He wasn’t hallucinating.
“Buses,” she said. “School buses.”
And the gate was wide open.
FIFTEEN
Kit took inthe tidy row of buses,clutching Cullen around the shoulders as much as she dared while keeping the baby sandwiched between them. They’d stumbled upon a transportation lot for the school district. The management must have been unable to relocate the vehicles before the expanded evacuation. In their hurry they’d left the gate unfastened, or maybe they’d intended to move more out but had run out of time. Not much of a theft risk. A stolen school bus was not a prize for looters.
Tot was frighteningly still, and Kit wanted to urge Cullen on, but the man was already likely near his limit, as was she. Her arms felt numb, her fingers barely able to hold on to Cullen and the baby. If conditions didn’t change quickly, there would be no saving any of them.
Cullen carried them to the nearest vehicle and set them down. It was a shorter one, a small mini bus that seated ten or fewer passengers. The paint was chipping and there was a massive dent in the side, so it was probably awaiting repair. Her arms trembled around the baby.
“Tot?” she whispered. The baby’s eyes were closed,and she thought she felt the slight rise and fall of her breathing, but Kit was shivering so hard she couldn’t be sure. Before she’d even considered how to gain entry into the nearest vehicle, Cullen had found a strong stick and pried open the double doors with some remaining store of strength. He supported Kit and Tot inside and laid Tot on the first passenger seat to examine her while Kit struggled to keep the light from her penlight steady in her tremoring fingers. Her headlamp had disappeared during the tunnel escape.
“Tottie, it’s okay now, sweet pea,” Cullen said. “We’re in a nice toasty bus. We’ll get you warmed up in a jiffy, and I’ll find more cookies for you, okay? As many as you want.” Tot lay silent, though her face was puckered as if she would cry.
Please cry,Tot.
He stripped off the baby’s damp clothes until she was naked save for her diaper, and then pulled off his own wet jacket and T-shirt. His muscled torso was rippled with goosebumps, but he drew her to him, chafing and rubbing the child to warm her.
“Come on, Tottie. Let’s hear a scream, huh? Blow out my eardrums, why don’t you?”
From the corner of her eye, Kit spotted a sweatshirt draped over the driver’s seat.
“Here.” She pulled it over both Cullen and the baby.
He continued to rub and coo at Tot, edging up and down the aisle to help generate some warmth. His worried gaze found Kit. “I can hotwire it, maybe. Get some heat going?”
The comment broke through her sluggish brain. Shelimped to the driver’s seat, and her heart skipped up to a joyous rhythm as she spied what she’d hoped for.
“No need. The keys are in the ignition.”Small town. Small-time security.She jammed the key forward and cranked the engine. It rattled and wheezed, then died after a moment or two. She swallowed the panic. “Come on, baby. You can do this.” The second attempt yielded no better result. Teeth ground together, she forced herself to pause, wait, and relax her stranglehold on the wheel before she tried again.
The engine coughed to life. The most beautiful sound in the world. She swallowed the lump in her throat and flipped on the heater to maximum. Her muscles would hardly obey.
Cullen’s massive sigh echoed her own relief. They’d been spared yet again. But there had been no sound from Tot. Had she gotten too cold to recover? “How is she?”
Cullen continued to joggle. “Moving a little more, I think.”
She nodded. “Give it a few minutes to warm, then come sit up front and I’ll blast the vents.”
When he did move to the first-row passenger seat a few minutes later, she angled the heat to blow directly on them. It took a long while before the warmth penetrated her own frozen fingers and toes, painfully overcoming the chill. She couldn’t feel her hands, arms, nose. Her face was wooden where it wasn’t stinging and throbbing.
They sat in silence, absorbing the blessed warmth, Cullen murmuring endearments to Tot. Still no crying, but the movement gave Kit hope.
She took the phone he passed to her. Her hands respondedas if she were wearing oven mitts, and she almost dropped it. “No bars.”
He huffed. “Unbelievable. Figures the moment we get a signal, my brother calls while we’re fully occupied trying not to drown. Typical Gideon. He has the worst timing of anyone I’ve ever met.”
She chuckled. “Do you realize you called him a galoot?”
“A well-deserved title in his case.”
She was still too cold to engage in much conversation as the bus engine rumbled. The transportation yard was silent and eerie in the shrouded moonlight.
A soft burp from Tot made them both smile. Cullen looked down at her through the neck of the sweatshirt. “You good, Tottie?”
Tot reached a hand up through the gap and grabbed his chin.
