DESPERATE CREED: (Book 5 Ryder Creed K-9 Mystery Series) Page 18

  The middle-aged couple braced against the wall in the far corner. Maggie had thought they looked like lovers earlier. Now, neither comforted the other. In fact, they stood at arm’s length.

  The man dressed in a polo shirt and khakis had been at the counter, too. He stayed close to the stairwell.

  The truck driver had lost his ball cap. Long, thin strands of hair whipped around his head and looked as wild as his eyes. He stood close to Hank, staring up the stairwell like he was ready to push the door open as soon as the storm stopped. But he was holding his arm. In the dim light Maggie could see the stain of blood growing on his shirt. When he turned, she could see something protruding from the back of his shoulder.

  It reminded her of her forehead and her fingers found the open wound. Then Maggie realized something else. Her eyes darted around, checking faces, searching the far corners. The other waitress—the one who had served Frankie and her—wasn’t here. She had looked for her and had hoped the woman had already escaped down the stairs. But she wasn’t here.

  Maggie listened to walls collapsing overhead as the storm punched and scratched and beat down on them. She felt the crushing weight of the woman’s absence. There was no way she could survive whatever was happening up there.

  Just when Maggie didn’t think things could get any worse, something exploded above them. The beams creaked and groaned. The concrete wall vibrated. A second boom shattered the light bulb sending them into darkness. A slow moan grew into a high-pitched screech.

  Then suddenly, the ceiling started collapsing down on top of them.

  42

  Creed carefully maneuvered the Jeep through the mess. Power lines dangled from broken poles. They tried to drive to the industrial area they had watched take a direct hit. A gigantic cell tower had toppled over on top of the interstate, so they had to backtrack to another exit.

  Creed weaved along a side road, stunned by what he saw. Branches cluttered their path. Cinder blocks and bricks were scattered everywhere. Electrical transformers six-stories high were bent over and twisted into the ground. In an area where trees had blocked their view of the tornado, now Creed could see all the way to the horizon.

  He slowed and they rolled down their windows to listen for calls of help, but an eerie silence had replaced the roar of the storm. And in the quiet they could hear the tinkling of shredded metal that hung from the few trees that remained standing.

  “Oh man, over there,” Jason said as he pointed to the right. A few blocks away was the entrance to a residential area.

  Creed saw flashing lights of rescue units arriving at the other end of what used to be a housing complex. Three blocks wide, for as far as he could see, foundations looked swept clean, but beside each one stood a pile of rubble. If not for the concrete slabs it would have been difficult to tell where one house ended and the other began.

  People wandered around. Some looked totally lost. Some were bleeding. A few first responders were already in the streets. Sirens filled the air. Confetti littered the lawns with shattered glass, toys, shoes, books, dinner plates and twisted pieces of chain link fence. Yet, at the end of one driveway stood a stainless steel refrigerator, upright and unmarked as though someone had just delivered it.

  Across the street, not a house looked touched, except for the corner lot. The wall facing the street was sheered off, making it look like a dollhouse. Furniture, rugs, wall hangings remained in place. Creed was stunned to see that even the pillows on the sofa hadn’t been disturbed.

  The path of the storm was very distinct. To the right, every single tree had been uprooted, stripped of leaves and bark or dumped on top of what used to be a house. But on the other side of the street, huge oaks weren’t missing a single branch. Magnolia trees still kept their blooms. The only indications of a storm were the pieces of pink insulation clinging in between the leaves like cherry blossoms.

  Creed felt a bit numb. He backed the Jeep and pulled up off the street into an empty lot, getting out of the way of a fire truck.

  “We should take the dogs,” he told Jason, “and do a sweep. See if there’s anyone trapped.”

  When Jason didn’t respond, Creed glanced over at his profile. Behind his sunglasses Creed could see the kid staring out the windshield. His hand was rubbing the elbow of his other arm. It was a familiar gesture, a habit Jason had gotten into after his arm had been amputated, but Creed hadn’t seen him do it since he’d been fitted with his new prosthetic.

