Hot Zone (5 page)

But she’d been told again and again that communication was spotty. It could take days, even longer, for different rescue sites to communicate back and forth with ease.

So much had been accomplished since the earthquake over three days ago, with so much still left to do.

How could she have been down there for two whole days without realizing that much time had passed? The doctor had told her she must have been unconscious at first, a diagnosis the monster-sized lump on the back of her head validated.

Hugh hadn’t told her about the passage of time either, likely to keep her from panicking. Good call on his part. But then he’d seemed so confident throughout the entire ordeal, so in control during living hell, she shouldn’t be surprised at how he’d known just what to do. And now he was off helping someone else who needed him, offering those same words, that same comfort. She needed to realize she was just a routine mission for him.

Yet still…

Even when he wasn’t around to fill the space with his broad shoulders and strong reassurance, he occupied her thoughts… and even her dreams.

Her head lolled to the side as she drifted into another micronap, exhaustion tearing at her. Amelia indulged herself in the memory of his reassuring bass, the lingering feel of his hand. She invited thoughts of him to fill her, to anchor her through the nightmares.

“Amelia,” his voice whispered through her head, the feel of his hand on hers becoming all the more real until…

She jolted upright to find Hugh kneeling in front of her. Green eyes held her with the same intensity that had sustained her for hours belowground.

Her brain churned overtime to make the leap from sleep to awake, the dream and real world blurring. “Is everything all right? Did something happen during the night? Are you here to see a doctor?”

“I promised to check on the kid and I keep my word. I just finished my shift or I would have come earlier.”

Those bourbon-smooth bass tones had kept her alive. She couldn’t forget the sound of him even if she never saw him again.

But a clear view of his face, of his body? There she found uncharted territory. She’d thought she memorized the look of him as she’d been carried out on the stretcher. But realized she’d only seen his body. His face had been covered in grime, and while his clothes were still grimy, he’d washed his face and hands.

His face wasn’t poster-boy pretty. He was all man, with hard handsome angles and gleaming emerald eyes. Buzzed short black hair proclaimed a lack of vanity. And his mouth was a full but hard line that called to a woman’s finger to trace, to tease into softening.

She reached for a gulp of water.

His dusty camo uniform sported a survival vest. His weapon was strapped to his hip. An angry scrape down the side of his face added to the outlaw look, like he was some kind of rogue rebel fighter. He personified everything edgy and dangerous she’d steered clear of as an adult—and strangely, exactly what she needed right now.

“Amelia? The kid?” He nodded to the sleeping baby in her arms. “What did the doctors have to say?”

“Oh, uh…” She toyed nervously with the drawstring on her surgical scrubs.

Damn, she was seriously losing her grip. She should find a free cot and just sleep as the military doctor had suggested, but she couldn’t bring herself to send Hugh away.

Besides, she was suddenly wide-awake and wired.

“The doctors say Joshua should be fine, once he’s rehydrated. And he’s blessedly unfazed by the whole ordeal, as if he truly did nap through it all. A couple of IVs and he will be ready to eat, play, laugh, just like before.”

“Good, that’s really good.”

“What about you? You were supposed to see the medic last night. I thought you would still be asleep.”

He scrubbed his fingers along the scratch on his cheek. “We found another pocket of survivors. My help was needed. Sleep can come later.”

Yet he was here now instead of resting.

She stood, placing Joshua in the playpen, careful to adjust his sleeve for the IV. With a couple of nurses watching over him and the other eleven napping babies, she could afford to step away for a moment.

“The nurse was just telling me how I should pick up one of the boxed meals in the cafeteria. Would you like to walk with me? I imagine, since you worked through the night, there wasn’t much time for food.”

A smile kicked into one cheek. “You guess correctly.”

She pulled her eyes off his mouth and angled past, leading him into the hall packed with pallets of supplies, and the only part of the school without people to disturb. Other corridors were full of injured, but they kept the kids with the gear as a means of quarantining the more vulnerable little ones. The building was filled to capacity. She’d heard they were sending all new arrivals to another site set up at a nearby church.

