Breathless, Skylar ran alongside Danny, anxious to know what had happened, equally anxious not to know.
They couldn’t pinpoint the direction from which the noise had come, but—like others racing ahead of them—deduced that the rally site must somehow be involved.
What insanity possessed them all to run toward the sounds of chaos rather than away? She thought of videos of tumbling skyscrapers, still frightfully vivid after so many years.
They couldn’t see anything yet except for stopped traffic and racing fire trucks and police cars. The coffee shop was at least ten blocks from the demonstrators. Skylar slowed to a jog. Surfer Dude might be able to run the whole way, but she couldn’t.
“Danny, what are we doing?”
He matched his pace with hers, his breath nowhere near as ragged as hers. “Rosie’s there. Other people I know.”
“Rosie will know what to do. You told me you warned your friends about what she said even before I caught up with you.”
“That doesn’t mean they left like we did. I have to make sure they’re okay. I have to make sure Rosie’s okay. I should call Erik—no, not yet. You don’t have to come.”
No, she didn’t. But at the same time, yes, she did. She knew people there too. At least one, anyway. If God wanted to wreak a righteous vengeance, that one should be lying on a stretcher. She should have said something. She should have said something! Deep down she’d understood he was not there just to carry a sign.
They reached a corner. A few blocks ahead, every kind of emergency vehicle clogged the street. Their lights flashed, the sirens winding down. Firefighters and people in military uniforms looked like fish swimming upstream against a tide of people exiting a church.
A church. The one Rosie mentioned? The one holding a funeral ?
Skylar saw a curl of smoke and followed it downward to a side wall of the big old, gray stone building. Where stained-glass windows should have been there were, instead, two gaping holes, giant eyeballs staring blankly.
Insane.
There were no visible flames. Skylar surmised that an explosive device had blown out the windows. Or blown them in. To prove a point?
Or to maim and kill?
“Skylar.” Danny grasped her arm and they stopped. “You look ready to barf. I said you don’t have to come. I’ll show you how to loop around this block and get to the parking garage.”
She shook her head vehemently. “I have to come.”
Beneath the sunglasses, his mouth twisted in a quizzical expression. “Suit yourself.” He let go of her arm and they resumed their hurried pace.
She’d heard the anger in his voice, felt it in his fingers digging into her arm. It matched her own.
This should not have happened.
Skylar and Danny reached the edge of the chaos. Someone jostled her and she fell against him. Police were cordoning off paths, allowing people exiting the church down ramps and steps one way, emergency workers up another ramp. Looky-Lous like themselves were being turned aside.
They stepped off the curb and found an empty spot to stand, in between two parked cars. Their owners wouldn’t be driving off anytime soon.
“I don’t see Rosie.” He pulled off his sunglasses and continued scanning the hordes.
Skylar’s throat ached at the sight of mourners stumbling along the sidewalk, some so close she could have reached out and touched them. They were all dressed in black, a new horror etched on their faces that had nothing to do with burying a loved one.
She whispered, “It’s not right.” He goes too far. How did I ever . . .
“I want to punch somebody,” Danny muttered. “I want to tear somebody’s head off.”
“No, you don’t.”
He turned to her.
“You don’t, Danny. Don’t say that. Don’t say that kind of stuff.”
He looked away.
A medic backed out of the church’s double center door. He guided a wheeled stretcher over the threshold. A fireman came into view, holding aloft tubes and an IV bag. Another medic followed at the other end of the stretcher. They moved toward a handicap ramp down one side of the steps.
At least a face was visible on the stretcher. It wasn’t covered with a sheet. It wasn’t in a body bag.
Skylar heard faint music. “Your phone’s ringing.”
“Huh?”
“Your phone.”
Danny dug into his back jeans pocket, pulled out his cell, and flipped it open. “Erik . . . Yeah. Mm-hmm . . . I talked to her earlier. It’s a mess now. I don’t see her, but she’s fine. The damage seems to be inside the church. She wouldn’t have been in there . . . What?!”
At his shout, Skylar looked at him. The tanned cheeks had drained of all color. “What is it?” she asked.
He ignored her, listening intently for long moments. “I’ll find her.” He snapped the phone shut.
“Danny?”
“Jenna’s inside the church.”
Skylar’s knees buckled. She sank onto the bumper of one of the cars, watching him stride up the curb and roughly elbow his way between people, powerless to go after him. Acid burned its way up from her stomach into her throat.