  “You okay?”

  Jason blinked a couple of times before he turned to look at Creed.

  “It looks like a war zone,” he said.

  “Yeah, it does. One big difference,” Creed said. “Rufus and I usually came in before everything exploded.”

  43

  Florida Panhandle

  Hannah had saved Brodie from the anxiety of having lunch with her mother.

  What a spectacle that would have been!

  Brodie could only imagine the look on Olivia James’ face as soon as she started breaking apart her entrée into tiny, little pieces. Here was a woman who instructed and lectured on the appropriate utensils used to serve particular foods. She remembered an entire episode dedicated to silverware placement that included a total of four separate forks.

  But now, as they sat across the kitchen table, Brodie didn’t know what to do with her hands. She had picked up Kitten at one point, trying to settle the cat on her lap. Even Kitten must have felt the woman’s disapproval. The cat insisted on jumping back to the floor and disappeared as she often did when she didn’t want to put up with whoever or whatever upset her.

  Brodie was quickly learning that Kitten didn’t possess the same loyalty Hannah and Ryder’s dogs had. Still, the cat had become a sense of security to Brodie. She couldn’t explain it. The animal calmed her like nothing else.

  The kitten had appeared inside the Christmas house along with two paper bags full of grocery. She wasn’t sure if the person who left the food had also left the kitten. It didn’t matter. Whether a mistake or an intention, Brodie immediately thought of the cat as much of a gift as the food.

  Now, Brodie wished her fingers were stroking Kitten’s soft fur. Instead, she was hiding them and wringing her hands under the table.

  Thankfully, Hannah filled the silence. Her voice was smooth and steady and peaceful. She talked about recipes, the storms and about Ryder and Jason. She told Olivia about Isaac and Thomas, and Brodie wished the two boys were here. They would understand her discomfort, but they would also be impatient and wanting to play with the toys inside the box.

  At first, Brodie tried to keep up, listening and nodding, but now her heart was pounding too loudly. Her ears were filled with a rushing sound. She glanced at her mother to see if she could hear the thumping. Olivia James’ lipstick was too perfect. Her fingernails were trimmed and painted. Not a single chipped one. No jagged skin.

  Under the table Brodie looked at her fingernails. Several were bitten to the quick. She fought the urge to take care of a cuticle on her thumb. Unable to bring it to her teeth, she started to pick at it with her fingers.

  Olivia James’ hair was pretty, too. There were highlights of gold and the ends swished softly under her chin. Both sides were even. Brodie resisted forking her fingers through her short-cropped hair. Only recently had she tried to stop cutting swatches of it out. In her mind, long hair was what had attracted attention. It was one of the reasons she was taken. Iris wanted to replace her daughter Charlotte, and Charlotte had always worn her hair long.

  Brodie had hated the dirty, unwashed strands clinging around her neck like a noose. As soon as she had access to a pair of scissors, she started to cut it and didn’t stop until it was shorn so close she could see her scalp in places.

  Those scissors...she remembered now. The image flashed before her. She had driven the metal blades deep into Aaron’s neck. Above the rushing sound in her ears Brodie could still hear his howls of pain. She could still feel his warm blood splatter her face. She didn�
��t attempt to pull the blades back out. No, if anything, she pushed them deeper.

  She gave her head a small shake, wanting to get rid of the image. She looked up to find Hannah and her mother staring at her.

  When had Hannah stopped talking?

  Brodie could see the concern lined on her forehead. Her mother was watching her like a person watching a scary movie and not knowing what came next. Brodie wanted to tell her that this was exactly what she was getting herself into. She wasn’t her innocent, little girl anymore. She didn’t care about pretty things or old toys. Instead, she was thrilled to have a drawer full of socks and warm blankets and chocolate chip cookies. She wanted to tell her mother that she was as strange as she looked with sunken cheeks and skinny legs. She was inappropriate. She ate with her hands...hands that were still chapped and scarred; fingernails manicured by teeth.

