Whirlwind
Whirlwind
Rick Mofina
An anguished mother loses her baby in a deadly storm…A kind stranger helps Jenna Cooper protect her baby boy when a killer tornado rips through a Dallas flea market. But in the aftermath, Jenna can't find her son or the woman who'd been holding him.A journalist under pressure breaks the story…Upon discovering the tragedy, reporter and single mom Kate Page, battling for her career and trying to hold her life together, vows to determine what happened to tiny Caleb Cooper.A vortex of life-and-death forces…As the FBI launches an investigation amid the devastation, Kate uncovers troubling clues to the trail of the woman last seen with the baby…clues that reveal a plot more sinister than anybody had imagined. Against mounting odds, Kate risks everything in the race to find the truth…before it's too late.
An anguished mother loses her baby in a deadly storm…
A kind stranger helps Jenna Cooper protect her baby boy when a killer tornado rips through a Dallas flea market. But in the aftermath, Jenna can’t find her son or the woman who’d been holding him.
A journalist under pressure breaks the story…
Upon discovering the tragedy, reporter and single mom Kate Page, battling for her career and trying to hold her life together, vows to determine what happened to tiny Caleb Cooper.
A vortex of life-and-death forces
As the FBI launches an investigation amid the devastation, Kate uncovers troubling clues to the trail of the woman last seen with the baby—clues that reveal a plot more sinister than anybody had imagined. Against mounting odds, Kate risks everything in the race to find the truth…before it’s too late.
Praise for the novels of Rick Mofina
INTO THE DARK
“This is a one-day read (most likely a two-to-four-hour read,
depending on how fast your eyes can soak all this in),
but with the exciting plot and a conclusion that is a true surprise
to one and all, this is one book that has to be seen ASAP.”
—Suspense Magazine
THEY DISAPPEARED
“Mofina is one of the best thriller writers in the business.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
THE BURNING EDGE
“Rick Mofina’s tense, taut writing makes every thriller he writes
an adrenaline-packed ride.”
—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author
IN DESPERATION
“A blisteringly paced story that cuts to the bone.
It left me ripping through pages deep into the night.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author
THE PANIC ZONE
“Taut pacing, rough action and jagged dialogue feed a relentless pace.
The Panic Zone is written with sizzling intent.”
—Hamilton Spectator
VENGEANCE ROAD
“Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit! It’s a great read!”
—Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author
SIX SECONDS
“Six Seconds should be Rick Mofina’s breakout thriller.
It moves like a tornado.”
—James Patterson, New York Times bestselling author
Also from Rick Mofina and Harlequin MIRA
INTO THE DARK
THEY DISAPPEARED
THE BURNING EDGE
IN DESPERATION
THE PANIC ZONE
VENGEANCE ROAD
SIX SECONDS
And watch for Rick Mofina’s next Kate Page thriller,
coming soon from Harlequin MIRA!
Other books by Rick Mofina
A PERFECT GRAVE
EVERY FEAR
THE DYING HOUR
BE MINE
NO WAY BACK
BLOOD OF OTHERS
COLD FEAR
IF ANGELS FALL
Whirlwind
Rick Mofina
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To the memory of John Gradon
The clouds poured out water; The skies sent out a sound; Your arrows also flashed about. The voice of Your thunder was in the whirlwind;
The lightnings lit up the world; The earth trembled and shook.
—Psalms 77:17–18
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u04356ab2-9f0f-56c5-bb94-aa4de22bf9ac)
Chapter 2 (#ue0fe102f-8536-537d-a31f-564caf66c1e1)
Chapter 3 (#ubbc37a01-3f5f-5ef4-adaa-d463fde995e2)
Chapter 4 (#u35e5d534-f496-5956-ac98-c1ce2ca1366b)
Chapter 5 (#u58b8d945-bad8-502c-b6de-c7ca638eb289)
Chapter 6 (#u3b8586dc-de7b-58c4-971d-75986626908c)
Chapter 7 (#u6018b858-64c1-5138-827a-371f9b8ea699)
Chapter 8 (#u5cd0ff9f-6f30-5ca9-a3e9-0c79d3e9e513)
Chapter 9 (#ufa6c403f-4426-5d75-a499-2ad97721f7d0)
Chapter 10 (#uafc1b2d0-4378-5beb-95b0-4a0c52f7321d)
Chapter 11 (#u106e26dc-4b56-5296-b69d-03377b2d197b)
Chapter 12 (#u2924cd70-118d-54ca-aec4-ed9b2fc98985)
Chapter 13 (#u9a27eb27-767a-599b-a91a-acae43b9e58a)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
1
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Death was near but Jenna Cooper was not aware.
No one was.
Like the thousands of other people at the Old Southern Glory Flea Market, in the southeastern part of the Dallas– Fort Worth Metroplex, she was hunting for bargains.
Jenna liked coming here. With more than nine hundred vendors in buildings and open-air sections spread over forty acres at the Hawn and LBJ freeways, Old Southern was one of the biggest flea markets in Texas.
Whatever Jenna needed, she could always find a deal on it.
“Can I make you an offer on these?”
Jenna touched the folded baby clothes she’d selected and piled on the vendor’s table. The fleece hoodie, the footed pajamas, a romper, T-shirts, bibs, the lace tops and the skorts, which were so cute.
The vendor was wearing a Cowboys ball cap, rose-tinted sunglasses and a T-shirt that read: Verna’s Clothes for Kids. Jenna guessed her to be in her late sixties.
“What’s your offer, dear?”
Jenna figured the clothes would cost fifty to sixty dollars if she were to buy them new. But the items, as tagged on the table, would run about thirty-five dollars. She was not very good at negotiating, but these days she had no choice. For her, Blake and the kids, money was an issue.
“Would you take twenty-five for all of them?”
The woman took stock of Jenna’s daughter, who was holding on to the stroller where her baby brother was waking up from a nap.
“How old are your little ones?” she asked, weighing Jenna’s offer.
“Cassie’s four, almost five, and her baby brother Caleb’s five months.”
“I bet they’re a handful.”
“They are.”
“All right, dear, for you and your angels, twenty-five.”
“Thank you.” Jenna handed her the cash from her wallet.
While the vendor rummaged under the table for a bag, the old transistor radio hanging from her wooden sign that also read Verna’s Clothes for Kids, crackled faintly with an updated weather report.
But few people were listening about the possible tornado watch.
The sky was overcast with flashes of lightning on the horizon. It was hot and humid. Jenna pressed the back of her hand to her moist forehead then checked on Caleb. He was going to be hungry and she’d have to find a place to feed him. She gave Cassie a sip of bottled water, intending to finish shopping and get home before it rained.
“Your little girl’s beautiful.”
Jenna’s attention shifted to the end of the table, where another woman had stopped browsing to pay her the compliment. She was about Jenna’s age, mid-twenties, with short spiky red hair and a nice smile.
“Thank you,” Jenna said.
“And—” the stranger nodded to the stroller “—I overheard, your baby boy’s five months old?”
“Yes.” Jenna beamed.
“May I?” The woman stepped closer, lowering herself to Caleb’s stroller. “Oh, he’s brand-new! What a sweetheart!”
“Here’s your bag,” the vendor said to Jenna.
“Thanks.” She reached out for it.
“Who does he take after?” The stranger stood.
“His dad. He’s got his father’s eyes.”
For the first time, Jenna noticed a man at the other end of the table. He seemed about the same age as the woman and by the way he was watching, appeared to be with her.
“You’re so blessed. They’re beautiful children,” the woman said.
“Thank you.” Jenna stowed the clothes in the stroller’s basket.
That woman was right, Jenna thought, while making her way through the bustling market. Jenna was blessed, but this past year had been hard for her family. A week after she’d learned that she was pregnant, Blake was laid off from his ground-crew job at DFW International Airport. As weeks and months passed, Blake took any work he could find. He’d come home, hands callused from a long day on a construction site, or he’d fall asleep in front of the TV after a day making dozens of deliveries as a courier. But that was all low-paying, temporary work.
Blake couldn’t find a good, steady job.
