Page 34 of Shattered Hearts

“Baby,” Gage snaps, and she stops, her ears cocked, listening.

My skin begins to tingle with apprehension, and I turn to ask Gage what’s wrong.

I don’t get a chance.

In a big ball of fire, his truck explodes.

Gage tackles me, and the wind knocks out of my lungs as we hit the sidewalk. Baby starts barking like crazy, and people are screaming everywhere.

A loud shriek vibrates painfully in my ears, and everything moves in slow motion. A little girl runs away from the fire, and her mother is lying on the sidewalk, not moving. A young couple sits on the ground, the boy holding his bleeding head with one hand, the other pressed against the girl’s back as she sobs.

The acrid odor of burnt metal and melted plastic fills the air, and puffy plumes of black smoke billow from the truck. Flames eat up the interior.

Gage is frozen, waiting for something else to happen, but there isn’t another explosion and no one starts shooting. The cold is seeping through my clothes, my ribs ache, and my head throbs. My hearing is fuzzy, and voices sound muddled, as if I’m listening underwater.

In the distance, sirens shrill—cop cars, firetrucks, ambulances. The vehicles rush down the street toward the park, but I can’t tell one from the other.

The flames are burning out, leaving Gage’s truck nothing but a charred skeleton. Two cop cars and a firetruck careen into the lot, and I watch it sideways lying on the ground, Gage’s heavy body still shielding me.

“Are you okay?” he murmurs in my ear. It sounds like,Blah blah okay?

“You’re crushing me.”

“Sorry.”

He levers himself off me, but only slightly, and searches my eyes, looking for any kind of injury. I pass the test and he helps me to my feet. Keeping his arm tight around my waist, we walk toward the police cruisers. Baby’s brushing against my leg, her posture just as stiff as Gage’s.

People stand in clusters watching the dying flames, crying and consoling each other. Parents keep their kids from running toward the parking lot, but they can’t bring themselves to leave, too caught up in watching the horror. Some are filming with their phones, and because of my own experience, I know a hundred different angles of the blast will show up on social media.

The cars parked next to Gage’s truck are damaged, too, their paint bubbling and peeling, windows shattered, and I can only pray to God they were empty.

“This your truck?” one of the cops asks Gage.

“Yeah.” He grabs his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans and flicks the police officer his driver’s license and a business card.

“You know who would want to do this? Target you?”

“No, but their timing was lucky for us. If it had gone off five minutes sooner, we wouldn’t be standing here.” He says it calmly, like he isn’t talking about our deaths.

The soup and salad in my stomach flop around, and my palms start to sweat inside my gloves. He’s right, and the five minutes could have come from anywhere. If I would have gone to the bathroom when we picked up Baby, or one red light too many.

The paramedics help who they can, and two gurneys already have people strapped to them, oxygen masks covering their faces. Another ambulance jumps the curb and screeches to ahalt. EMTs rush out the back and there isn’t a moment’s delay before they too, are assisting the several people too stunned to stand.

A news truck turns into the lot and a cameraman hops out. He immediately starts filming the commotion, and a reporter speaks into her microphone not waiting a second to relay all the gory details.

“You better call Zane, sweetheart. He’ll see this online.”

The cop focuses his stare onto me, and my skin crawls.

Woozy and lightheaded, I lean into Gage’s side.

Ashton Black had most of the King’s Crossing’s police force working for him for big payoffs. I wonder if they still do in some way or if they’ve turned their attention to less lucrative, but just a sleazy, bosses, wanting extra pay, recognition, and power.

“Zarah Maddox?” The cop sneers, and his partner shoots him a warning look.

“Yes.”

“Don’t suppose this has anything to do with you?”

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