  But instead of saying any of those things, what she said next surprised her as much as it surprised Hannah and her mother.

  She blurted out, “I killed a man.”

  44

  Just South of Montgomery, Alabama

  Creed and Jason geared up. They grabbed helmets and added extra batteries for the flashlights already inside their pre-loaded daypacks. Creed squeezed in a couple more water bottles in case someone needed water. Both of them had wrap-around sunglasses to protect their eyes from falling debris, but they also had goggles for themselves and for the dogs.

  Grace didn’t mind goggles, but it was impossible to get her to accept boots. Most of their dogs came to them after being abandoned. As a result, some had particular issues, and Creed took all of those issues into consideration when he began training. Lately, he regretted that he hadn’t tried harder to get Grace to wear protective footwear.

  As Jason put Scout’s all terrain boots on, Creed applied a breathable wax balm to Grace’s pads. This, she allowed. It protected her from the hot asphalt and toxins, keeping her pads strong. But it wouldn’t protect her against sharp objects like Scout’s boots would. Creed had tried to put Grace in every kind of footwear available, even the less obtrusive ones that Dr. Avelyn, his veterinarian, had recommended. Grace didn’t resist having them put on. She didn’t chew or tug them off. No, she simply sat. She wouldn’t move. She refused to move.

  They put the dogs’ vests on and attached short leashes. Creed checked the GPS devices to make sure the batteries were full before zipping one into the pocket of each dog’s vest.

  Jason and Scout headed down one street. Creed and Grace took another. They agreed to meet back at the Jeep in an hour. The dogs would need a break. The sun was blazing hot and the air thick. The extra moisture from the storm made it difficult to breathe.

  It amazed Creed how people reacted to dogs in a disaster zone. Dogs brought normalcy back to their lives. Some even stopped and asked to pet Grace, despite the shock in their eyes or the blood on their clothes. Grace’s presence, her prancing and genuine joy to get to work, also gave Creed a sense of calm. Still, he could feel the tension as the two of them walked through these very personal and private ruins of strangers. He couldn’t help but feel like a trespasser.

  After a natural disaster, the primary search for first responders had to be for surface victims. It would keep them busy doing triage and getting survivors to hospitals. But Creed and Grace had to concentrate on those victims trapped, buried, or pinned beneath the crushing weight of their demolished homes.

  Time was never on their side. Buildings compromised by the storm could collapse completely. It wasn’t just the structures they had to worry about. There were downed power lines, gas leaks and flooding. Life threatening injuries could quickly turn a rescue into a recovery.

  “She must be in here,” a woman was screaming.

  Two men teetered on top of a rubble pile that just hours before had been a house. They were ripping up layers of shingles, beams and drywall. They tossed down bent window frames with pieces of glass flying as the frames hit the pavement. The younger man stopped and waved at Creed.

  “Mr. Creed. Deputy Mitch Huston. I was out at the interstate site yesterday.”

  Without his uniform, Creed didn’t recognize the man. Truthfully, there had been dozens of responders, and he’d only met a handful, but he pretended to remember.

  “This your neighborhood, deputy?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m across the street. We were lucky. Unbelievably lucky.” He sheepishly pointed to one of the houses that escaped damaged, survivor’s guilt already taking hold. “These are my neighbors, Bud and Alice.”

  “My mom is somewhere in this mess,” the woman said to Creed, gesturing to him with a cell phone in her hand.

  “She was home. I was talking to her on the phone when it hit. She’s in there somewhere.”

  She tapped her phone’s screen and a few seconds later everyone stopped at the muffled sound of a phone ringing. It came from deep inside the debris pile. Creed could tell they’d already done this—call the number and listened to the ringing. They knew where they needed to dig, but now, they all stared at him, watching and waiting.