Jenna was a part-time teller and worked as many hours as she could before she was due. They were burning through the little savings they had, and she feared they would lose their home, right up until six weeks ago. That’s when Blake was hired by American Journey Movers. It was full-time, and luckily there were health benefits, which helped when she had Caleb.
The downside was that Blake was always on the road. He started in Florida one week then was in Minnesota the next. Thankfully, Jenna’s sister, Holly, came in from Atlanta for two weeks when Caleb was born, because the day after Jenna brought him home from the hospital, Blake was on the road again to Kentucky and Virginia.
Now he was in Alaska.
Jenna missed him.
“You’ll tough it out, Jen,” Blake would tell her. “You’re not a quitter. We’ll get through this. Look at all we’ve faced so far.”
He was right, and she was grateful. Things were turning around for them. She had a healthy baby boy and a beautiful daughter. Blake had found a good job. It was true, she was blessed. They’d kept their house and were clearing their debts.
To help with their finances, Jenna was trying to get a data-processing job that would let her do extra work at home. She was also careful with money, never spending beyond their budget. That’s why she had buckled Cassie and Caleb into the family’s ten-year-old Ford Focus and come here.
But before heading out this morning, she’d hesitated. The forecast had called for a slight risk of severe weather later this afternoon. Standing in her driveway, she thought the sky looked fine, and she planned to be home by early afternoon. Besides, she needed to get some things now, and this was the best time for her to go.
They’d had good luck so far, Jenna thought, as she maneuvered through the crowded market lanes. Along with the baby clothes, she’d bought towels and bedsheets for a steal. They had factory flaws that weren’t even noticeable. Now she needed a desk lamp. She’d spotted one priced at two dollars. The same one in the store was going for fifteen.
Caleb was starting to fuss. Jenna needed to feed him but wanted to get the lamp first. She was trying to recall the row where the lamp was when she felt the first raindrop.
Then a wind kicked up some papers and dirt. Vendors began throwing tarps and plastic sheets over their wares, others unrolled canvas walls. Jenna unfolded the canopy on Caleb’s stroller, got Cassie into her rain jacket and opened her umbrella just as the downpour started.
Hunched against the rain they hurried to take cover under the tent roof of a large picnic area. They crammed in with other shoppers just as hail in golf-ball-sized chunks smashed into the ground, pelting the roof with such ferocity Jenna feared it would tear through.
“Mommy I’m scared!” Cassie slid her arms around her.
Jenna pulled her closer and tightened her grip on her stroller. She bit her lip watching the storm and lightning, regretting not leaving earlier.
“Mommy, I want to go home!”
“Me, too, honey. It’ll stop soon. Then we’ll get you a cookie, I’ll feed Caleb and we’ll go home, okay?”
Jenna felt Cassie’s little face nodding against her as the hail relented.
“What! Baby, I can’t hear you!”
Jenna’s head snapped to a man in the gathered crowd with his cell phone pressed to his ear. “Baby!”
Others under the canopy turned to a woman as she said, “For real?” into her cell phone.
“Baby.” The man was staring helplessly at the sky, then at his phone. “I can’t hear you!” Then to the rest of the group he said, “My wife’s east of Lancaster. She said a tornado hit, then her phone died.” He flipped up his hood. “I gotta find her. Y’all better take cover!”
As if on cue, a siren wailed. Jenna knew that sound. The city had about a hundred warning sirens throughout Dallas and tested them once a month.
Only this one was not a test.
The steady signal was an alert to seek immediate shelter.
“Mommy!”
Jenna was transfixed.
A massive wall of black cloud in the shape of a wedge had suddenly risen in the west where the sky had turned an otherworldly shade of green. All the saliva in Jenna’s mouth suddenly evaporated as she fought to contain the wave of panic rising in her gut.
“My God!” an old man said, adjusting his glasses as he pointed to the sky. “That’s a school bus spinning up there, hundreds of feet in the air!”
Crushing Cassie to her, Jenna whispered a prayer.
2
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Jenna’s heart was racing.
Numbed by disbelief, she stared through the rain at the towering wall of black cloud swirling toward the market.
Vendors were scrambling to protect their goods; people hurried in all directions. The siren’s cry underscored the panic vibrating among those huddled under the tent; some ran off to the nearest building. Horns blared.
Beyond the rows of tables, Jenna saw the cars gridlocked in a futile struggle to leave. She calculated her chances of getting her children to their car in the distant parking lot before the storm hit.
We won’t make it in time.
“Mommy!” Cassie covered her ears with her hands. “I want to go, Mommy! I’m scared!”
Caleb was crying.
We have to find a safe place, now!
The nearest building was their best hope. She’d keep Caleb in his stroller; that way she could move faster with the kids. Quickly, she tightened the straps holding him, then she hoisted Cassie onto her hip, carrying her with one arm while steering Caleb’s stroller with her free hand.
As they headed into the rain, the tent canopy blew away behind them.
“Hang on to me, Cassie!”
Jenna bent against the wind, determined to make it to the building some forty yards off. She saw the scores of people clogging the entrance and prayed that she could get her children inside.
There’s no turning back, nowhere else to go.
Items from the market started shooting through the air around them, a lawn chair, a bookcase and a folding table, ricocheting off the ground, trees and structures.
Above the siren and all the noise Jenna heard a scream, turned and saw an older man knocked down by a flying piece of lumber. People who’d stopped to help him were suddenly in the path of a large Dumpster, tumbling at top speed before it hit them like they were bowling pins.
Jenna agonized over stopping to help when Caleb’s stroller began shaking and lifting slightly as gusts tried to wrench him from her grip. She fought to hold on to Caleb and Cassie and kept moving to the building, praying with each yard she covered until she made it to the entrance where she joined the others inching their way inside.
“Please hurry, please!” Jenna pleaded over the rushing winds.
Known as the Saddle Up Center, the large square building had been constructed decades ago in a pole barn design with a concrete floor, wooden frame, metal walls and a metal roof. It housed rows of vendors’ tables displaying clothes, furniture and collectables. Hundreds of worried shoppers were jamming into it.
Foreboding filled the air. The warning siren was accompanied by the furious, staccato bombardment of debris striking the walls and roof. The building shook as if under artillery attack.
People with working cell phones shouted out reports.
“A lot of injuries in Lancaster!”
“Transformers are blowing, fires everywhere!”
“A tornado is heading this way!”
There was a loud bang; a streetlight pierced the roof, its large arm swaying perilously above the crowd.
The center’s lights began flickering as debris hammered the building and the wind howled.
“She ain’t gonna hold much longer!” a man shouted.
As Caleb cried, Jenna stared at the roof. The wooden trusses supporting the roof began bending and cracking. She craned her neck, searching for someplace, anyplace, to go.
“Mommy!” Cassie was sobbing.
She was heavy in Jenna’s arm and she had to put her down.
“Mommy, please, no! I’m scared. Hold me!”
“Sweetie, we have to find someplace safe.”
Jenna’s heart was pounding as she looked for a stairway to a basement, a cellar, a grandstand, anything to protect her children.
There was nothing.
Oh God, please help us!
The roof began shifting. A steel trash drum punctured it like a bullet, smashing into a vendor’s stall. Then a small car with terrified people inside hurled through the top of one wall, crashing down onto the sea of helpless shoppers. People screamed while others tried to lift it from the victims.
The building’s walls began to ripple from the pulverizing wind. Jenna’s breathing quickened, the blood rush in her ears keeping time with her heart. She got down on her knees and pulled Cassie and Caleb’s stroller closer to her.
We’re not going to die here.
Someone grabbed her shoulder.
“This way!” a woman shouted into her ear. “Come with me! It’s safer this way!”
Jenna recognized the red-haired woman she’d met earlier, who’d fussed over Caleb.
“You look like you need a hand! Let me take him for you—we need to cut across the floor!”
Jenna had no time to think. She let the woman take control of Caleb’s stroller. Jenna carried Cassie while the man accompanying the woman cleared the way for them. Her pulse galloping, Jenna still savored a degree of relief.
