When The Right One Comes Along

Cal didn’t want to stop, but he knew the firefighter was right. “Okay,” he said. “Kayla, I’m going to come and get you, but I have—” he glanced at the badge on the firefighter’s shirt “—Captain Eagan with me. He’ll be here if you need anything, okay?”

“Yes.” She’d clearly worn herself out or was already losing consciousness. She didn’t have the energy to cry anymore.

In hushed tones, Cal explained the situation to Mark. “You have to create an opening,” Cal said. “I doubt she has enough time for us to get her from the other side.”

Mark had both a pick and a shovel with him and continued where Cal had left off.

Cal signaled to Scout, and they went back in the direction they’d come. Outside, he met up with two more firefighters and a building engineer, and was directed to where they could access the elevator shaft. The elevator had failed in its normal mode with the counterweight plummeting, meaning the elevator itself was at the top of its trajectory, so the shaft was clear. The two firefighters entered the building with him, and he, Scout and one of them were lowered down the shaft to the ground floor. With the firefighter’s key and some effort, they were able to open the elevator landing doors.

Cal could immediately see what had happened. As he’d suspected, when the floors of the building had collapsed, they’d blocked off the entrance to both corridors leading off the lobby. The entrance to the corridor where Kayla and her mother were trapped looked even less accessible from this side.

Cal feared that if the corridor was the only way to get to Kayla, they wouldn’t reach her before she ran out of oxygen. He had to believe that with the tools Mark had, he’d be able to create an opening sufficiently large for air to get in. When Cal gave Scout the hand signal to locate the girl, Scout bypassed the corridor entrance altogether. The rubble must have masked Kayla’s scent. In seconds, he was barking and scratching along what would’ve been a side wall.

Hope surged through Cal as he and the firefighter rushed over to where Scout was digging. They might still have a chance. He instructed Scout to move back and wait, and squatted to get a better look. A structural column had collapsed, and the beam it was supporting had tumbled down on top of it, but there was a small triangular opening at its base. The gap was filled with crushed concrete and other debris, but it appeared to be loosely packed. Cal and the firefighter worked feverishly to open up the space. If the little girl had depleted the available oxygen, every second counted.

The time seemed interminable, but it actually took them less than a minute to create an opening under the column. The good news was that air was now flowing freely into the space. Cal hoped fervently it wasn’t too late.

Crouching down by the opening, he shouted, “Kayla, it’s Cal. Can you hear me?”

There was no response. No sound of movement.

He called out again, then asked the firefighter to radio Mark Eagan on the other side to see if Kayla was still communicating with him. Lowering himself to his stomach, he tried to crawl into the gap. He could aim his flashlight in, but there was no way his shoulders were going to fit.

The firefighter reported that Kayla had been non-communicative for nearly five minutes.

That sent a chill up his spine but, he wouldn’t give up on her.

He considered the small opening. It would be tight, but Scout should be able to crawl through, he decided. Before giving the dog commands, he shouted, “Kayla! I’m here and I’m going to get you out, like I promised. I’m sending my dog in to get you. His name is Scout and he won’t hurt you. Don’t be afraid, okay?”

Still no response. The firefighter shook his head dejectedly, but Cal refused to accept that they were too late.

Although search-and-rescue dogs generally didn’t perform extractions, Cal had made it a game with Scout during training. He wasn’t sure it would work, but it was Kayla’s only chance right now and worth a try.

He removed Scout’s collar; he didn’t want to risk having it get caught on something in the tight space. If that happened, both Kayla and Scout would be trapped. He gave Scout the play signal, and pretended to throw a toy into the opening. The shepherd cocked his head and looked at Cal questioningly. Cal pointed to the opening. “Go get her, Scout,” he said with as much enthusiasm as he could. “Go on. Go get her.”

Scout obviously understood there was no toy involved, but crawled into the void on his belly. Down on one knee, Cal continued to aim the flashlight into the space and listened intently. He heard scrambling as Scout must have reached the cavity on the other side. A series of staccato barks indicated to Cal that Scout had located his target. He heard more scrambling, then Scout was backing out through the opening. From the way he was laboring, Cal knew he had the little girl. If only the child was still alive.