Hugh marched past a mural obviously painted by the school’s students, a playground scene of rainbows and palm trees. “You’ve bounced back quickly for someone who went through hell for forty-eight hours.”

She breathed deeply, still savoring the ability to draw air into her lungs after her time in the dark and dust. Now she smelled twenty years worth of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a scent that no amount of hospital antiseptic could dispel. “I’m fine. I have a baby to take care of, a brother and sister-in-law to search for.”

“No word at all on them yet?”

Her chest went tight. And suddenly she understood her draw to him, to his reckless look. This was the kind of man who—in a lawless world—kept people safe. “They’re still unaccounted for.”

“I am sorry.”

More of that fear and grief howled inside her and she saw a deep understanding in his eyes. Those three words weren’t the mere platitudes others offered.

“Thank you.” She sucked in another breath, shakier this time as she worked hard not to think of the particular brand of hell her brother could be going through. “I have to believe they’re okay, out there somewhere, worrying about Joshua and me.”

“What’s your plan?”

“I’m staying here with my nephew. I won’t, I
can’t
leave him. I’m hoping to hire help in searching for my family.” She needed someone like Hugh, but he obviously already had a job of his own.

“It’s not safe to stay here.”

“I know.” But what choice did she have? “I’ve heard there are looters everywhere.”

“Damn straight. And worse. Black-market types thrive on situations like this. With all this food and all the drugs here, I wish there were more guards to go around. The best thing you can do is get on the first plane out. I can pull strings for you—”

“Stop.” She squeezed his forearm, pausing outside the cafeteria. “I will not leave Joshua. Legally, I’m on shaky ground without his parents. It’ll take a while to get me declared his guardian until my brother is found.”

“You’re a tenacious one.”

“You’re one to talk.” A smile slid through her grief.

Hard muscles contracted under her fingers. Had she been holding on to him this whole time? Apparently so.

Gulp.

Her body hummed with that same sensation from earlier, so much so, she could no longer write it off as coincidental or some general need for sex. But the feeling, the connection, was inconvenient and unwise. She felt guilty. Her thoughts should all be focused on finding her brother and sister-in-law. Instead, she was a ragged mess clutching some hunk’s arm like a lifeline.

And he didn’t move away.

He eye-stroked her in a way that made his answering attraction clear without crossing the line. “You clean up nice.”

“You’re not quite what I expected either, now that we’re in the daylight.” She slid her hand away, closing her fist to hold on to the feel of him.

“What did you expect?”

Someone with traditional good-guy looks—blond. All-American like her ex. Would she have reacted differently earlier if she’d known her gentle, steady rescuer had a bad-boy body and forbidden-sex eyes?

But she still hadn’t answered his question. She settled on a safer lie, a last-ditch effort to hold strong against the need for an outlet clawing at her insides harder and harder with each second. “I expected someone older.”

“I’m an old guy in this career field.” He scrubbed a hand over his beard-stubbled face. His eyes tracked a kid crying in a wheelchair all the way into the cafeteria. The noise inside swelled out as the double doors opened.

“Age notwithstanding, you got the job done.”

“I only wish we could have freed you faster.” He lifted her hand, her bandage stark white in a dull gray world. “What happened?”

“When the aftershock came, right after you found me, some debris cut my hand, but it only needed butterfly bandages. They pumped me full of antibiotics and a tetanus shot for good measure.” She thought back to cupping Joshua’s head. If she hadn’t, the debris would have pierced his skull. She’d been granted a miracle. She just prayed there was room for another for the rest of her family.

“You should have told me.” He thumbed her fingers until her fist unfurled.

“Wouldn’t have made any difference. It wasn’t as if I could have rolled over to give you the hand to treat.”

“And you called yourself a wimp? I gotta disagree.” He stepped aside to make way for two nuns carrying stacks of boxed meals toward the children’s wing.