Amid the noise and confusion they found a corner where four huge concrete planters were stored against a wall. Keep us safe here! Please keep us safe! The planters were about three feet tall and three feet square with a narrow gap between them that no one was using.
The roar grew so intense Jenna felt vibrations in her rib cage as the earth began trembling.
The woman pushed Caleb’s stroller into the gap between the planters; Jenna followed, holding Cassie. They hunkered down as chunks of wood began raining from the roof.
Adrenaline pumping, Jenna’s body quaked and she begged Heaven to keep her family safe.
As the man tried to pull a canvas over them, Jenna saw the winds suck the doors from the building, then some people.
The roof began twisting as trusses gave way and large beams fell on helpless people. Chunks of the building’s wall started ripping away, then the roof was gone, people vanished up into black swirling clouds. Metal, wood and debris rained down on Jenna and the others.
Tears streamed down Jenna’s face.
Please help us! Keep my children safe! Don’t let us die!
The heavy planters began shifting.
During horrible chaos Jenna held Cassie tight and held the stroller’s frame as the wind tried to tear it away. The kind stranger was holding on, too.
Lord, please help me!
The last thing Jenna remembered was hanging on to her children and praying before something struck her head. She saw stars before everything went black.
* * *
Jenna Cooper was floating.
She was adrift under a brilliant sun as diamond waves of warm water lapped on a white-sand beach. Blake was beside her, Caleb was napping between them, shaded by their towels. Cassie was making sand castles.
Totally content, Jenna watched the gulls gliding above them, circling, shrieking, inviting her...
...the shrieking...pulling her up from the beach...taking her higher, farther and farther from Blake and the children...no...she can’t leave them...the shrieking...no...she’s not ready to leave them...she’s rising faster...this can’t be happening...
Jenna’s eyes flicked open, squinting and adjusting to shafts of light piercing the latticework above. Where am I? A million muddled thoughts streaked across her mind as she blazed through an inventory of sensations. She was on her back. She wiggled her toes, her fingers, took a deep breath. No discomfort. Where’s Blake, the children? She thought she heard the clamor of radios in the distance. She coughed, twisted grit from her eyes, feeling warmth next to her and a familiar snuggle.
“Mommy!”
“Cassie!” Jenna moved to check her in the weak light. Cassie had cuts on her little cheeks. “Are you hurt, sweetie? Are you okay?”
“I think so. You got a big ouchy on your head.”
Jenna felt some swelling on her forehead and touched her fingers just at the hairline. It was tender, sticky and her fingertips glistened with blood.
“I guess I got a little bump, honey.”
Cassie’s chin crumpled and she cried. “I’m scared. What happened, Mommy?”
Images flashed before Jenna: The market, the storm, seeking shelter, a red-haired woman helping with Caleb, taking cover by the planters, everything going dark, the building breaking apart, Jenna’s hand holding the stroller.
Now her hand was empty.
She searched the area around her.
Where’s my baby?
“Caleb?” she said. Then, the scream ripped from her throat: “Caleb!”
3
Dallas, Texas
In the hour before the storm, Kate Page, an intern reporter at the Dallas bureau of the global news service, Newslead, was at her desk on the phone.
She’d taken a cold call from Cody Warren, a sixteen-year-old high school student whose father had been killed last week in a hit-and-run case just south of Dallas.
“Can you help us find my dad’s killer, please, ma’am?”
Kate adjusted her grip on her handset as he continued.
“We got to get the word out. Police say they have no leads, nothing.” Cody’s voice broke. “We buried him yesterday.”
Over the years, Kate had kept an emotional distance from the people she’d faced while reporting on tragedies. But she never lost her compassion and her heart went out to this teenager who’d been calling every newsroom in Dallas–Fort Worth.
He deserved kindness and the truth.
“Cody, I am so sorry for what’s happened. You have my condolences.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I can’t guarantee that we’ll do a story, but I give you my word I’ll look into it, okay?”
There was a pause.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay, thank you, ma’am.”
After hanging up, Kate took a moment then took a breath. Her attention shifted briefly when the chatter of the bureau’s emergency radio scanners blared from across the floor where Tommy Koop, a news assistant, was monitoring the stream of coded transmissions.
Kate thought she’d heard the word, tornadoes, until Tommy lowered the volume, and she guessed it was just a spurt of firefighter cross talk about weather forecasts.
Ten people worked at the bureau; most of the reporters were out. Kate had an hour before her next assignment, enough time to keep the promise she had made to her caller. She did a quick online search of the suburban news outlets for the last reports on the hit-and-run. Not much had surfaced. She made a round of quick calls to the highway patrol, the sheriffs for Ellis and Dallas counties, and Cedar Hill PD, which had jurisdiction. Kate got through to a sergeant, who updated her.
“Cody’s father had stopped to help a driver, an elderly woman, change a flat on Bear Creek Road when he was hit by a car,” the sergeant said.
“He was being a Good Samaritan.” Kate was taking notes.
“That’s correct.”
Investigators had a blurred image of the suspect car from a store security camera but were counting on people who knew about the case to step forward. The sergeant gave Kate details on time and location.
After the call she looked out the bureau’s twenty-second-floor windows. The sky had darkened. It was raining with flashes of lightning.
She called Cody back for more background on his father. Then, pen clamped in her teeth, she crafted a tight three-hundred-word news story on the search for the car tied to the death of a Good Samaritan motorist. She sent it to the news desk, hoping Chuck Laneer, the bureau chief, would see it before Dorothea Pick, the bureau’s news editor.
The scanners grew louder again with dispatches on a storm, and Tommy paced between his desk and the window, then began making calls. A severe weather warning had been issued earlier in the day indicating a slim chance of tornado conditions. Kate considered it for a moment, wondering about the odds of a tornado touching down and thinking that it was a good thing she’d brought her rain jacket. She still had some time before her assignment, a city meeting on parks that Dorothea had given her.
Kate glanced at Tommy. He was a good-hearted, hardworking kid, she thought, before her concern shifted to whether Chuck and Dorothea had assigned a reporter to monitor the possible storm.
She took stock of her temporary “squatter’s” desk, at the artifacts left by the previous occupant; the torn city map pinned to the fabric half wall, alongside the calendar and the fading list of contact numbers.
She had worked at a newspaper in Ohio before she was laid off. Now she was a week into a three-week “internship” at Newslead’s Dallas bureau. Internship? It’s an all-out job competition.
Kate was one of three reporters in the program. The other two candidates were experienced and they were Texans.
Roy Webster, 42, had been with the Houston Chronicle for twenty years before he was laid off. His team had been a finalist for a Pulitzer for its coverage of Hurricane Ike.
When they had all first met, Webster had extended his hand. “You’re not from Texas, are you, Kate?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You chose a helluva way to get to know the state.” He winked.
The other candidate, Mandy Lee, 33, was a general assignment reporter and former teen beauty queen, who’d won two state news awards before she’d taken a buyout from the Dallas Morning News.
She was cool to Kate when they’d met.
“Canton, Ohio? I didn’t know they even had a paper in that itty-bitty town.” Mandy showed Kate her pageant-winning smile.
Kate knew she was at a disadvantage. She’d also sensed that Dorothea Pick had disapproved of her being on the short list.
“You’re fortunate to be here,” Dorothea had said. “There were so many strong candidates right here in Dallas.”
For his part, Chuck Laneer, impressed by Kate’s doggedness when she’d worked in Ohio, had been firm but fair.
“Just show us your best,” he’d told her.
Oh, she’d do more than that.
Roy and Mandy may be better qualified but Kate was a never-say-die fighter. At the end of the internship, one of them would have a job. The others would go home unemployed.
Losing out was not an option for Kate. These days most newsrooms across the country were cutting staff. Few were hiring. This was Kate’s best shot at a full-time job, maybe her only shot, and so far it was not looking good.
So far, her work had received little play, or had resulted in inserts in other peoples’ stories. She’d had her name on only one item that had been picked up nationally. She’d put a lot on the line to be here.
She could not fail.