As soon as Scout’s back end cleared the opening, Cal gave him the command “out” to release. The dog been dragging the girl by the hood of her sweater, which luckily had been buttoned up in the air-conditioned cool of the building.

Cal handed the flashlight to the firefighter and wriggled in as far as he could to get hold of the little girl under her armpits, gently pulling her out. Once she was clear of the opening, the firefighter checked her for vital signs. Nodding to Cal, letting him know she was still alive, he started rescue breathing.

Cal felt an immediate sense of relief. His next priority was to locate Kayla’s mother—or anyone else who might’ve been trapped with them. He signaled to Scout again, and said silent thanks when he heard the little girl cough behind him. He knew the firefighter would take care of Kayla and have her lifted out. His focus was now on the mother.

Cal illuminated the cavity with his flashlight. From his vantage point, he couldn’t see anyone, or anything of significance. But he assumed from what Kayla had told him that her mother was in there somewhere, unconscious. He tried again to get his shoulders to fit through the opening. It was a no-go.

“Palmer,” the firefighter called to him.

He backed out of the opening. “Yeah. What?” he snapped in frustration.

“We need you here.”

Cal’s irritated gaze met the other man’s.

The firefighter gestured to Kayla. “She needs you.”

Cal glanced at the girl with her long black hair and huge dark brown eyes, and everything in him softened. The kid couldn’t have been more than four or five. It was obvious that she was making a heroic effort not to cry.

Cal squatted down in front of her.

“Mommy...?” she croaked, tears shimmering in her eyes and spilling over to trail through the grime on her cheeks.

“Kayla, your mother was with you?” He pointed toward the opening. “In there?” She’d already said so, but Cal hadn’t been able to see anything, nor had he heard any further noise from inside.

The child swiped the back of her hand under her nose. “Uh-huh,” she said before she started to cough once more.

The firefighter offered her some water from his flask. She took a sip, gagged, then coughed again as Cal patted her back. “You’re okay,” he reassured her. “I’m going to look for your mother. We need to get you out of here.”

“No!” The word exploded from her and she grasped his wrist with her small hand. “I want my mommy.”

“We’re going to get her next, but you have to go out of the building.”

“No. I don’t want to. I want Mommy.” She thrust out her lower lip.

“You have to. Your mother would want you to be safe. This man will take you out and I’ll look for your mother.”

“Can’t the other man get Mommy?” Her chest was heaving and she clutched Cal’s arm harder. She was obviously near her breaking point.

Cal glanced up at the firefighter, who shrugged.

“That’s why I called you. She wouldn’t leave. She wanted you.”

Cal gripped Kayla’s shoulders and stared into her tear-drenched eyes. “I’m going to look for your mother now.”

She started to sob and threw herself in Cal’s arms. “I’m afraid. I don’t want to go without Mommy. Or you.”

Cal held tight, clasping one hand over the back of the child’s head, smoothing down the tangled, matted mass of dark hair. He assessed the circumstances quickly and decided the extra couple of minutes it would take him to lift the girl out would likely make no difference to her mother. Air was getting in. If the woman was unconscious, she wouldn’t run out of oxygen. And if it was worse...well, he didn’t want to think about it.

A loud grinding noise reverberated around them—metal abrading against metal—as if the building was settling. Cal and the firefighter froze, waiting for the noise and the vibrations to cease.

“I’ll take you out, but after that you’ll stay with this man, so I can come back for your mother.”

She sniffled a bit, then nodded, her head resting against his shoulder. “Okay.”

Cal rose, with Kayla in his arms. They made their way over to the hoist and the firefighter radioed to let them know up top what was happening. They decided the firefighter should go first. He would take Kayla to the triage area once Cal got her out. Cal ordered Scout to wait. The firefighter was lifted out, then the harness was lowered again. Cal strapped himself in. Holding Kayla firmly against his chest, he wrapped the final harness strap around both of them. He signaled for the crew to start the extraction.

As they began to move, the little girl held on tight, her arms wound around his neck, her face still buried in the crook of his neck. They ascended slowly and cleared the building. He blinked rapidly to adjust his eyes to the late-evening sunshine, blinding after the darkness inside.

