She sprinted toward the chaos, with Max right next to her. She had no idea what they would find when they eventually turned the corner…
Chapter Ten
Kara's lungs burned as they made their way through the panicked crowd rushing toward them, but eventually they got to the end of the block and around the next corner, where a scene of destruction arose before them.
The blast had shattered a mid-rise building under construction in a residential neighborhood. Out of the six stories, the top three floors were engulfed in flames. Scaffolding had collapsed onto the street, with twisted metal and wooden planks scattered across the pavement. Windows were blown out, glass glittering on the sidewalk like deadly confetti. Smoke and fire were visible through multiple openings, black and thick, blotting out the afternoon sky.
There were already emergency vehicles on the scene, with more arriving by the second—fire trucks, ambulances, police cars. Crews from the FDNY were on their way into the building while other units attacked the fire from the outside. The police had established a perimeter, officers pushing the crowd back, as well as evacuating people from the buildings on either side of the damaged structure.
They made their way through the crowd, flashing her badge whenever someone tried to stop them, but they could still only get so far, the last officer directing her to the scene commander, where a man in an NYPD captain's uniform stood amid a cluster of police vehicles, talking into a radio.
She recognized him not from her days on the force, but from his relationship with her uncle. Captain Hank Ridgemont played cards with her Uncle Danny every other Thursday. He was a good cop, twenty-five years on the job, and had worked his way up from patrol. He was also someone who'd stood by her when many people had not. She wanted to talk to him, but the priority now was getting people out of the building and putting the fire out, so she and Max stayed clear of the emergency operations but close enough to see what was going on.
"What the hell?" Max muttered, his gaze moving from the fiery scene to her. "Is this connected to the café?"
She didn't know how to answer that question. "I was just thinking that the bomb at the café definitely had Samantha's name on it, but now…"
"Maybe this was construction related. A gas pipe explosion or something..." He turned his gaze back to the scene as firefighters were bringing people out of the building.
Most were wearing reflective vests, a few with hard hats on. EMTs rushed to meet them, triaging on the sidewalk.
"At least there are survivors," she said, feeling good about that, until she saw one person being carried out on a stretcher and rushed to a waiting ambulance.
She swallowed a knot in her throat and called Jason, explaining what little she knew about the explosion. "I'm waiting to talk to the incident commander," she finished. "I'll hopefully get more information from him."
"I'm on my way," Jason said.
"Okay."
Max was on his phone when she finished the call. She gave him an inquisitive look. "Who were you talking to?" she asked.
"A woman who works with me. I asked her to see what she could find out about this building."
"As in whether it's tied to Dominic?"
Max's gaze hardened, and so did his jaw. "That would be one question."
"If this building ties to Dominic, and he ties to Samantha, then these explosions are connected."
"Which is a big if," he said.
She wasn't so sure that was true. Dominic had a global empire, but he also had buildings in New York, and this could be one of them. As the urgency of the scene diminished, she made her way to Captain Ridgemont.
"Kara," he said in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"I was a few blocks away when I heard the explosion. I'm concerned it may be tied to the one at the café on Monday. I'm the agent in charge of that investigation. Can you tell me anything about what happened here? Was it a bomb?"
"It appears that way. Probably located on the fourth floor. That's where most of the serious injuries occurred."
"How many people were inside?" she asked.
"Six."
Surprise ran through her at his response. "So few? On a construction site?"
"It was inspection day. Most of the crew wasn't here. Two victims with minor injuries were treated on scene. Four were sent to the hospital, two critically. Several people on the street suffered injuries. I don't have that number at the moment. One of those was a woman who works for the building department. She had just walked out of the building when it blew up, so she knew how many were inside." He tipped his head to a disheveled woman sitting in the back of an ambulance. "There's a lot to unravel. We'll have a longer conversation later."
"Of course. Thanks, Captain."