Kate met the eyes of Grace smiling from her screen saver, and a wave of guilt rolled over her.
Did I make the right decision, doing this?
Grace, Kate’s six-year-old daughter, was back home in Canton, staying with friends. Lord, how Kate missed her; she hated being away from her but she needed a full-time job. She was laid off from the Repository six months ago and this Dallas internship was her best shot at a new start.
But so far, it was not going well. She needed to deliver stronger stories.
Kate’s phone rang. It was Dorothea.
“Got your story. Come see me.”
When Kate got to Dorothea’s desk, the news editor patted a chair she’d rolled next to hers. Kate’s story was up on her monitor.
“Have a seat,” Dorothea said. “I want you to see what I’m going to do.”
Dorothea Pick, second in command at the bureau, was in her late forties. Kate thought she wore a little too much makeup and with her overarching eyebrows, appeared to be in a state of perpetual surprise, or anger. She had a lovely voice that dripped with Southern charm that bordered on condescension whenever she addressed Kate about her work.
“This is well written but it’s not a national news item.” Dorothea’s extension rang. She glanced at the number. “Hang on, I need to take this.” Into the phone, she said, “Where are you? Okay, what do you have? Yes, yes...but did it touch down?” After waiting for the answer, Dorothea glanced to Chuck Laneer’s glass-walled office. They could see him on the phone, standing at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, bifocals pushed atop his forehead and pointing a remote at his flat-screen TV. “I’m going to pass you to Chuck.”
Dorothea transferred the call and resumed her work with Kate’s story. Her mouse and keyboard clicked as she removed line after line.
“As you know, this tragedy was reported regionally, so at best this is an updated regional brief and regional briefs are one hundred words, maximum.” With surgical precision, she’d reduced Kate’s story to ninety-five words. “And, as we know, briefs don’t run with bylines.”
Kate watched Dorothea delete her name.
“There we go,” Dorothea said. “How’s that?”
“I don’t understand why this is not a story,” Kate said. “This man was a volunteer firefighter, an ex-Marine who’d done duty in Afghanistan. He stopped to help a woman who’d been visiting her dying husband in the hospital and paid for it with his life. The person responsible for killing him has so far gotten away with it.”
Dorothea nodded and smiled. “Sorry, it’s a traffic accident. Now you should get moving to the assignment I gave you.”
“The one about the meeting on city parks?”
“It concerns Dealey Plaza.”
“But there’s a severe storm approaching, possibly with tornadoes. Maybe I could help cover the outcome? The meeting doesn’t sound like hard news. I could pick it up later.”
“We’re fine with the storm. We need someone at the parks meeting.”
“But—” Kate shot glances at the news assistant monitoring the scanners and Chuck Laneer in his office on the phone “—I really think—”
“Are you refusing an assignment, Kate?”
“No, not at all.”
“Did you read the report on Dealey Plaza that I gave you?”
“Yes. But all it suggests is planting some trees.”
“You’re not from Texas, so you can be forgiven for not understanding that Dealey’s a national historic landmark. Anything concerning the plaza interests editors across the country. You’d better hurry along.”
Kate returned to her desk for her things.
Biting back her frustration, she pulled on her raincoat, unable to dismiss the niggling feeling that Dorothea was attempting to thwart her. In the past week she’d given the two other interns bigger stories that got major national play. It seemed Dorothea went out of her way to feed Kate scraps and soft news.
“Everybody stop what you’re doing!” Chuck’s voice boomed.
He stood in the doorway of his office holding a notebook in one hand and his glasses in the other. Thirty-nine hard years in news were written in the lines that creased his rugged face.
“We have confirmation that tornadoes are cutting across the metropolitan area. We have casualties and destruction.” Laneer glanced at his notebook. “We’ve got people going to Arlington, Grand Prairie and Lancaster.”
Laneer pointed his glasses at Kate.
“I want you to get to Wildhorse Heights, to the Old Southern Glory Flea Market, south of LBJ and Hawn. It got hit. New York wants everything we’ve got and they want it fast, people. Stand down from all other assignments. There is only one story today. Let’s get on it.”
4
Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
Kate took the elevator down to the building’s parking garage.
She hurried to her car, a 2007 Chevy Cobalt that started with a rattle, reminding her that she had to get it to the shop one of these days. She reset her mileage counter then keyed the flea market address into the GPS on her dash.
Newslead’s bureau was in Bryan Tower. The flea market was about twelve miles southeast.
She switched on her hands-free speakerphone and wheeled out of the garage. Her wipers swept at the rain as Chuck’s orders echoed in her head.
“Get us the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes.”
Kate got onto the expressway with her stomach tightening, as it always did whenever she’d rushed off to a breaking story. No matter how many tragedies or disasters she’d covered, Kate never got used to it.
No reporter did.
You never knew what you were heading into. But it was up to you to pull a story out of the chaos, to make sense of whatever was unfolding and to do it as a clock ticked down on you. And if that wasn’t enough pressure, Kate knew that she and her two competitors would be judged by their performance on this story.
The prize was a full-time job.
She adjusted her grip on the wheel as she worked through traffic.
I’ll do whatever it takes, she vowed to her daughter’s snapshot on the visor as the radio news broadcasted tornado updates, confirming: “A large number of fatalities,” shifting Kate’s thoughts to the victims and their families. She did not want to land a story, or a job, at the expense of someone else’s pain.
I didn’t mean it that way. Forgive me.
She glanced at the few sparkles Grace had shed from her homemade card onto the passenger seat when she’d taken her to her friend Courtney’s birthday party, a few days before she’d left for Texas.
It was nearly two weeks ago but it seemed like a year.
In her rearview mirror Kate saw Dallas’s skyline, the Bank of America Plaza, the Renaissance and Comerica towers and the Fountain Place prism, all blurring in her rain-streaked rear window.
Would Dallas be her new home?
As the wet road rushed under her car, she considered her life and where she was headed with it. She was a twenty-nine-year-old single mother with a six-year-old daughter. From the beginning, Kate and Grace had been on their own. Grace’s father had never been in the picture. Kate had been a loner most of her life. Her mother and father died in a hotel fire when she was seven years old. After the tragedy, Kate and her little sister, Vanessa, lived with relatives then bounced through foster homes. Two years after her parents’ deaths, she lost Vanessa in a car accident.
Kate’s radio beeped.
“We have confirmation that powerful tornadoes have touched down in Lancaster and Wildhorse Heights. We have reports of fatalities and widespread devastation. This could be one of the worst storms ever....”
Kate took a deep breath and concentrated on her driving when her phone rang with a call from Chuck Laneer.
“Where are you now?”
“A little over halfway.”
“Do you see any pockets of damage?”
“No, nothing but black clouds and rain where I am.”
“We need to move on this.”
Kate passed a line of slower vehicles. As neighborhood after neighborhood rolled by she checked her GPS constantly. She was somewhere at the southern point of Kleberg when the squeak of wipers on the windshield signaled that the rain was letting up.
The sky was clearing.
The area was flat, nearly treeless, but it appeared undisturbed. She saw an aging roller-skating rink, an auto auction yard, an ice-cream stand—but no indication of damage.
None.
Fearing she’d missed a turnoff, she consulted her GPS again. Where was the flea market? It should be here.
Her phone rang. Chuck again.
“Kate, where are you...what’ve you got?”
“Nothing so far.”
“You should be—”
“Chuck, you’re breaking up!”
“—we’re hearing that the Saddle Up Center in the market got—”
When the call died, she tried calling Chuck back, but she’d lost the connection.
Traffic ahead was slowing into a stream of brake lights as troopers and sheriff’s deputies were merging two lanes of southbound traffic into one to keep a clear path for emergency vehicles. Kate got into the single slow lane, which soon crawled to a stop.
In the expressway’s grassy median she saw a large upside-down neon sign for Sanchez Restaurant—Fajita Special Today; she saw a partial splintered wooden structure that may have been a roof, then a crumpled van on its side. Cars had pulled over to aid the van’s passengers. Two solid lanes of traffic flowed in the opposite direction. Kate had to do a double take on several pickup trucks. They were loaded with bleeding people being tended to by others.