He wondered fleetingly how the sun could shine so intensely with all the destruction below, but he didn’t have long to dwell on it. They were swung away from the opening and Cal unfastened them, handing Kayla to the firefighter.

Just as Cal was strapping himself back in, he felt a strong breeze and spread his legs to brace himself. Even so, when the building beneath him shook, he was nearly knocked off his feet.

“An aftershock,” he heard someone yell, and the building shifted, then tilted perilously.

This time Cal did lose his balance. Landing on his backside, he was catapulted down the inclined rooftop headfirst. The harness he hadn’t fully secured snapped free. He tried to twist around as the edge of the rooftop rushed toward him. He managed to turn enough so that he wasn’t leading with his head when he hit the parapet wall. He lay still for a few moments to catch his breath. His left shoulder screamed but he didn’t think it was broken. He hoped it wasn’t dislocated, either. Nothing else seemed to hurt enough to worry about.

People on the rooftop and at street level were shouting and rushing about. Cal unfolded himself and, bracing against the parapet wall, he rose to stand on the steeply sloping rooftop. He took one quick glance over the edge and knew that if the parapet wall hadn’t been there or hadn’t held, it would have been game over for him.

He pushed that thought aside and turned to search the area for the firefighter and Kayla. They were huddled together against the railing by the rooftop stairwell and looked unharmed. His next thought was of Kayla’s mother and Scout. He had to get back into the building. Massaging his shoulder, he walked at an angle along the steeply sloping roof toward the elevator shaft opening and the hoisting mechanism.

“Let’s get this done,” he said to the firefighter operating the hoist as he strapped himself back into the harness.

“You aren’t going down there.”

“Darn right I am.” He gestured toward Kayla. “Her mother is down there, and so is my dog.”

“I don’t have permission to let anyone back in.”

“Then get it,” Cal snarled, forestalling any further argument.

The firefighter had a hurried conversation on his radio with the incident commander, and shook his head. “No go. The building might be unstable now and they’re worried about another aftershock.”

Cal cursed under his breath and yanked his own radio off his belt and contacted Incident Command. “Yeah, I have to go back in,” he said. “Why? Because there’s a person still in there. The mother of a child I just brought out. Yes, I realize she’s probably deceased. And Scout—my partner—is down there.”

“Your partner is in there?” the incident commander boomed into the radio. “Have you contacted him? Is he okay?”

Clearly Williams had forgotten that Cal was with the K-9 Unit and his partner was a dog. Cal ran a hand over his hair. He didn’t bother to set him straight. “I have to go in.”

“No.”

“I have to—”

“I said no.”

“But—”

The voice on the other end became more human, less like the commanding officer at a serious incident. “Look. I understand your position, but we have no idea if anyone still down there is alive. It was a significant aftershock, and the building shifted considerably.”

“Yeah. But I have to make sure.”

There was a long pause. “No. It’s too dangerous. We haven’t ascertained the structural integrity of the building, and the probability of another aftershock is high. I’m sorry, but I can’t risk it. I can’t clear you to go in.”

Cal heard the click of the radio disconnecting and was tempted to hurl the device over the edge. Instead, he glanced around. He saw the firefighter who’d been in the building with him preparing to take Kayla down to street level on the articulated boom lift of a fire truck. She was holding on to him, her chin resting on his shoulder. When his eyes met hers, she raised a hand and waved to him, and he was sure her mouth formed the word mommy. That decided it for him. He had to go in. He’d promised her he’d go back to find her mother. The odds might be against it, but he couldn’t ignore the possibility that Kayla’s mother was still alive.

And he wouldn’t leave Scout.

There weren’t many people left on the rooftop, and those who remained were in the process of making their way back to street level.

Soon it would be him and a firefighter who’d been helping with the hoisting mechanism. Cal didn’t know where the firefighter he’d argued with had gone, but this guy was young—no more than twenty-four or -five—and in the process of dismantling the contraption.

“Hey!” Cal called as he did his best to jog up the slanted roof toward him. “Hold on a minute. I need to go back in.”

