At first her subconscious registered the sound and ignored it. Clink. Then she heard it again. And again. Clearly coming from beneath the wreckage. And then, a faint recognizable pattern. Clinkclinkclink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clinkclinkclink.
Three short, three long, three short.
SOS.
Someone was alive.
She turned to run back to her crew. They had to know. She had to tell them—but then her radio crackled.
SOS observed. Pending clearance from bomb squad and collapse units. Hold all rescue.
They were right. She knew they were right. Attempting a rescue when a bomb could be sitting in there was nuts. Even without a bomb, nothing about the remaining structure looked secure. Those propane tanks could be leaking. There could be an active gas line leading to the stove. One spark could send the rest of the building sky high. One shifting board could send it all crashing down. She’d gone through the schooling and knew it as well as anyone.
But learning something in a classroom was different from handling it in practice.
Clinkclinkclink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clinkclinkclink.
So faint, yet so clear.
“Hannah.”
Her father. She’d lost track of herself, and she was now standing between units, staring at the wreckage, a bar clutched in one hand.
She looked at her father. His features blurred, just a little, then steadied. She blinked and tears rolled down her cheeks.
She was crying. She hadn’t even noticed.
“Hannah?” he said again. His voice was quiet. Not harsh, but not gentle either.
Emotion clogged her throat and made it impossible for irritation to color her words. For an instant she wanted to be six years old again, for her father to be a hero again, for him to put on a helmet and rush into danger and walk out with a survivor in his arms.
But he wasn’t. And now she was the firefighter. He was the fire marshal. The most heroic thing he did these days was harass people.
“Michael was here,” she said.
“Was?”
She shook her head quickly. “Is. His truck . . .” She pointed. “Do you hear that?”
Clinkclinkclink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clinkclinkclink.
The rhythm had changed. It was slower. Fainter.
Clinkclinkclink.
Clink.
Clink.
Clink.
And then it stopped.
“We all hear it,” he said.
“It stopped,” she whispered.
His own radio, tuned to the police channel, fired off a lot of codes she didn’t know. He paused to listen, then said, “Bomb squad is en route.”
His voice was so practical. Had he always been like this? She wanted to smack him. “Can’t we send a crew in? Can’t we—”
“That’s up to your chief. Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?”
“Dad! Don’t you want to help? Don’t you think we should be rescuing them?”
“Hannah.” His voice sliced through hers, cutting her off. His eyes were ice cold and furious. “I have a job to do here. There are more people involved than your boyfriend. There are procedures here, for your safety and everyone else’s. Do you understand me?”
He might as well have hit her. She stared up at him.
She remembered that photo from her dining room wall, the way she’d looked up at him in admiration.
She’d been so stupid.
Hannah turned on her heel and started walking. She waited for him to call her back, but she wasn’t five steps away when he was speaking into his radio.
And then her phone chimed.
A text from Michael.
Her heart cheered. It was almost enough to send her running into the wreckage, and procedure be damned. But no message appeared. Just a picture.
At first she didn’t understand. It was dark, and the image was gruesome. A limb—and she couldn’t even identify whether it was an upper arm or a lower leg—with a piece of rebar impaling it. Torn denim. Blood everywhere, speckled with dirt.
Then a line of text appeared.
Not me. Tell me what to do.
CHAPTER 13
When the text finally sent, Michael almost fainted from relief. He had about fifteen texts with a little red exclamation point beside them, showing that they hadn’t gone through. Calls wouldn’t connect at all, and he watched his battery percentage drop with each attempt. Water sprayed from exposed pipes overhead, creating puddles everywhere and misting his skin.
He was twenty feet below the surface, in a ravine of his own making.
Along with almost everyone else from inside the bar. Debris had fallen among them. And through them. Michael had turned on the flashlight feature of his phone and shined it around until he’d found familiar eyes staring back at him.
“Did it go through yet?” said Tyler. His voice was wispy. From what Michael could tell, they were the only two people conscious.
Michael was terrified that they were the only two people alive.
Tyler’s leg was impaled on a steel bar—which was attached to a slab of concrete.
Hannah sent back a text.
DON’T MOVE BAR. Could bleed out. Conscious?
Yes.
Keep him talking. What else you got?
“She says we have to leave it,” said Michael.
“Fuck that!” Sweat bloomed on Tyler’s forehead despite the chill in the air. “Get it out!”