Oh, my God...
Then her rearview mirror flashed with wig-wagging emergency lights as she heard the siren of an ambulance, no, three ambulances, coming fast behind her in the emergency lane, followed by an SUV painted with the colorful logo of a radio news station.
Kate’s traffic line was inching along. She had to get to the scene.
She bit her bottom lip and made a decision.
When the radio news truck passed, she wheeled her car into the emergency lane and followed it. She traveled for about a quarter mile before reaching a roadblock at a U-turn. Several marked police cars were parked there. Officers were turning traffic around to the lanes moving northbound.
Sheriff’s deputies waived the ambulances and news truck through southbound, but a big trooper in a raincoat stepped in front of Kate’s car, pointed at her, commanding her to stop. Then he leaned into her window.
“You can’t go any farther, miss. This lane is for emergency vehicles only. We need you to go through the U-turn and head back.”
“I know, but I’m with the press and you just let that radio news guy through.”
As the trooper hesitated Kate noticed officers at the patrol cars nearby contending with six or seven anguished people. They were demanding to be allowed through the roadblock. “My father and mother are there...but we can’t reach them on their phone...please let us by—”
Kate’s trooper glanced at the group, then, as he returned his gaze to her, she said, “I have a job to do, too.”
“Who are you with? Do you have some ID?”
“Newslead.” Kate fumbled for her plastic photo ID and chain, showing it to him. “Our stories go across the country and around the world.”
He studied her ID long enough for her to notice he had blue eyes and rainwater webbing down his jawline.
“All right.” He nodded. “I’ll let you through, but when you get to the next point, park to the side. We need the lanes clear for emergency crews.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve seen a lot in my time, but nothing like what happened down there. Brace yourself.”
5
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Tense from the trooper’s warning, Kate drove beyond the roadblock.
Her knuckles whitened on the wheel as she navigated around the chunks of plastic, metal and garbage scattered over the two empty southbound lanes. About a hundred yards in, the freeway dipped with a gentle slope, giving her a sweeping view of what used to be the Old Southern Glory Flea Market.
“Oh my God!”
For as far as she could see, the landscape was a graveyard of crushed cars and trucks, punctuated with the ghostly pronglike remnants of trees jutting from a sea of debris.
Small fires flickered amid the destruction.
It looks like a gate to hell.
Ahead, Kate saw the long line of ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and emergency crew vehicles, their lights flashing. She parked between a fire truck and a TV news van. The rain had stopped. She was dressed in fitted jeans and a belted top, but her flat leather shoes wouldn’t do. Metal, wood and glass covered the ground. She got a pair of old hiking boots and woolen socks she kept in the trunk, put them on quickly and tied the laces tight. She pulled on her rain jacket, grabbed her phone and tried to call Chuck. Nothing happened. She tried texting. It didn’t work. No service. The cell towers must be down. Damn. She tested her phone’s camera. It worked. She tested the keyboard, created a file called Storm-1. Okay, she could still write and take pictures.
She gathered her spare phone battery, notebook and pens, slipped the chain with her press ID over her neck and recalled Chuck’s orders.
Get us the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes.
Her pulse quickened as she rushed into the chaos. Rounding a heap of splintered lumber and smashed Sheetrock, she stopped in her tracks at the scene before her.
With a funereal air, two firefighters were placing a yellow tarp over the bodies of four dead people: two adult men and two adult women, side by side on the ground, in a neat row. Nearly stripped of their clothes, their battered bodies were blood soaked. One of the women was missing a foot. One of the men had a shard of glass sticking out of his stomach. Not far off, she saw another yellow tarp on the ground with three more pairs of feet extending from it. Two of the pairs belonged to children.
Kate steadied herself on a picnic table until she found her composure.
She offered a silent prayer for the dead, then thought of her daughter in Ohio, wishing she could be with her now. After blinking back her tears, Kate opened her notebook, made notes and moved on.
I have to do this.
Everywhere, people staggered in wide-eyed shock, shouting names of loved ones at the debris.
Kate came upon an overturned car with a metal signpost rammed through the windshield. The car had a large white X sprayed on it. Two women sat on the ground next to it draped in a tattered blanket. They were on the road but much of the asphalt near them had been peeled away.
She lowered herself and sat with them.
“Hi, I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead. May I talk to you?”
The women were in their twenties, their faces were scraped and their eyes were tearful. One of them gave a little nod.
“Can you tell me where you were when the storm hit and what happened?” Kate asked.
The first woman had short blond hair. She looked at the horizon as if the tragedy were replaying there and trembled as she spoke.
“My sister and I were stuck in the traffic, trying to get out, when we saw it coming—the hail, everything going black. Things started hitting the car.”
“Lawn chairs, tables, steel poles,” the second woman added.
“I thought we were going to die,” the blonde woman said. “We heard this roaring, like ten freight trains. The ground shook and this pressure came, this huge pressure, like something trying to crush us. Our windows shattered. We could hear the metal of our car literally crumpling.”
“We just hugged each other and prayed,” the second woman said.
The blonde woman said: “Then the car rocked back and forth and the tornado picked it up. We spun and flew for about fifteen seconds then it dropped us and the air bags popped. We were upside down... I screamed for my sister. But we were alive, thank God. People pulled us out. Our legs and shoulders hurt but we’re all right...but other folks—” The woman stared at the sky like she no longer trusted it. “Others weren’t so lucky.”
Kate steeled herself, offered words of empathy, moved on and talked to more survivors. All the while her deadline was ticking down. She needed to find the Saddle Up Center, get official comment from the scene, write up what she had and find a way to get her story to the bureau.
Everywhere people were calling for help.
Rescuers worked to pull people out of the rubble. They used their hands, pipes, pieces of wood, whatever they could as emergency radios blared. The air smelled of churned earth, fresh-cut lumber and desperation.
Helicopters thumped far off overhead, paramedics moved out the injured on gurneys, others used doors or sheets of plywood as makeshift stretchers while volunteers held IV bags.
Kate saw several firefighters huddled at a table, talking on radios, poring over rolled-out maps. She identified herself and asked for a status report from the most senior member of the group, Station 9 Captain Vern Hamby.
“We don’t have a lot to report right now.”
“Can you give me what you know, please, Captain?”
His weary face creased with experience and concern when he yielded and gave Kate an on-the-record summary.
“We’ve got a significant number of casualties. The dead could be in the hundreds, or higher.”
Kate wrote as he spoke.
“We’ve been told it was an EF5 tornado. That’s the strongest on the scale, with winds in the 260 to 300 miles per hour range. On a day like today, there might be upward of three thousand visitors to the market. The grounds offer little shelter.”
Kate absorbed the information.
“Our priority is to rescue people in the rubble,” the captain said. “We’ve got spot fires from ruptured gas lines, blown transformers. It’s treacherous. We’ve got apparatus coming in from all over the region. We’re setting up triage units, shelters, missing-persons centers and morgues, some on-site. See the flags? Others will be near schools and community halls. We’ve got reports that a number of tornadoes touched down in the Metroplex, across Texas and in other states.”
Hamby’s radio burst with cross talk. He had to go. Kate walked with him, posing her last questions.
“The Xs on the vehicles?” She nodded to a van with X3 sprayed on the side. “It means you looked at them, right?”
“An X means no one inside, an X with a number, tells you how many confirmed dead inside and that you should move on to help those you can help.”
Kate cast a sad glance at the van. A hand was protruding from a door frame.
“Which way to the Saddle Up Center?” she asked.
“The Saddle Up?” Hamby shook his head slowly. “A lot of casualties there.” He spoke into his radio’s shoulder microphone. After a static-filled response, the captain stopped and pointed Kate’s attention to a distant landmark. “See that car that looks like it’s standing on its rear bumper against that pole down there, like a rocket ready to launch?”
Kate nodded.
“It’s way down there.”
Making her way to the center took time.
Kate stepped slowly through the remains of a destroyed building, taking care because pink insulation hid the jagged sections of the broken wooden walls. Midway, a hand seized her ankle.
