“Hey! Watch it, asshole,” she yelled when a pedestrian bumped her bike and snarled at her. Totally his fault—his attention was fixed on the news too, but he was the one moving.
Images of a building with half the top floor missing filled the screen. Giant white text identified the damaged building as the New Amsterdam Hotel.
Dizzie exhaled in a whoosh.
The time stamp on the never-ending loop of footage read 12:05. Minutes after she’d left.
Her stomach turned and she felt lightheaded.That could have been her.
The canapés had smelled so good and looked so pretty, she’d been tempted to grab one or two of the little nibbles from passing waiters after she’d delivered the package. Only a death stare from a security guard had stopped her. Her stomach roiled again. Just one of those delicious-looking finger foods and she might have been there when…
The screens changed, filling with images of the city’s elite and powerful. Pictures taken as they had arrived earlier tonight. Beautiful people in their beautiful clothes.
God, she would have looked so out of place in the wreckage. An uncomfortable laugh bubbled out. She clamped her hand over her mouth and glanced around. Everyone else was still staring at the screens.
She swayed as her close call sank in.
An image of Portia Tremaine, Tommy Gilmore, and Killian St. John flashed on screen. Had they made it out?
Imagining them crushed under the rubble…
She barely managed to lean far enough away from her bike before she threw up.
On the jumbo screen, the images changed again. Lights bounced over and around the damaged floor, creating eerie shadows in the rubble. Footage from a news drone showed search and rescue helicopters circling the building.
Every major corporation, every news station, had to have aerial support on scene searching for their own people. Would they stop to help those they found buried? Or would they leave them and continue searching only for the ones who mattered?
Dizzie shifted on her seat, thankful another skyscraper blocked her view of the hotel.
The images shifted again and the screen split into quarters, each one featuring a single person. She sucked in a breath. Leopold Brunswick, the assistant to the head of the Tremaine Corporation, occupied the top right corner. The other three boxes featured the leaders of other companies or their proxies. The scrolling text along the bottom highlighted what was happening with the rescue efforts of each group. Corporate security would lead the investigation—they policed their own. Non-corporate law enforcement was left to handle tasks traffic and other “less important” crimes.
The newsies must not be able to get images within the wreckage. That was a small mercy. If there were bodies, they’d be shown over and over as talking heads rambled on.
She wanted out of here before that happened. She wasn’t sure she would be able to look at the lifeless bodies and not remember the pulsing energy of the ballroom or Killian’s disarming smile.
Dizzie put her helmet back on, tucking her braids beneath the hard plastic. All she wanted now was to get back home.
Chapter4
Killian dreamed of suffocation.Of a giant weight bearing down on his chest. Desperate for his next breath, he gasped awake. Darkness pinned him down. His arms and legs flailed but barely moved.
Nononononononono
“Mom? Dad?”
Silence.
His heart was beating too fast. He sucked in air with short, shallow breaths. The air was thick and gritty, carrying more particulates than oxygen.
Struggling against the panic, Killian struggled to remember what had happened. He and his parents had been vacationing in a distant country at a newly completed resort they’d invested in when the building had rumbled and collapsed.
Grief washed over him and he choked back a sob. And somehow, that familiar emotion allowed him to force back all his feelings and think.
He’d been with Portia and Tommy, not his parents. They’d attended a party in Seattle. There’d been a deafening, horrible sound, so like the one Killian heard in his nightmares. He’d caught up to Portia and pulled her close as the ceiling fell down on them before the world went to hell.
Portia! Tommy!Where were they? He had to find them.
Killian shot upright. Or tried to.