The kid looked around, seemingly confused. “I was told no one else is going in. I’m supposed to wrap up here and get off the rooftop.”

“Well, I have to go back in.” When the kid just stared at him, Cal sighed. “Hey, my partner’s in there...”

“Your partner?” The kid sounded horrified. “But we lifted everyone out before the aftershock hit. We tracked everyone going in and out.”

Cal’s mind was made up. He doubted he could do anything for Kayla’s mother; he had to face reality. But Scout was still down there, his condition unknown. He was going in, with or without Command authorization, whether this kid was going to help him or not. He raised himself to his full six feet two inches and tried to look intimidating. “I don’t have time to argue. You saw that little girl?” The kid nodded. “Her mother’s down there. I don’t know what kind of shape she’s in, but I can’t leave her without determining her condition. What if she’s still alive? You want to tell that little girl that we abandoned her mother to die? And my partner is the search-and-rescue canine hoisted down after me. I’m not leaving him, either.”

“Okay,” the kid said hesitantly, and reached for his radio. “I’ll just get it cleared.”

Cal shot out a hand and placed it over the kid’s, held his gaze. “You’re not going to get clearance. I’ve tried and Command refused it.”

“But...”

Cal felt the guilt trickle through him. It was one thing for him to disregard a direct order from Command, especially with the blot on his past. It was something entirely different for him to coerce someone else to do so—and that someone still young and inexperienced. “Look—” he checked the kid’s nametag “—Adam, I’m disobeying an order by going back in, but I have to do it. Like I said, there’s no way I’m leaving my dog. And I want to verify the condition of the girl’s mother. I owe it to Kayla to make sure. What if she is alive and I can save her?”

Cal examined the ropes and pulleys of the hoisting mechanism. His voice was solemn. “I don’t want to implicate you in what is essentially insubordination. Go. But if you could leave this stuff behind, I’d appreciate it.”

Cal could see that Adam was trying to work things out in his own mind. When Adam spoke, his voice was a little shaky but he seemed resolved. “You can’t do this on your own. I’ll help you.”

“You understand what it means if you do?”

Adam nodded.

Cal had a silent debate with himself. He was involving the rookie in something that could cost the kid his job, his career. But he acknowledged that he needed Adam’s help. If sparks flew, he’d just take all the heat, accept all the blame. He’d say he’d pressured the kid. It would be even worse for him, but Adam would get written up for a mild misdemeanor without the risk of losing his job.

“Then let’s do it,” Cal said.

The elevator shaft no longer provided a straight vertical descent. Their progress was slower and Cal had to guide himself down, using his feet to push away from the obstructions and around protruding structural elements. They couldn’t use their radios or they’d be discovered; they communicated by a prearranged sequence of tugs on the guywire.

When Cal reached the third floor, he could no longer follow the elevator shaft. The force of the aftershock had created a hundred and thirty-five-degree elbow in the passage. He was lowered through the elevator door opening, directly into the tilted two-story atrium of the main lobby. When he emerged from the elevator shaft, he was suspended a good twenty feet above floor level. Two thoughts flashed through his mind. First, that the space had shifted considerably with the aftershock, just as he’d been warned. And second, that Scout was nowhere in sight. As his feet touched the floor and he unbuckled himself, he swept his gaze around the room and called Scout. Relief flooded through him when he heard the short, sharp barks signaling the dog’s location. Following the sound, he could tell that Scout was in the same cavity from which they’d rescued Kayla. He must have tracked the scent back to Kayla’s mother, but the opening they’d cleared was blocked again.

“I found you. You’re okay!” Cal called to Scout as he rushed over. Fortunately, the opening, enlarged by the way the building had skewed during the aftershock, was blocked only with loose rubble. When he removed it, the dog bounded out and directly to Cal. Scout’s coat of black and brown was covered with so much concrete dust he looked nearly white. Even his eyelashes and whiskers were coated in white. While Scout licked Cal’s face and pranced around, Cal did a quick exam to satisfy himself that the dog appeared to be unharmed. He took a moment to reattach Scout’s collar, and instructed him to sit-stay.