“Help me!”
Kate had almost stepped on a woman entangled in the ruins. Dirt and glass fragments were embedded in the woman’s face. Kate got her free and into a sitting position. The woman was holding a cloth to the blood oozing from her leg.
“Let me have a look.” Kate lifted the blood-drenched rag.
The woman’s lower left calf had a twelve-inch gash to the bone. The woman was losing blood. Kate’s first aid was rusty, but she knew they had to clean that wound and get pressure on it to stem the bleeding. She pressed the woman’s hand back on the cloth.
“Hold it down firm.”
Kate looked around, called for paramedics, for firefighters, but none were near. Nothing that looked clean, no fabric, nothing was at hand. Kate removed her shirt’s belt, then cut the bottom of her shirt against a broken window and tore long strips from it. She used her shirt to treat the wound then wrapped the clean strips around it and used her belt for pressure.
“Please don’t leave me,” the woman said.
Kate took her hand and sat with her while calling for help.
“I was in the office,” the woman said. “Everything outside went black. The whole office twisted off the ground, the windows exploded, the walls started wobbling like rubber. I was hurled around like a doll in a blender. The desk, the chair, smashed into me. Broken glass flew like bullets. I was going to die.” Tears were streaming down the woman’s face. “Bless you for helping me.”
Kate consoled her until paramedics arrived.
As Kate continued to the Saddle Up Center she spotted a satellite truck for WFGG-TV News, reminding her that she needed to get a story to Chuck at the bureau.
I need to file now, before I get to the center.
She sat near two crushed cars with Xs, paged through her notes and began writing on her cell phone. She had the story structured in her head and her fingers moved fast. The screen smeared with blood as she typed, finishing at the five-hundred word mark.
There’s no cell service. How will I get this to the bureau?
The answer was in the distance.
She hurried to the WFGG-TV satellite truck with its dish extended on the pole above. Satellite phones didn’t need cell phone networks, they worked anywhere. No one was around. She pounded on the doors. A man in his mid-twenties with a stubbled face opened a side door. Jaw clenched, he stared at Kate.
“What is it?”
“I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead.”
“Yeah, so? I’m busy.”
“What’s your name?”
“Fitch, but I’m busy.”
She saw the array of small monitors, computers and equipment.
“You guys have a satellite phone, right, Fitch?”
“We’ve got satellite everything.”
“There’s no cell service. I need your help now. I need you to take a file off my phone and send it to my desk over your sat system.”
“Sorry, I’m busy.”
“Fitch, please, I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
He looked at her, considered the deal.
“Thirty.”
“Come on, where’s the professional camaraderie?”
“Thirty.”
“Okay, thirty. Deal.”
“Let me see your phone.”
Kate gave it to him. He examined the ports.
“I should have a transfer cable for that. What is it you need to move?”
Kate took the phone, showed him her file named “Storm-1”.
“Just text?” He turned to his workstation, rummaged through a box of wires and adapters, fished out a cable, connected one end to Kate’s phone, the other to a laptop.
“Yes, no images.”
He typed a few commands, and seconds later Kate’s story appeared on his laptop.
“Where’s it going?” he asked. “You can email it.”
Kate gave him the newsroom email address for filing stories.
“Type ‘Urgent from Kate Page’ in the subject line.”
Fitch angled the laptop to Kate.
“You go ahead, write what you need. Keep it short.”
She stepped inside, set her things down and typed:
No phone service at the flea market. WFGG let me use their satellite. Will file more soon, Kate Page.
After sending her story, Kate typed another email to her friend Heather in Ohio.
“Hey, what’s that?”
“Just letting my daughter know I’m okay.”
Kate was fast, hit Send then went through her wallet. All she could find were twenties. She checked her pockets. No cash there. She passed Fitch forty dollars.
“I need the change, buddy.”
He slid his hand into his jeans and pulled out a five.
“That’s the best I can do. Sorry.”
“Whatever. Thanks for helping me, Fitch.”
“Otherwise you would’ve hurt me. I sensed that about you.”
“Ha-ha.”
Kate collected her things then took several steps from the truck.
“Hold on!” Fitch called. “You’ve got a reply here. Take a look.”
Kate returned and read the email.
Kate: You should’ve tried to reach us sooner. Can you find anything stronger? Your story has no reference to the Saddle Up Center, which you were told to focus on. Benny Lopez, one of our photogs, is on scene, you should find him fast. AP has already filed.—DP.
“What a hard-ass,” Fitch said. “AP has satellite phones.”
Kate’s face flushed at Dorothea’s remarks.
“Want to respond?” Fitch asked.
“No.”
Kate slammed the door like a gunshot when she rushed out of the truck.
6
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
“Help! Somebody help!”
What?
Jenna’s ears pricked to the sound of a faded response.
Someone was out there, far off.
She looked and felt around, clawed at the debris. The stroller was gone. The red-haired woman was gone. The man with her was gone.
No, this isn’t real!
“Caleb! Anybody? Help!”
This can’t be!
“Help! Somebody, over here! Help!”
“Hello!”
Someone was out there and getting closer. Jenna thrust her hands up to the wooden beams that were sealing their tiny cell like pickup sticks. She couldn’t budge them.
Her mind reeled; her head spun.
“Help! Somebody help!”
Something tugged at her shirt.
“Mommy, that lady’s scaring me,” Cassie said.
“What lady?”
“In there.”
Jenna repositioned herself to go as far as she could behind Cassie. She stopped at a bushy mass of white hair belonging to an old woman.
Jenna shot back. Bile gushed along the back of her throat as she battled nausea. A corpse! Oh, God! Jenna touched the back of her hand to her mouth, fought to regain her composure. All the while her scalp tingled.
I’m sorry.
The woman was in her seventies. Her head, shoulders and arms were sticking out from debris as if she’d attempted to swim out. One side of her face was torn off, revealing tissue, her teeth and skull. She was not moving, or breathing.
“Oh God, don’t look, honey.”
Jenna took the woman’s hand to feel for a pulse.
Nothing.
“Is she dead, Mommy?”
“Shh-shh,” Jenna took Cassie into her arms.
“Where’s Caleb? Are we going to be dead, too?”
“Don’t worry, honey. Somebody’s going to help us. We’ll find Caleb.”
“Will Daddy come?”
“We’ll call Daddy.”
Adrenaline-driven fear vibrated through every part of Jenna’s body.
“You’re shaking, Mommy.”
“I know, everything’s going to be o—”
“Can anybody hear us?”
A man’s voice, very close.
“Yes!” Jenna shouted. “Over here! Please help us! My baby’s missing! We have to find him! Please!”
“Can you move something to signal your position?”
Jenna found a length of pipe, shoved it straight up and wiggled it while shouting.
“Here! Over here!”
“We see it. Hold tight.”
More voices and muted radio talk filled the air along with the noise of debris being moved piece by piece. It took time before searchers, about six in all from a Dallas rapid-rescue squad, cleared their way to Jenna and Cassie and lifted them from the ruins.
“Please help me find my baby boy!” Jenna sobbed, pulling Cassie to her. “He’s five months old, he’s in his stroller. A lady was helping me hold him in the storm. I can’t find him! I can’t find her!” Jenna scanned the area, hysterical. “Help me!”
Jenna suddenly lunged toward the area where she and Cassie had been trapped, grabbing, kicking at pieces of wood, metal, plastic, tossing them wildly, causing small sections to shift then collapse, forcing new jagged spearlike sections to dangerously jut from the ocean of debris.
“Caleb! My baby!”
Members of the rescue team pulled her back.
“Ma’am,” said the thirtysomething man who held her shoulders. “Ma’am, my name is Steve Pawson, the squad leader. Try to take it easy. It’s not safe. We’re here to help. Your head’s bleeding. How badly are you two hurt?”
“My daughter’s got cuts on her face. I got bumped, but I’m okay.”
“Anybody else in there with you?”
“A woman. I think she’s dead. I have to find my baby!”