  He ventured closer. Toward the back, another section of the house had collapsed into a mess of splintered boards and drywall. Creed found a tangle of clothes and shoes. Carefully, he tugged free a canvas tennis shoe. He held it up, showing it to Alice.

  She was speechless, suddenly overcome with emotion. She simply nodded before he asked if it belonged to her mother.

  “Hey, Mister.” It was Bud calling down to him. “No disrespect, but we could sure use a hand up here. It sounds like her phone is straight down underneath us.”

  “Sir, hold on a minute,” Creed told him.

  He squatted down in front of Grace. He presented the shoe to her, allowing her to sweep her nose over it. She sniffed the surface then dipped her nose inside. He could have chosen any of the woman’s clothing. If she had worn the item recently there would be skin rafts with her individual scent. But Creed trained his handlers to choose shoes if they had a choice. Few people laundered their footwear, so the scent stayed longer.

  He could feel all three of them watching. Most of the time, he’d insist family members move away while his dog did her job. A family’s emotions could distract a scent dog. Sometimes people physically got in the way or simply asked too many questions. But last fall Creed had found himself in the position of being one of those family members and defending his right to be included. At the time, they were searching the graves of a madman and believed they might find the remains of his sister. So he knew how it felt to be pushed out of the way. For all he knew, Grace would alert to the exact spot where they were already digging and confirm the woman’s location.

  But that wasn’t at all what Grace did.

  She poked her nose in the air. Circled once. Then she turned her back on the mountain of debris and headed in the opposite direction.

  45

  Frankie felt the crushing weight but couldn’t see what was on top of her. There was a lot of scrambling in the dark. Flashes of blue light as people found their cell phones. Someone was crying. It was better than the screams from a moment ago. And the fact that she could hear again, should have brought relief that the storm above them had stopped. Actually, it had stopped so suddenly Frankie didn’t trust that it was finished.

  “Are you okay?” Someone asked. Before Frankie could respond, someone else answered and she realized they weren’t talking to her.

  Could anyone even see her? It was so dark she could hardly see. Her back was against the cold concrete floor. When had she fallen down? She tried to move and pain shot up her leg.

  “Oh my God, you’re bleeding!”

  This time the voice was too far away, and Frankie knew it wasn’t directed to her.

  The chaos around her didn’t seem to include her at all. More flashes of blue and white light as more cell phones came on.

  “I can’t get a signal,” a woman said.

  Then suddenly a stream of light hit Frankie in the face.

/>   “Frankie? You okay?” It was Maggie O’Dell, though she couldn’t see the woman on the other side of the blinding light, she recognized her voice. Finally, the stream moved down. “Can you move?”

  “I’m stuck,” Frankie said as she lifted her head to see what the light revealed.

  It made her stomach lurch, and she tasted bile in the back of her throat. Her legs were pinned underneath one of the steel beams that had been holding up the basement ceiling. It looked like part of the building had also caved in on top of her. In a panic, she twisted and wiggled and tried to pull herself out.

  “Hold on,” Maggie told her with a hand on her shoulder. “Hey, I need some help over here!” She yelled.

  Frankie pointed to Maggie’s forehead, “You’re bleeding.”

  The FBI agent swiped her fingers over the wound and wiped the blood on her jeans.

  “I think it’s okay,” she told Frankie. “Probably just needs a couple stitches.”

  The older man who Frankie remembered had been at the counter before the storm, was the first to respond. Except his jaw was bloody now, and his salt and pepper hair glittered with glass and dust. His white shirt with his carefully rolled up sleeves was torn and stained.

  “Do you think we can lift it?” Maggie asked him. She didn’t wait for his answer. She was waving someone else over.

  He crouched down and stared at Frankie as if it were important for him to know the identity of the person he was helping before he gave the beam a single glance. Frankie guessed he was in his sixties. Close up, his skin looked weathered from too much sun, and his hair was more salt than pepper. But his forearms looked lean and strong. And yet, Frankie almost sighed with relief when she saw the giant of a man over Maggie’s shoulder.