Andrew Britton - The American

Assistant Special Agent in Charge Luke Hendricks had been distracted by the figure racing through the crowd. His vision was not obscured, and so he was able to watch in disbelief as death rained down from above. Falling awkwardly to the ground, he pressed his face into the freezing asphalt, covered his head with his hands, and opened his mouth to scream.

The thunderous roar of the explosion echoed in Kealey’s ears as he threw Naomi into a corner of the armored vehicle and covered her body with his. Her muffled screams vibrated through his chest as thousands of pounds of cement, marble, and iron from the building’s facade crashed down onto Connecticut Avenue. He could hear no other sound of human life, only the deafening sound of the world falling down around them. A sudden impact crushed the opposite end of the vehicle, flipping the van onto its side like a toy. He felt something sharp tear into his face as the walls caved in, the wheels ripped from the axles, the polycarbonate glass crumpling in the windshield and passenger doors. Then the noise was gone and everything went black.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

“Connecticut Avenue was a scene of devastation this morning as an explosion tore apart the eastern face of the Kennedy-Warren residential complex. Although the building was evacuated prior to the explosion, officials fear that the death toll will continue to climb as many people at the scene are still unaccounted for. The explosion appears to be terrorist related, and is thought to have originated in the eighth-floor apartment of Michael Shakib, the man who allegedly provided information that led to the assassination of Senator Daniel Levy, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, here in Washington almost two weeks ago. We’ll have more updates on the way. I’m Susan Watkins, for CNN.”

Katie Donovan hurried past the disbelieving crowd gathered round the television in Terminal A of Dulles International, barely taking the time to glance at the ruined building on the screen. United Airlines Flight 213 had just landed after leaving Bangor less than ninety minutes earlier. She had gripped the armrests tightly the entire flight, struggling to maintain the self-control that had been gradually slipping away since she first heard about the bombing earlier that morning. A sick fear had taken root and blossomed in her chest as the hours crept past.

Ryan had given her a cell phone number for emergencies, but she reached only his voice mail each time she tried to call. Then she attempted to reach him by calling Langley direct, but they refused to give her any information, instead referring her to a hotline set up to handle calls from friends and relatives of the victims. Victims. The word echoed in her head. It was hard to imagine Ryan being victimized by anything, but she couldn’t shake the fear, and the panic threatened to consume her — if he was okay, he would have called. She knew he would have called. By the time she reached the Avis counter, it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

Forty-five minutes later, Katie’s rented Taurus screeched to a halt outside Georgetown University Hospital. A uniformed police officer yelled at her as she ran through the assembled crowd of reporters and into the building, leaving the car unattended with the keys still in the ignition. A preoccupied nurse absently waved her toward surgery care, which led in turn to a large room decorated in a failed effort to project cheer. Katie could not imagine a more despairing sight. The room was filled to capacity with frightened-looking people. She was dimly aware of quiet whispers of support and low, muffled sobs.

With weak knees, she squeezed through the crowd to the desk and tried to speak to the woman on the other side, but the words were slow in coming.

“Are you okay?” the attendant asked with a genuinely concerned expression. The young woman standing before her looked terrible, hair plastered to her face, the skin around her eyes red and puffy. “Take your time, honey. It’s going to be fine.”

Katie took a deep breath and rested her shaking hands on the counter for support. “I’m looking for my fiance, Ryan Kealey. Ryan Thomas Kealey.”

The nurse looked down through the list, shaking her head. “I don’t see anyone by that name.” Katie felt her heart sink, but there was a glimmer of hope. Maybe he hadn’t even been at the Kennedy-Warren. But if he was okay, why hadn’t he called? It just didn’t make sense… “Hold on, honey, let me double-check.” As the nurse turned to question a harried surgeon, Katie squeezed her eyes shut and willed herself to breathe again.

“Katie?”

She looked up to see him standing in the doorway, a large bandage covering the left side of his face. She could see long tears in his leather jacket, streaks of dried blood on his stained jeans and the backs of his hands. He hadn’t called… It didn’t matter, because he was there, alive. Her right hand flew to her mouth, the other reaching out for him as the tears streamed down her face.

“So you’re both okay?” Harper asked. Ryan was pressed uncomfortably into a booth just outside of the hospital, a pay phone held to his ear. He needed to be outside for a while. The thin wall housing the phone rubbed at a long stripe of raw skin on his left arm, and the pain worked with the bite of the air to remind him that he was still breathing.

“We’ll make it. A lot of other people didn’t,” he replied. “Naomi’s right arm was banged around pretty bad. I was sure it was broken, but the X-rays came back negative. They gave her a sedative; she’s asleep now, I think. Suicide bombers in D.C. The audacity of these bastards. John… I don’t know how to fight that.”

“We just got the first numbers.” Harper paused for a moment, beats of silence filling the empty space. “As of 5:00 PM, 64 dead, 121 injured. Obviously, that’s going to climb tomorrow when they finish going through the rubble.”

Ryan didn’t respond. There didn’t seem to be much to say.

“Listen, you’ve had a long day. If it hasn’t caught up with you, it will. We’ll talk in the morning.” A longer pause this time.

Harper sounded tired. Tired and weak. The combination served to gently ease yet another yoke down onto Ryan’s shoulders, the burden of uncertainty. He wondered how much more he could carry before he crumbled under the weight.

“It’s good to hear your voice, Kealey. I was worried there for a while. Give my regards to Naomi — the department already sent flowers to her room.”

“That was good of you, John. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

After hanging up the phone, he leaned against the cold brick wall facing the hospital, looking up into the black emptiness. Ryan noticed that his hands were shaking, but he couldn’t will them to stop. He had seen many awful things in his life, far more than most, but knew that he would never forget the images that had confronted him through the choking dust after pulling Naomi out of the crushed van.

Now those terrible scenes reminded him of others, and he rushed to quickly push the thoughts from his mind. Searching frantically for something else to focus on, anything else, he found himself thinking about what he had overheard Katie saying earlier. My fiance… I’m looking for my fiance, Ryan Kealey.

They had never talked about marriage, and at first glance the idea seemed completely implausible. They had barely known each other six months, and he had never even met her family. Now that he thought about it, she had never mentioned them. In truth, though, he was more than ready to leave this life behind and start a family of his own. There had been women in the past, of course, but none that he cared about so much. If pressed, he wouldn’t have been able to say exactly why.