Pawson nodded to other members of the rescue party, who were still searching the area where they’d found Jenna and Cassie, while a female team member studied Jenna with calm concern.
“Ma’am, I’d like to take care of your wound.”
The woman took a pressure bandage from her backpack, wrapped Jenna’s head. “Let me help you and your little girl. My name’s Nancy. Can you tell me your names?” she asked while assessing their conditions.
“Jenna, Jenna Cooper and this is my daughter, Cassie. My baby son is Caleb. He’s missing.” Jenna looked frantically in every direction. “We have to find him now! Please!”
“All right, Jenna,” Pawson said. “We’re going to search everywhere for him. Nancy here will take you and your daughter to the first aid station.”
“No, I need to stay and look for my baby!”
“Jenna...” Pawson was firm and looked directly at her. “It’s not safe. You’re in shock. I give you my word we’ll keep searching everywhere. We have dogs coming to help us find people.”
Jenna stood there, numbed, not moving, not speaking.
“Go with Nancy, Jenna.” Pawson softened his voice. “There’s more help at the first aid station, people to take more information about your son.”
“But I have to look for him.” Her voice trailed. “I’m his mother. He needs me.”
“I know this is hard,” he said. “But you have to trust us.”
Tears rolled down Jenna’s blood-streaked face as she, Cassie and Nancy moved through the debris. With every step, Jenna concentrated, searching intensely for any trace of Caleb, but it was futile as the horror of the Saddle Up Center unfolded around them.
7
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
It was slow going for Jenna, Cassie and Nancy, trying to step through the wreckage of the Saddle Up Center without stumbling.
In every direction, more rescue teams sifted through endless heaps of smashed walls, remnants of vendor stalls, chunks of the building’s roof. The voices of those still buried and hurt called out as search-and-rescue dogs led their handlers, probing the destruction to pinpoint pockets of life. Workers carefully disentangled debris to extricate survivors.
Nancy led Jenna and Cassie to a canvas canopy erected at the edge of where the center had stood. Dozens of bleeding victims were being treated at the busy first aid station. Paramedics loaded those suffering the most serious injuries onto gurneys, hurried them to ambulances and on to hospitals. Victims in critical condition were being rushed to a landing site nearby to be transported by helicopter to hospitals.
Where is my baby?
Jenna scoured the activity for any sign of her son, all the while thinking how this couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be happening.
“Maybe they found Caleb and took him to a hospital?” she said to Nancy.
“That’s possible. Let’s get you both checked more thoroughly.” Nancy took them to a table where a patient had just been cleared by the nurse there.
“Jenna, this is Margot Tuttle.” Nancy then advised Margot about her initial assessment. “Be right back,” Nancy said. “I’m going to see someone to help with your son.”
Margot, a soft-spoken woman in her mid-thirties, checked Cassie and Jenna’s vital signs, shone a light in their eyes for any indication of brain or nerve injury, then treated Cassie’s face, gently dabbing it with cotton swabs.
“I’m just cleaning your cuts, sweetheart.”
Jenna continued scanning the area and other aid tables where medical people were helping the injured before asking Margot, “Has anyone seen a baby, a five-month-old boy?”
“No, not that young. Not yet. I’m sorry.” Margot glanced to a clipboard. “So far at our station, our youngest patients have been a two-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. But we’re finding survivors, so we’re hopeful.”
Her heart racing, Jenna continued scanning the area surrounding the station while battling a rising tide of guilt and worry over Caleb.
How could I lose him? Why didn’t I hold him?
When Margot finished with Cassie, she reached under her table into a bag, took out a stuffed teddy bear and gave it to her.
“This guy’s for you. He needs someone to take care of him. Can you do that for me?”
Cassie hugged the bear and nodded. Margot then changed Jenna’s dressing. “Looks like you took a nasty bang to your head,” she said as she cleaned her wound and put on a new bandage.
Afterward, Nancy returned and took Jenna and Cassie to another smaller post nearby where a woman and a younger man were at a table working on laptops. The woman took Jenna’s hands in hers.
“Hi, Jenna. Nancy told us about you. I’m Belle Walker. This is Denton Reeves, my partner. We’re here to help.”
Belle offered Jenna a folding plastic chair next to her so she could see her laptop’s screen. Cassie was given a chair nearby but could not see the screen. She hugged her bear in silence while staring at the ongoing rescue efforts around them.
“We’re working with the Dallas PD, county and state on a preliminary list of missing and people unaccounted for.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Jenna’s voice quivered.
“In these kinds of situations there’s a lot of confusion and chaos. People are hurt, they’re taken to a hospital without loved ones knowing, or they go to a first aid station or an aid post—we’ve got several here. Or they just go home, or to their hotel, or somewhere.”
“Or they’re still trapped?”
“Yes. Or—” Belle lowered her voice “—the storm—”
Jenna revisited images of the tornado tearing the center to pieces, seeing some people sucked up into the winds.
Belle didn’t finish her sentence, but Jenna understood.
“So we’re working on the list,” Belle said. “It will feed into a bigger database that will be shared with fire, police, paramedics, hospital, aid agencies, to help reunite people, okay?”
Jenna nodded, then said, “I’d like to call my husband...I can’t find my cell phone. Can you help me call him?”
“We can. After we’re done here we have buses taking people to the community hall near here—that’s our closest emergency shelter.” Again, Belle took Jenna’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “They’ll have working phones there for you to use, and there will be counselors there if you feel like talking to someone, okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Let’s get started,” Belle said.
They took down vital information, names, dates of birth, addresses.
“It’s usually a good idea to give us contact information for relatives in case we can’t reach you. We’ll put it into the system—it’s all confidential,” Belle said.
Jenna gave her the cell number for Blake and her sister, Holly, in Atlanta. Then Belle asked for more details on Caleb, everything she could think of that would identify him.
“He was, is, sorry—” Jenna wiped her tears. “He is wearing a blue-and-white-striped romper with a little elephant crest on it that’s lifting a bit on the right. The bottom snap is loose. He’s got a rocket-shaped birthmark on the back of his left calf. He’s in a folding umbrella stroller, navy with green, red-and-blue polka dots on a white seat. The left front wheel had some white paint on it that I’d spilled when I put a paint can away.”
As Belle entered the information quickly into her laptop the concern on her face deepened.
“You live in Lancaster.”
“Yes.”
“From our information it looks like it was hit hard. I’m sorry.”
Jenna closed her eyes tight.
“I’ll deal with that after I find my son.”
Denton Reeves then gave Jenna a photocopy of a floor plan of the Saddle Up Center.
“Please mark the area you were in when the storm hit.” He gave her a pencil. “As best as you can.”
Jenna marked the spot, recounting how the red-haired woman and her friend helped her, leading up to the time the tornado hit.
“The woman is in her mid-twenties, with short, spiky red hair. I know she had nice teeth, a nice smile,” Jenna said. “I don’t remember much about the man. Same age, wearing a T-shirt with a dog on it, I think. My bag with the clothes I’d bought for the kids was in the stroller’s basket.”
After Belle submitted the details, Denton said to Jenna: “Would you recognize the woman who helped you if you saw her again?”
Belle threw Denton a look of concern.
“I think so, why?” Jenna said.
Belle drew up close to Jenna and dropped her voice so Cassie wouldn’t hear. “We can show you video of the deceased recovered so far from the Saddle Up Center and the area nearby.”
Jenna stared at Belle, who continued in a near whisper.
“You’ve already been through so much and this won’t be easy. Would you be willing to look?”
“What is this? Is this your way of telling me my son’s among the dead?”
“No.”
“You tell me right now if he is because I want to see him. I have a right to see him!”
“No, we’re sorry...we don’t know,” Denton said. “Police made the video. They’re updating it as they recover more fatalities, and they’re requesting we show it to people who’re reporting missing persons. It’s a first step before allowing people into the area where the deceased are before they’re moved. It’s nearby.”
Belle placed her hand on Jenna’s.
Jenna took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’ll look at it.”