“I just did what I had to in order to survive. What you’ve been doing out there? That’s takes bravery to a whole new level. Thank you again.”

“No more thanks needed. You’ll make me blush and ruin my badass image. Let’s find some food.”

He palmed the small of her back. The heat of his hand steadied her in a way she hadn’t felt in days, then warmed her in an altogether different way. An inappropriate way, given what was going on in this corner of the world. She stepped ahead, moving with the line inside.

The room was packed, not a seat in sight, hollow-eyed survivors filling the space and eating the boxed meals with a dazed-automaton motion. Even the small stage to her side was crammed with people eating while sitting on the floor around an old upright piano.

Her feet stilled. “The children break my heart the most. They should be playing outside, singing in music class”—she skimmed her hand along bins of stacked instruments on the steps leading up—“or even grousing about a spelling test.”

“The kids are always the hardest.” He scooped a guitar from an open case.

“You play?”

“I do.” He slid the strap over his head. His fingers worked along the strings as he twisted the tuning pegs.

Heads turned in his direction in a wave of increasing attention. One child, then two, then small clusters, moved toward him. He grimaced, before shooting her a wry grin. He shifted from tuning to a song. Before she could process the shift in
him
, Hugh was strumming through “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends.”

Surprise tingled through her. When children looked up and began migrating toward him, he started singing. No self-consciousness. Just pure rich tones smoothing tension from the room as tangibly as a hand sweeping over a wrinkled sheet.

A small mosh pit of little fans gravitated toward him. He segued into “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” which should have seemed grossly ironic, except the children were smiling and clapping along. One of the nurses reached into a box and began passing out classroom instruments—finger cymbals, blocks, tambourines, castanets, and some rattles she didn’t recognize. An older man left his food to help pass out the instruments to the children, his stoop-shouldered walk growing taller by the second.

Hugh’s ease with the children couldn’t be missed or faked. Her heart squeezed, hard. Watching him with the kids, how could she not think of her own dad right now? No matter how hard she tried to push back memories of the way her father had betrayed his family, purely emotional times like this brought the loss crashing forward. Her father had taken that purity and exploited it, seducing her teenage friends.

Part of her trusted the world far less because of that. Another part of her couldn’t help but celebrate true honor when she came across that rare commodity.

Like now.

Clutching her boxed meal to her stomach, she turned away sharply. But with every step back to the nursery, she strained to hold on to the echoing drift of Hugh’s voice.

***

Liam McCabe had stayed in some nightmarish shit holes over the years, but as far as living quarters went on a scale of one to ten? This place rated a negative two.

A tent in a field would be better—not to mention more stable—than a beach cottage on a crumbling bluff.

Although considering that much of the region was currently homeless, he probably shouldn’t complain. As long as the two-room shack with a cracked foundation didn’t slide the rest of the way into the ocean before he finished taking his shower, he was cool.

He turned off the faucet, gathered up his toiletries, and tossed them into his travel bag. Snagging a towel off the stack, he swiped the inside of the shower stall down, cleared his beard shavings out of the sink, made sure he’d flushed the john. All three of his marriages may have failed, but he’d picked up a few friendly housemate habits along the way.

His exes may have been right in calling him an immature son of a bitch, but by wife number three, he never forgot to put down the toilet seat.

Now that the cottage bathroom was cleared, time to hotfoot it out so the rest of the team could clean up. The place had running water and a stack of semiclean bedrolls. Even if the hundred-year-old structure reminded him of a haunted house carnival ride. The floor shifted under his feet every other step as he tied the towel around his waist.

At least it was private, a place to decompress from the hell they’d seen over the past eighteen hours.

He tugged open the warped door leading into the living area. The other seven PJs tasked for this mission were scattered out in the two rooms, quiet, letting the weight of the job roll off before they returned for more tomorrow. An evening muggy breeze drifted in through the open windows, doing little to ease the heat. Grimy uniforms aired out, hung over chairs and nails hammered into the wall, while the team cooled down wearing their boxers or a towel.