Nora Roberts: Best Laid Plans

They'd come back here one day, when the lobby was filled with people and light. When they did, they would remember how it had all started. His vision, and hers.

Daydreaming, she wandered toward the pipes that ran down the walls. Fanciful, yes, but certainly not foolish. In fact, she could- Her thoughts broke off as she stared down.

At first she wondered how the drywall finishers could have been so careless as to waste a trowelful of compound. And then not to clean it up, she thought as she crouched down to inspect it. A finger of light fell over it, making her look again, then look more closely and reach out to touch.

The moment she did, her heart froze. Scrambling up, she raced for the door, screaming for Cody.

He found the flashlight in the glove compartment, then tested it as a matter of course. It was probably useless to look around. It was probably just as useless to want to rip off a few panels of drywall and see for himself.

What did it matter if the place had been vandalized at this point? Correcting the wiring would have been difficult and time-consuming enough, but if the concrete and the steel were substandard, it all had to come down.

The anger bubbled up again, enough that he nearly tossed the flashlight back into the car. He'd come this far, he reminded himself. And Abra with him. They would look, and then they would leave. After the next day, what had once been his would be completely out of his hands.

His thoughts were running along the same lines as Abra's when he started back. Without the building- whatever Tim had done to sabotage it-he would never have met her. Whatever happened here, the moment the mess was turned over to the proper authorities he was going to tell her exactly what he wanted. Needed.

The hell with that, he decided, quickening his pace. He was going to tell her now, right now, on the spot where it had all started. Maybe it was fitting, somehow, to ask her to marry him inside the half-finished building that had brought them together. The idea made him grin. What could be more fitting?

When he heard her scream the first time, his head whipped up. His heart stopped, but he was already running when she screamed again. He was close enough, when the explosion ripped, that the wall of hot air punched him like a fist and sent him flying in a rain of glass and rock and sheared metal.

The fall left him dazed-five seconds, ten. Then he was up and racing forward. He didn't feel the gash on his temple where something sharp and jagged had spun by close enough to tear his flesh. He didn't realize that the fall and those few seconds of numbness had saved his life.

All he saw were the flames licking greedily out of the windows the explosion had blown apart. Even as he reached what had been the doorway there were other explosions, one after another until the dawn echoed like a battlefield.

He was screaming for her, so strangled by fear that he couldn't hear his own voice, couldn't feel his own heart pumping out the panic. Something else blew, and a chunk of two-by-four shot out like a bullet, missing him by inches. The wall of heat drove him back once, searing his skin. Coughing, choking, he dropped to his knees and crawled inside.

There was more than fire here. Through the thick screen of smoke he could see where walls had crumbled, where huge chunks of ceiling had fallen in. As he fought his way in he could hear the sickening sound of steel breaking free and crashing down.

Blindly he heaved rubble aside, slicing his hand diagonally from one side of the palm to the other. Blood trickled into his eyes, which were already wet from the sting of smoke and fear.

Then he saw her hand, just her hand, almost covered by a pile of rubble. With a strength born of desperation, he began to heave and toss while the fire raged around him, roaring and belching and consuming. Over and over he called out her name, no longer aware of where he was, only that he had to get to her.

She was bleeding. In the turmoil of his mind he couldn't even form the prayer that she be alive. When he gathered her up, her body was weightless. For a moment, only a moment, he lost control enough to simply sit, rocking her. Slowly, with the terror clawing inside him, he began to drag her out.

Behind them was an inferno of unbearable heat and unspeakable greed. It was a matter of minutes, perhaps seconds, before what was still standing collapsed and buried them both. So he prayed, desperately, incoherently, while his shirt began to smoke.

He was ten feet beyond the building before he realized they were out. The ground around them was littered with steel and glass and still-smoldering wood. Every breath he took burned, but he fought his way to his feet, Abra in his arms, and managed another five yards before he collapsed with her.

Dimly, as if through a long, narrow tunnel, he heard the first sirens.

There was so much blood. Her hair was matted with it, and one arm of her shirt was soaked red. He kept calling to her as he wiped the worst of the grime and soot and blood from her face.

His hand was shaking as he reached out to touch the pulse in her throat. He never heard the last thundering crash behind him. But he felt the faint thready beat of her heart.

Y ou need some attention, Mr. Johnson."

"That can wait." The panic was down to a grinding, deadly fear in the center of his gut. "Tell me about Abra. Where have you taken her?"

"Ms. Wilson is in the best of hands." The doctor was young, with wire-framed glasses and a shaggy head of dark hair. He'd been on the graveyard shift in the ER for a week and was looking forward to eight hours' sleep. "If you lose much more blood, you're going to pass out and save us all a lot of trouble."

Cody lifted him off his feet by the lapels of his coat and slammed him against the wall. "Tell me where she is."

"Mr. Johnson?"

Cody heard the voice behind him and ignored it as he stared into the eyes of the first-year resident. "Tell me where she is or you'll be bleeding."

The resident thought about calling for security, then decided against it. "She's being prepped for surgery. I don't know a great deal about her condition, but Dr. Bost is heading the surgical team, and he's the best."

Slowly Cody let him down, but he maintained the grip on his coat. "I want to see her."

"You can throw me up against the wall again," the young doctor said, though he sincerely hoped it wouldn't come to that, "but you're not going to be able to see her. She needs surgery. You're both lucky to be alive, Mr. Johnson. We're only trying to keep you that way."

"She's alive." Fear was burning his throat more than the smoke inhalation.

"She's alive." Cautiously the doctor reached up to remove Cody's hands. "Let me take care of you. As soon as she's out of surgery I'll come for you."

Cody looked down at his hands. Blood was already seeping through the bandage the ambulance attendant had fashioned. "Sorry."

"Don't mention it. From what the paramedics said, you've had a rough time. You've got a hole in your head, Mr. Johnson." He smiled, hoping charm would work. "I'll stitch it up for you."

"Excuse me." The man who had spoken earlier stepped forward and flashed a badge. "Lieutenant Asaro. I'd like to speak with you, Mr. Johnson."

"You want to speak with him while he's bleeding to death?" Feeling a bit more in control, the doctor pulled open a curtain and gestured toward an examining room. "Or would you like to wait until he's patched up?"

Asaro noticed a chair near the examining table. "Mind?"

"No." Cody sat on the table and peeled off what was left of his shirt. Both his torso and his back were lashed with burns and lacerations that made Asaro wince.

"Close call, I'd say."

Cody didn't respond as the doctor began to clean the gash at his temple.