Because of the enlarged opening, Cal was able to shimmy into the cavity on his stomach, using his elbows to propel himself, his flashlight gripped between his teeth.

Sweeping the beam of light around the confined space, he saw her, lying on her back. Her face was stunningly beautiful. Dark olive skin, delicate features and the long cascade of ebony hair, so much like her daughter’s. His throat clogged and he had trouble breathing. He crawled over to her to check for vitals, but he was certain it was just a formality.

He understood why Kayla would have thought her mother was asleep; she must not have noticed—understandable with the absence of any light filtering in—that her eyes were open. She had one arm slung above her head and the other extended at her side. The way her hand was positioned and her fingers curled, Cal concluded Kayla would’ve been holding it.

The woman looked flawless and uninjured from her abdomen up. A portion of the collapsed wall lay across her lower torso. The black jacket she wore appeared to be soaked in blood. None of it would have been evident to Kayla in the dark. Thankfully, the child would not be haunted by images of her dead mother for the rest of her life.

There was nothing Cal could do for her. This woman would now be the responsibility of the coroner. He made another thorough sweep of the area with his flashlight, then backed out through the opening.

He signaled to Scout, ordering him to do a quick search to make sure they weren’t leaving anyone behind. The dog didn’t give any indication that there was anyone else present.

A light vibration had Cal bracing himself again and grabbing for Scout’s collar. The rumble passed and he exhaled.

Back in the atrium, he strapped Scout into the hoisting harness and tugged on the guywire, signaling to the firefighter to lift him out. When the harness came back down, Cal secured himself in quickly, and gave the two tugs to let Adam know he was ready. He could hear the winch kick in and he began his slow ascent.

He was almost at the top of the atrium, nearing the elevator shaft, when he felt what seemed to be a gust of air whoosh down the opening. Simultaneously, the building shuddered again, and Cal started to swing and twirl on the hoisting rope. With the next tremor, he was catapulted toward a solid interior wall. He leaned back to try to control his motion and was able to maneuver sufficiently to cushion the impact with his legs when he collided with the wall. The force sent him hurtling backward. Just as he was twirling around once again, another rumble came from the ground beneath and seemed to rise up to engulf him. An ominous grating sound followed.

Cal’s blood ran cold as he watched a ceiling beam tear loose to his right. Still anchored to a column by some rebars, it crashed toward him like a battering ram.

He thrust back and as far out as possible, and flailed his legs to increase the swing of the rope. Unable to control his spin, he was propelled in the opposite direction from the one he’d intended, right into the path of the beam.

CHAPTER THREE

JESSICA ACCEPTED THE scissors from Marcia and snipped off the ends of the surgical thread she’d used to suture the long gashes on the face and neck of a middle-aged man. She thought about how close one of the lacerations had come to the man’s carotid artery, and how different the outcome could have been.

“You’re going to be fine, Mr. Bowen,” she assured him. She cleaned another cut on his left arm and applied a gauze bandage. “You’ll have some scarring unfortunately. Treating the wounds with vitamin E cream while they’re healing will minimize the effect.”

“Fortunately, my wife loves me for more than my pretty face.” He smiled weakly as he pulled his shirtsleeve back down.

“There’s no need for you to go to the hospital, but your family doctor should have a look at that wound in a couple of days. Nothing to worry about. I just want to make sure you don’t develop an infection. Your stitches will have to come out in a week’s time.” She gave him an encouraging look as she removed her latex gloves and tossed them in a waste receptacle.

“Thanks, Doctor,” he said as he slid off the treatment table. Their smiles faded as they watched two paramedics carry a black body bag to a waiting transport vehicle. “I’m lucky to be alive,” he murmured.

Yes, he was, Jessica thought. She made some hurried notes on a chart and glanced up in time to see Marcia taking a little girl from the arms of a firefighter. She felt a chill descend on her and a voice inside her head screamed, “No!” Still, she did a quick visual scan of the girl for obvious signs of trauma, and was relieved to find none.

The girl was maybe five. She was wearing lemon-yellow shorts and T-shirt, and had a small white sneaker on her left foot and only a white sock on her right. She had long dark hair. Her hair, like the rest of her, was covered in concrete dust.