Images battered about in her mind, snapshots of herself. Lonely, toddling behind her older sister and brother, never catching up. Confused at her parents’ disinterest in her. So sad in that redwood forest, heartbroken years before she was old enough to understand man’s destructive ways. Angry with the unfairness she met at every turn, at the crimes committed against people and nature. Growing quiet and secretive and fearful. So naive even when she was old enough to understand. Running. Running.
Explosion after explosion echoing in her head.
Skylar jerked upward, quickly scanning every direction, assuring herself that the noise had been in her imagination. Disorder filled the area. Those clad in black still inched their way past her. People crushed against each other, shouting. Sirens screamed.
The blasts were all imagined . . . except for that one, the one that swirled Kansas, the Land of Oz, and the yellow-brick road all together and right on out into oblivion.
She faced a choice: stick with the Beaumonts or hightail it out of San Diego. Claire would forgive her for using the credit card to buy just one tank of gas, wouldn’t she? When that ran out, Skylar would stick the card in the glove box and abandon the car. The police would eventually find it. Max would retrieve it. By then Skylar would be long gone. The family would think it all rather curious and simply get on with their lives.
Oh! She nearly shouted a curse. She did not want to leave! The Hacienda Hideaway was not a movie set. The Beaumonts were not a sitcom family. They were a safe harbor, her safe harbor, unlike any she’d ever had in her life. The least she could do was jump into the fracas with Danny and help him find his sister.
And what of Fin Harrod, the ghost from her past? The one who could very well be—most likely was—at least partially responsible for the mess before her? For any harm that had come to Jenna?
Skylar hesitated.
What would Indio do? What would Claire do?
Those two women who welcomed her as a family member would not back down. They epitomized feminine courage.
More than anything else, Skylar wanted to be like them.
She sprang up the curb and pressed herself into the crowd. “Excuse me. I have family inside the church. Excuse me.”
Skylar found Danny behind a parked ambulance, its rear doors open.
“Hey,” she said.
He whirled around and tossed her a passing glance as he hurried by.
She kept pace with him.
“She’s not here. She’s not there.” He waved his arm in the direction of other ambulances. “I don’t see her on the street. She’s got to be inside.”
Or on her way to the hospital. Skylar didn’t want to say that aloud. “Who would be with her?”
“No clue. Jenna doesn’t hang out with military people. She hasn’t even admitted that she is one.” His face was crimson. The anger almost masked the fear so obvious in his eyes that darted every which way. “I can’t imagine what she’s doing here, how she got here.”
“Who said she was here?”
“Her principal.”
So Jenna had left school to attend a military funeral. Maybe the family was somehow related to the faculty or a student? But wouldn’t she have said something to her own family if the school were affected like that?
In the confusion she and Danny easily bypassed police and firefighters still trying to cordon off the sidewalk. On the church steps, Skylar climbed slowly behind Danny, squished against a railing by people descending them. They made it to the main double doors.
A helmeted fireman blocked their path. “You need to turn around, please. Only emergency personnel allowed inside.”
“My sister—”
“Sorry, bud. Everyone needs to clear out. We don’t know the extent of the damage. It’s not safe in there—”
Danny was on his toes, jabbing the air with his finger. “Are there people in there?” He was just shy of going ballistic.
“Medics are bringing out the injured as quickly as possible. Please, sir, move away.”
“I’m not going—”
“Danny!” Skylar grasped his elbow and pulled as hard as she could. Getting close to his ear, she whispered, “Come on. Maybe there’s a back way in.”
Avoiding the side with the blown-out windows, they went the other way and passed one door with a cop helping people exit it. They rounded the back corner. Ahead, nearly hidden in an alcove behind wide-leafed tropical plants, a door opened. Clergymen emerged, followed by a woman, two little kids, and an elderly couple. They were all clothed in black, all with blank expressions that seemed to say the moment was totally beyond comprehension.
Danny hurried across the narrow stone path, moving quickly to the door that kept automatically closing on people. He took hold of the handle. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Waiting off to the side in the grass, Skylar stared at him. Was he for real? In the midst of his own anxiety, gracious words fell from his lips in heartfelt tones.
Marines backed out through the door now.
They carried a casket.
God, if You’re for real, would You just wipe everyone responsible for this right off the face of the earth?