The Target. Kay David
they brought the rest of ’em out! Charles Junior and Sister. They forgot ’em both!”
Bobby sucked in an audible breath as Hannah felt her stomach constrict, a hot sickness suddenly turning her inside out. Above his beard, Mark’s face actually paled.
Quinn held the woman’s arm and spoke gently. “Are you sure, ma’am? Are you positive they didn’t just slip out—”
“Yes, I’m sure!” She flapped her hand behind her and the four of them looked over her shoulder. Another woman, this one younger and better dressed, stood by the uniform, obviously arguing with him. “Ask her! She’s the one done left ’em there!”
Quinn called out and motioned to the cop to let the woman through. She ran to them, then spoke breathlessly, her eyes full of fright. “Two of the children are missing! We counted all of them twice, but Louetta—” she nodded toward the older woman in the flowered dress “—she came in late and I forgot to log them in.” She shivered visibly in the cool January sun, her fingers knotting together. “They must have hidden when we left.”
“How old are they?”
When Hannah asked the question, the woman glanced at her in a daze. “Charles Junior—he’s five—and Sister.” She gulped. “Sister’s only two. She does everything he does. He—he probably told her they were playing a game or something and they hid. They’ve done it before.”
“Where do they go?”
She turned back to Quinn, her eyes swimming with guilt and fear. “Th—there’s a closet by the back…back door. They like to climb inside. It’s where we keep the nap pads and blankets.” She started to shake, then she gathered herself with a visible effort and reached out to clutch at Quinn’s arm. “You’ve got to go in there, mister. You’ve got to go in there and save those babies.”
LACROIX SENT FOR ONE of his team members. She came quickly and led the two women away, making sounds of sympathy and doing her best to calm them. As they stumbled off, even more tension filled the space where they’d been, narrowing the choices the team had of how to proceed. Everything had changed. It was one thing when a building could suffer damage—it was a different situation when lives were at stake. Especially children’s lives.
Bobby spoke first. “I’ll go. This—”
Quinn interrupted. “No.” His voice was firmer than usual and both of them knew why. “I’ll do it.”
“C’mon, man,” Bobby persisted. “I know the area. I think I can get the PAN in there and then—”
“No. I’ll go and get the kids, then I’ll decide how to proceed.”
Quinn felt the curious looks from Hannah and Baker as his authoritative words registered, but he couldn’t take the time to explain. He hurried toward the SUV.
Hannah caught up with him as he swung open the back door. She grabbed his arm. “Let me go, Quinn! Those kids won’t leave that place with a man. I’d have a much better chance—”
“No way.” He pushed aside his heavy protective suit. It took too long to get into. He’d throw on his SRS-5—a lighter outfit—and hope for the best. “They won’t know the difference once I’ve got on the helmet.”
“This is crazy, Quinn,” she cried. “You can’t just crash in there—”
“But you can?” His fingers found his jacket and he turned to her, holding it out so she could help him into it. She responded automatically, and he stiffened his arms as she put the coat on him, the protector hard against his spine, a trickle of sweat already rolling down his back.
She buckled him in and he saw that her hands were trembling. “We haven’t done enough recon yet—”
“Hannah, for God’s sake! We don’t have the time for that.” He plucked his helmet from the rear of the SUV, gave the plastic shield a swipe, then thrust it on his head. “We’ve got to get those kids first. Then we’ll proceed.”
“No,” she said, almost in a whisper. “This is wrong…all wrong….”
He stared at her in puzzled surprise. Her face was flushed and her blue eyes were glowing with alarm. She was the least superstitious, the most logical of them all.
Why this? Why now?
Lifting the visor, he reached out and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, the silk curl soft and fragrant. “Everything will be fine, baby. We’ve got a date tonight, remember? I wouldn’t do anything to mess that up.” He bent down and kissed her, the taste of her lips lingering against his own. Then he ran into the building.
He was barely over the threshold when the bomb detonated.
The blast was deafening, the force incredible. A shock wave of heat and light sent the back door flying, and then the walls. They exploded upward in a choking cloud of dust and debris, the roof immediately following with a shriek. Wood and metal, concrete and glass, toys and furniture—everything inside the building and outside for a twenty-foot radius was sucked up by the pressure. A moment later, a deadly shower of shrapnel rained down. The noise was unimaginable, then everything went quiet.
CHAPTER TWO
THE DOCTORS TOLD HER he might not live.
Describing Quinn’s wounds in detail, they explained to Hannah how badly he’d been hurt. His right leg had been violently broken and a piece of metal had pierced his chest. The burns weren’t too bad, but the blast injuries were severe. His hearing would probably return, then again, it might not—they weren’t sure at this point.
For a week, she didn’t leave the hospital. The nurses would occasionally try to get her to go home, but most of the time they left her alone, unwilling to face the battle she always put up and usually won. In the waiting room outside the ICU, she’d fall asleep sitting up on one of the chairs and have nightmares about the two children who’d died. The images haunted her and she suspected they always would.
Disregarding their own safety, she and Bobby and Mark had rushed in to pull out Quinn while Tony’s team had searched the rubble for the children. Trying to stem the blood flowing from Quinn’s chest, she’d looked up in time to catch a glimpse of LaCroix running out of the now-flaming building, a limp form cradled in his arms, another tech behind him carrying an identical burden. Bobby had followed her stare. When their eyes met a second later, his had been full of tears that spilled out and made two dark paths down his dust-covered cheeks. Hannah had wanted to scream at the heavens and curse, but instead she’d held her sobs inside and turned her attention back to Quinn. But every time she closed her eyes, she saw those babies again.
In the end, she left the hospital for them.
Hannah’s mother had told her she should go to the double funeral, and because Barbara Crosby was usually right about things like this, Hannah went, stopping at home first to dress. It felt strange to walk inside her house and take a shower and put on a suit. She went through the motions like a zombie, eating the hot lunch her mother forced on her, then heading for the service.
The church was two streets over from the day-care center. Hannah drove by the devastation with her eyes averted, finally locating a parking spot down the next block. After turning the engine off, she sat quietly and tried to gather her composure, breathing deeply and counting backward from ten. It was a trick she’d taught herself years ago and it usually worked. But not this time. She hadn’t even whispered “eight” when a couple walked by, obviously on their way to the service. The woman was already dabbing her eyes and the man had his arm around her protectively, his expression fierce with an angry grief.
If her mother hadn’t been waiting at home, Hannah would have fled.
Instead she closed her eyes and finished counting. Entering the church a few minutes later, she took a seat and then lifted her gaze. The first thing she saw, at the front of the church, were the two tiny caskets. All at once, she wished even