Time Bomb(32)

He wasn’t going to accept that.

“We can do this, Kaitlin,” he said, yanking a two-by-four out of a pile of debris. “Right?”

He looked over at Miss Princess, waiting for her to agree. But she was just standing there staring at Kaitlin. Her eyes wide. Her mouth slightly open.

“Right?” he asked again.

Slowly, the blonde shook her head and took a step back. “No. Listen to Kaitlin. You can’t move her.”

“We have to,” he insisted. She had to be okay. She just had to be.

“I get that you want to, but if we move her right now, she’ll die.”

The words slapped his heart.

“Look,” the girl said. “At best, her bones are simply broken, but if it’s more than that . . .” She took a deep breath and once again glanced down at Kaitlin before quickly looking away. “If she has other injuries, she could lose a lot of blood the minute we move her. We don’t have anything to stop the bleeding. This is bad, but that would be far worse. And she’s probably in shock.” There had to be other options other than having her legs crushed or bleeding out. There had to.

“Z,” Kaitlin whispered.

He squelched the panic and forced himself to give an encouraging smile as he walked back and knelt at her side. “I’m here. And I’m going to get you out of this. You’re going to be okay.”

How many times had he told his mother it would all be okay?

“I know you want to help, Z.” Kaitlin closed her eyes tight. Her voice sounded thin. The pain was wearing her down. “But you have to listen to her.”

Kaitlin’s face looked even paler. Ghostlike.

“I’m not going to give up,” he said. “You can’t either. You have to keep fighting.”

“Z . . .”

“Promise me you’ll keep fighting, and so will I.”

He smoothed her hair, stood up, and stalked over the cracked floor toward the shattered windows, wanting to smash something. To smash it all. But that would scare Kaitlin. He had to—

“Z?” Homecoming Chick’s voice made him jump. He hadn’t heard her sneak up behind him. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

People liked saying that crap. As if they really thought someone would believe them.

“My name’s Diana, by the way. Diana Sanford.”

Of course it was. He should have known that’s who she was. Senator Sanford’s sainted daughter. No wonder she thought she was the authority on all things. “I’m getting Kaitlin out of here.”

“Kaitlin needs paramedics or the fire department or people more skilled than we are if she’s going to get through this.”

“Well, where the hell are they?” he yelled while Diana looked down at the phone in her hand as if it were magically going to give her the answer. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not seeing any firefighters bursting through the doors.” He grabbed an overturned chair by the legs and swung it toward the window.

The chair and the glass shattered. Z leaned his head out and yelled, “Hey! We’re up here. There’s a girl who needs help right now!”

Dozens of emergency vehicles were in the parking lots, as were people in uniform. They were all looking in the direction of the school.

No one was rushing toward the building. A couple of firefighters took a step or two toward the edge of the asphalt, but no one came any farther.

“Hello?” he screamed. “What the hell are you waiting for? You need to move! A girl is going to die!”

“Z, you’re not helping,” Diana said as he pulled his head back into the room.

“Like you are?”

“I’m trying to. There’s a reason no one is coming in.”

“Like what?” he yelled.

“Like they think there’s another bomb!”

Kaitlin moaned, and Z’s heart tightened.

Quietly, Diana said, “Fire responders must have been ordered to stay out of the building until the bomb squad or robots or whatever determine if there’s another bomb. If there is, they won’t come in. They can’t; otherwise they’ll put us in even greater danger than we are now.”

Which meant they were on their own.

If that’s the way they wanted it—fine. Screw them. Screw them all.





Frankie





— Chapter 29 —


“HERE’S THE PLAN. We’re going to get out of this room. Then we’ll look at those bandages, and after we make sure you’ve staved off the vampires, we’ll get out of Dodge. Deal?” Frankie asked.

“I think we have more to worry about when it comes to the smoke, but if you want to focus on vampires, sure thing,” Cas said. She took a deep breath, then nodded. “I’m ready when you are.”

Still holding her hand, he got to his feet and said, “Okay. One. Two. Three.”

He pulled. She stumbled, and he snaked an arm around her back to make sure she didn’t go down for the count. The back of her shirt was wet with sweat.

He adjusted his grip and guided her until she was standing all the way upright in the middle of the chaos around them. She leaned forward, and he lunged to grab her because he thought she was going to hit the deck again. Then he realized she was reaching for a blue bag that was on the ground.