Red Alert. Jessica Andersen
the doors whooshed open on the ground floor. When the security guard shook his grizzled head, she jogged across the lobby and pushed through the revolving doors out onto Kneeland Street.
Boston General perched at the intersection between the swanky theater district and the more eclectic environs of Chinatown. The busy street dividing the two teemed with vehicles and pedestrians, making Meg fear that she might have lost the couple.
Worry flowed through her. If they’d been sent by one of the big companies, they’d probably given false names and contact information. She might be unable to find them, unable to warn Raine that—
There! The pedestrian flow ebbed for a moment and Meg saw a man leaning on a cane as he walked a woman to a taxi.
“Erik!” Meg called. A cement truck—part of the endless construction of Boston General’s new wing—revved its engine nearby, drowning out her next shout.
She gritted her teeth and dodged into the sea of bodies on the sidewalk. Some of the pedestrians gave way at the sight of her white coat. Others glared and jostled her as she fought her way to the street.
“Erik, Raine, wait!”
But he didn’t climb into the cab with the pregnant woman. Instead he handed her in, shut the door and awkwardly stepped back onto the edge of the sidewalk near the construction zone. Nearby, construction workers directed a heavy stream of cement into a deeply excavated foundation form.
She lunged across the last few feet separating them and grabbed his sleeve. “Erik!”
He turned and his face blanked with surprise. “Dr. Corning. What are you—”
Someone pushed her from behind and she tumbled against him. She felt hard muscle through the elegant suit, then another blow slammed into her, knocking her aside.
She shrieked and stumbled back, arms windmilling. Her hip banged into a railing and wood splintered. The heel of one of her tall boots snagged on something.
She screamed. Overbalanced.
And plunged into the construction pit.
The fall was short, but when she hit, the impact drove the breath from her lungs. Her landing pad was cold and wet. Too heavy to be water, too gritty to be mud.
She’d fallen into the cement form.
And she was sinking.
Over the growing hubbub of screams and shouts from above, she heard a man’s voice shout, “Meg!”
She looked up and saw Erik leaning over the lip of the cement form. He stretched his arm down and sunlight glinted off his cane. “Grab on!”
Gasping and choking as the wet, heavy weight pressed on every fiber of her being, she reached up. She could just touch the cane with the edge of her fingertips. She stretched farther and heard a rushing roar, and a man’s shout.
Above her, the cement truck sluiceway opened up and dumped heavy, clinging cement on top of her.
“Help me!” she screamed. The cascade of wet cement filled the space quickly, covering her shoulders in seconds, then working its way up her neck.
Why hadn’t they turned off the sluice? Couldn’t the cement truck operator tell there was a problem?
Even as the thought formed in Meg’s brain, it was too late. The liquefied silt poured down around her, covering her neck and ears. She screamed, though she knew it would do no good.
She was being buried alive.
Safety was no more than ten feet away. Rescue had to be on its way. But it would be too late.
She screamed again and arched her back against the sluggish give of the setting cement. She looked up to the edge of the cement form, toward the sidewalk, where the protective railing hung askew. Though she could hear nothing over the splatter of cement that continued to fall from above and her eyes were blurred with clinging clumps of grit, she saw the silhouette of a broad-shouldered man in an expensive suit.
The image of blue eyes stayed with her when she sucked in her last breath.
Chapter Two
“Get that crane down here! And kill the flow, now!” Erik’s ears rang from the equipment noise and the force of his own shouts. “What is wrong with you people? There’s a woman in there!”
He gripped the edge of the cement form so hard his fingers ached. He cursed the construction crew for being incompetent, and cursed himself for being worse than useless. Eight years ago, he could have jumped in and saved her.
If he jumped in now, there would be two of them stuck, drowning.
The flowing cement cut out with a rattle. The last few blobs plopped into the foundation form and were immediately absorbed by the smooth gray surface.
There was no sign of Meg Corning. No sign of movement.
Panic spiked through Erik. “Damn it! Where’s that crane?”
“Here!” a man’s voice shouted, and a weighted ball with a large, dangling hook swung down into the foundation pit.
Erik was aware of the shouting, gesturing pedestrians cramming close to the disaster site, aware of the rising throb of sirens in the near distance. The local cops would be here any moment, but the trapped woman couldn’t wait that long.
The thought brought an image of her, a flash of red-gold curls and intelligent hazel eyes, a stacked body hidden beneath a starched white lab coat.
He’d gone to the meeting in person because he’d needed to put a face to the reams of reports he’d amassed on Meg Corning. He’d told himself it was groundwork, but it had been more than that.
It had been a compulsion. He’d needed to see her.
Now he might be the last person to ever see her.
The crane operator finally swung the line toward Erik, who caught the cable. Cursing, he pulled himself onto the swinging weight, braced his good foot on the hook and let the other leg dangle free. Damn thing wasn’t good for much else.
“Lower me into the pit,” he shouted, waving at the crane operator. “Stop when I give the signal!”
He hung on tight as the crane operator swung him out over the slick gray surface and lowered him toward the cement. Please let it still be liquid, he thought. Please let her be holding her breath.
But that seemed a thin hope. The average person would be struggling. Thrashing. Fighting to get free, only to drive themselves deeper into the muck. The very stillness of the slurry was a problem. Either Meg Corning had professional-level survival skills or she’d lost consciousness.
Having met the pretty lady doctor, he feared the latter. She didn’t seem like the survivalist type.
“Okay, stop!” He waved when the hook was barely skimming the surface of the cement, not wanting to drop the heavy weight on top of her. Then he took two quick breaths, aimed off to the side of the form, away from where she’d fallen—
And jumped.
The impact was like slamming into a solid floor that became liquid the moment he passed through. His bad leg folded, sending agony up his hip. He ignored the pain and fought through the clinging gray grit, which had started to set.
It wouldn’t be fully solidified for hours, maybe days, but the partially thickened soup blocked his efforts. She couldn’t be more than three feet away, but he couldn’t get to her.
Heart pounding, fearing it was already too late, he reached up and grabbed on to the hook, then waved to the operator. “Pull me toward the other side. Slowly!”
Gravel and grit dug into his hands as the hook moved, dragging him through the resisting cement, sparking tortured howls in his bum leg.
Not for the first time, he wished they had just cut the damn thing off.