unconsciousness she finally had given in to—and thinking how beautiful she was. But then everyone was yelling and he remembered to fear what was about to happen.
Not for himself, but for Alyssa.
They waited.
And waited.
And waited.
No explosion rocked the ground, filled the air or even disrupted the birds chirping in the distance. Caleb chanced a look over to Charlie, who gave him nothing less than a similar expression of confusion.
“When I slid the plate in, a counter slid out for ten seconds,” he defended. “It started to count down instantly. It should have gone off by now.”
Cautiously both men stood, Caleb scooping Alyssa back up and putting her firmly against his chest. “I’m getting her out of here.”
Charlie didn’t stop him and ordered one of the bomb squad with the bomb blankets to follow until they made it past the barricade.
“Thanks, man,” Caleb made sure to say. The man nodded.
“No problem,” he answered. “It’s my job.”
The simple statement was all it took to remind Caleb of his own job. If he still had one. As if he’d been summoned, Captain Jones was at their side.
“I told the EMTs to stay farther back, just in case,” he hurried, pointing out the ambulance on the other side of the street. There was a news van a few yards from it, despite the blocks that had been put between them. A cameraman and a woman wielding a microphone were standing tall and ready. “Let me take care of them. You follow—”
Both men paused as a foreign sound filled the air.
“Is that—” the captain started, turning around to look in the direction of Alyssa’s car. Caleb did the same. “—music?” he finished.
The world quieted around them. Bystanders, deputies and bomb squad alike became silent and listened. There was no mistaking it. Coming from the abandoned Honda wasn’t fire and smoke but music.
A piano solo.
What was going on?
Alyssa stirred in Caleb’s arms. It brought him out of his moment of wonder. “Time to get you out of here.”
* * *
ALYSSA WISHED SHE’D worn a nicer bra. The one she had on now was off-beige, comfortable, did its job and was not supposed to be seen by anyone other than herself. Her panties—black, not beige, also comfortable and just as capable of doing their job—were on the same list of Things That Were Very Private. And yet, looking down at herself, there they were. Open to the hospital room around her just as they had been open to the EMTs who had deemed it necessary to strip her down in the ambulance.
Sure, they were trying to bring her core temperature down as quickly as possible to save her brain cells from dying off and, well, her dying off too. Yet there she was, all brain cells intact, remembering that it hadn’t just been her and the EMTs in the ambulance.
Deputy Caleb Foster had been there too.
Fresh heat crawled up Alyssa’s neck and into her cheeks. No one would count it as embarrassment, seeing as how she’d spent the last half hour being treated for heat stroke. Still, when someone knocked on the door, she tried to mentally restrain the blush.
“Hello?” a woman called. “My name is Cassie Gates. I’m from the sheriff’s department. May I come in?”
The
