Broken glass was everywhere, some blackened, some red. The smoke grew thicker and darker. I started up the concrete steps to the second-floor entrance, feeling a wall of heat ahead of me, but before I could take more than two steps a hand grabbed my shoulder, holding me back.
A figure appeared at the top of the stairs above me, blackened and smoldering. He coughed and took one step, then collapsed and tumbled down, coming to a stop, unmoving, right at my feet. His face was sooty, red, and blistered, and he smelled of burnt hair. I’d had CPR training, but I didn’t know if that was even relevant here.
Luckily, as I knelt down beside him, an older woman gently edged me out of the way, saying, “I’m a doctor.”
I stepped back, grateful to let her take over and do what she could. I looked behind me to see the jogger being helped out of the water, scraped and bloody, but looking mostly okay.
The sky overhead filled with the buzz of drones, like a cloud of gnats. News and police copters approached from the west. Sirens wailed, getting louder and closer. A crowd had formed in a circle around the museum, all of them standing a good twenty feet back from where I was.
The doctor stood, looking grim, and stepped away from the man on the ground. Now, with some of the soot wiped away, I recognized his face from the photos I’d seen. It was Reverend Calkin. He was dead.
Even with all the noise in the background, there was a strange muted quiet, and an audible hush fell over the crowd.
No one else came out of the museum.
A sob burst from my mouth and I took another step back as a firefighter in full gear ran past me up the steps, into the inferno, followed by another.
More of them showed up, pushing the crowd farther and farther back.
Suddenly, we were surrounded by fire trucks. Hoses materialized, crisscrossing the ground, some leading up the steps and into the museum, some snaking up truck-mounted ladders and arcing through the sky, onto the roof and into the windows.
The farther I moved back from the fire itself, the more the magnitude of what had happened sank in.
Those people were all surely dead. Everyone in the museum. Everyone at the luncheon. Some of them were likely people I’d had nothing in common with, who I might have considered enemies. Others were probably friends of friends. All different people, but with one thing in common: their willingness to try to find common ground.
Doc and I could have been in there, too. Doc had been saved by his bad back, and I had been saved by three creeps in a van.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, I thought that someday I’d have to thank them. But then, a cold rage seeped into my bones as I realized they were probably responsible for this.
They had tried to talk me out of going, and when that didn’t work, they’d left me where they knew I wouldn’t get to the museum in time to be caught in the blast.
You couldn’t call it saving me if they caused the blast in the first place. They had chosen not to murder me when they murdered all the others. And I had no idea why.
For several long moments, I stood there amid the chaos and destruction, briefly oblivious to my surroundings as I pondered that question. I realized I was shaking—from shock or fury, I didn’t know. But I did know that as the crime scene got bigger and bigger, I was more and more in the way.
News of the blast would travel quickly. I needed to get to a phone and call my mom, find Rex, let them know I was okay, that I hadn’t been inside. I also needed to talk to the police, to tell someone about this Cronos person, about what he had done and said.
My stomach twisted at the thought of how that might look. After everything that went down at Omnicare, the thing the FBI had cared about most was finding out whether I had any connection to CLAD.
That’s when it hit me. CLAD had no problem with using explosives to make a statement. They’d never killed, but they were known to plant bombs. Maybe it was CLAD who did this. Maybe the people in that van were with CLAD. And if the FBI suspected I was connected to CLAD before, the fact that its members had intervened to make sure I wasn’t there for the bombing was going to make them even more suspicious.
I could feel a storm of trouble gathering on the horizon, and I knew that before anything else, I needed to talk to DeWitt. She had helped get Doc Guzman out of jail. I might need her to do the same for me.
Unfortunately, when I turned to get out of there, those storm clouds I’d been worried about had arrived.
“Is that Jimi Corcoran?” asked the woman walking up behind me, sounding surprised. She held up her badge. “I’m Special Agent Ralphs, FBI. We met after the events at Omnicare in Gellersville.”
“Yes, of course,” I said, my heart still pounding. “I remember.”
“Events” was putting it mildly; what happened at the Omnicare hospital in Gellersville was horrifying, a concoction of greed and hatred and xenophobia and evil on almost every level. My involvement in exposing it was part of the reason I had been invited to the luncheon.
And by “we met,” Ralphs meant she had grilled me for hours on six separate occasions about CLAD.
As she took a step closer, I noticed two other agents flanking her, looking tense, like they were ready to spring into action if I bolted. And I’d be lying if I said the thought hadn’t crossed my mind.
Ralphs slipped her badge back into an inside pocket of her blazer. “We need to talk.”
Crap. I wanted to talk to the authorities, but I wanted to be going to them, voluntarily, not having them find me at a crime scene. As a minor, I probably could have insisted on waiting until my mom was there, but I wanted to tell them what I knew as soon as possible. I didn’t want to do anything else that would make them think I was somehow involved, but I also didn’t want to go in there alone and say something I’d regret later.
“Yes, we do,” I said. “But not without my lawyer.”
FIVE
Ralphs rolled her eyes and nodded when I said I wanted my lawyer there, as if I had just confirmed some unpleasant suspicion. I started to explain why, but she stopped me with a raised finger and said, “You can tell us back at the office. When your lawyer is present.”
Ralphs turned and the crowd parted as she and her minions escorted me through the police perimeter to their car and we sped off. Ralphs and I sat in the back, while her two silent underlings rode up front.
I gave her Marcella DeWitt’s name and phone number, and Ralphs nodded in recognition before radioing ahead and asking someone to call her. “What’s your mother’s name?” she asked.
“Why?” I asked, defensive, wondering if it was some sort of trap, or if they were going to question her, as well.
Ralphs rolled her eyes again. “So we can tell her you’re safe, and where you’re headed.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling stupid. “It’s Christine.”
Ralphs shook her head as she asked them to call Mom, as well.
“Um,” I added timidly, “can you ask them to call someone else, too?”
Ralphs furrowed her brow. “Who?”
“My boyfriend, Rex. He’s going to be worried.”
She paused, staring at me dubiously, but I guess she figured since I was being cooperative, she could be, too. “Okay. What’s his number?”
I told her and she asked whomever she was talking to if they could call Rex, also.