Jenna glanced protectively at Cassie. She couldn’t see Denton’s screen. He made a few keystrokes and a video played. The camera showed bodies arranged on the ground in a neat line, maybe twenty corpses. They were not covered and had varying degrees of damage.
Jenna held her breath and covered her mouth with her hand as her focus went to the smallest victims, seven little children. None looked any younger than two or three. No babies.
Oh God, it’s real! Those dead children! Their poor parents! Please, please don’t take Caleb from me! Please!
As the camera tightened and panned over each one, Jenna looked for any women with red hair, gasping when the camera found one. Instantly she thought of the spiky-haired stranger who’d complimented her on Caleb and Cassie at the clothing table; her smile and how she’d led them to safety in the center, holding Caleb’s stroller.
A kind woman who tried to help me.
But the dead red-haired woman, whose bruised face filled the screen, appeared larger and older. She couldn’t be the woman who’d helped her.
The camera continued its grisly display, evocative of documentary and news footage Jenna had seen of concentration camp and earthquake victims. In this one, many of the bodies looked as if they’d been broken and awkwardly reassembled. Her eyes blurred with tears. Not long ago, these people were living their lives, shopping, just shopping like me, but now—now...
“Oh, no!”
Jenna saw one dead older woman, her neck and face bloodied, still wearing a Dallas Cowboys ball cap and a T-shirt with the words: Verna’s Clothes for Kids.
“That’s the woman I bought my children’s clothes from just before the storm hit.”
“She’s been identified by a relative,” Belle said. “She’s a vendor.”
Jenna was overcome.
As the video played out to the end, the image flowed into Denton’s screen saver: a mountain vista with snowcapped peaks. Jenna stared at it then at the devastation around them, aching for her baby.
I should’ve been holding him. I’m his mother.
Jenna needed Blake, needed his arms around her, to hold her together because she was coming apart. It started with a small cry in a far corner of her mind and grew to a keening as the blood rush hammered in her ears—“Jenna, are you all right?” Bella asked—creating a deafening roar, and the beginning of a colossal scream rose from deep in her stomach when—
Cassie suddenly got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. Her eyes sharpened on heaps of debris in the distance. Clutching her teddy bear with one hand, she raised the other, extending a little finger to point.
“Mommy, I can see Caleb’s stroller!”
8
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Kate painstakingly picked her way through the debris to the Saddle Up Center.
It had been more than fifteen minutes since she’d left the news truck and the curt email from Dorothea.
Her criticism still burned.
You should’ve tried to reach us sooner.
How? Cell phones aren’t working here and no one at the bureau was handing out satellite phones.
Can you find anything stronger?
What the hell does that mean? Chuck wanted the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes, and that’s what Kate got. She could only interpret Dorothea’s comments to mean the people in her story were “not suffering enough.”
In her years as a reporter, Kate had encountered hard-case editors and unbalanced fools for editors, but Dorothea was in a class of her own. What is it with that woman, making those brainless comments on her work from her downtown office on the twenty-second floor of Bryan Tower? No doubt she was watching TV-news footage and convinced she was tuned in to reality while Kate was here, on the ground, stepping through it.
Feeling the crunch of debris under her boots, Kate looked at the wasteland around her; the air was filled with cries for help, the chaos of rescues, radios and helicopters; the smells of upturned earth, broken timbers and small fires.
As she got closer to the Saddle Up Center it became clear to Kate that for some unknown reason Dorothea did not like her. But Kate would be damned if she’d let that slow her down. If anything, she thought, tapping her notebook to her leg, taking in the destruction, it made her stronger.
“CALEB!!!”
A child’s voice cut through the clamor, yanking Kate’s attention to the scene ahead: a little girl, no older than five or six, with a woman in her twenties, presumably her mother. An empty, twisted stroller stood near them, the mother savagely tearing away debris, tossing pieces as she and the child repeatedly called out: “CALEB!!!”
Even the little girl was lifting smaller pieces and peering under them. Two aid workers in orange fluorescent vests appeared to be helping on the opposite side of the debris pile. The woman was contending with a large section of plywood by herself when she saw Kate at the end of it.
“Please help me move this!”
The panic in the woman’s eyes telegraphed her agony—she was in the fight of her life.
“Please!”
Once more, Kate was being asked to cross a journalistic line. She was well aware that her job was to observe the news, not take part in it, but her conscience would not allow her to ignore another plea for help. She gripped her side of the wood, heaved and helped toss it aside.
“CALEB!”
The woman got on her knees, her hands and fingers were laced with blood as she tugged at scraps and hunks of metal, glass and wood while combing every opening in the ruins.
“Is Caleb your child?” Kate asked.
“He’s my baby boy.”
The woman pulled at a large chunk of wood causing the entire heap to shift precariously toward her daughter. Kate reached to steady it.
“Stop, miss!” A relief worker shouted at Jenna. “Get back! It’s not safe!”
“My baby could be in there!”
“Yes, we’ve got help coming!”
“Hurry, please hurry!”
As Jenna continued searching the debris without touching it, Kate acted.
“I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead. Would you tell me what happened to you when the storm hit?”
Without taking her eyes from the debris to look at Kate, the woman quickly related her story. She held nothing back. “It’s my fault. I should’ve held him to me. I had him, but I let him go. Oh God, it’s my fault!”
I had him, but I let him go.
The words detonated an emotional charge within Kate.
An image flashed.
A tiny hand slipping away from hers in the icy river...
It’s my fault.
Jenna’s words jolted Kate because they were words she’d lived with. She’d known this anguish in her own life long ago. It was why she’d become a reporter. She was haunted.
“I understand,” she said.
Suddenly Jenna met Kate’s eyes and something between the two women fused. In that intense emotional instant Jenna searched Kate’s face for deception. Finding none, she started nodding with the belief that Kate did understand, just as they were overtaken by the arrival of rescuers.
For the next twenty minutes the team worked in the area, searching and moving wreckage with great care, but found no trace of the baby, or anyone else. They were still searching when two TV-news crews hurried by them. An anxious cameraman was saying that a helicopter ambulance had just crashed nearby.
“I have to go,” Kate told Jenna, quickly exchanging contact info with her. “I promise I’ll follow up with you. Where will you be later?”
“An emergency shelter, where they have phones. I need to reach my husband.”
Jenna sobbed as she stood there watching the search team, while holding her daughter and the bent and twisted stroller, struggling not to lose hope of finding her baby.
A portrait of heartbreak.
With Jenna’s permission, Kate used her phone to take a picture before she rushed off after the TV news crews.
Cutting across the market took time. When Kate’s group arrived they found that the helicopter was upright in the temporary medical landing zone. The chopper showed no obvious signs of damage. Kate spotted Barry Lopez, the Newslead photographer, among a knot of journalists. They’d encircled an EMS official, who someone called Dave Wills and who was facing questions under the glare of lights. Some of the arriving TV crews wanted him to “start over.”
“Look, this was not a crash,” Wills said. “It was a hard landing due to a mechanical issue. No one was hurt.”
Wills took questions for another fifteen minutes before wrapping up. News crews dispersed and disappeared into the chaos. Kate hooked up with Lopez. They picked their way back toward the Saddle Up Center but were unable to find Jenna Cooper.
For the rest of the day Kate went flat out, writing the stories of the victims and getting updates on the toll. Heartbreak after heartbreak, there seemed to be no end to the tragedies emerging from the flea market. Fitch at the WFGG satellite truck helped her free of charge when he had time.
At one point in the day, Kate realized that she’d not eaten for at least eight hours. She accepted an egg salad sandwich and cup of water from a church group that had set up a table, “for anyone who needs it,” one of the white-haired ladies said with a smile.
By late afternoon, Kate had lost count of how many times she’d filed to the bureau but the last one ended with a new order from Chuck.
We need you at the bureau to help with the day’s wrap-up piece. Come in now, Kate.
9
The bureau’s staff had doubled by the time Kate returned.
People she didn’t recognize were working side by side at every desk, including hers. Others were sitting on the floor, typing on phones, laptops, tablets, consulting notes, or talking to Dorothea.
One wall was papered with a massive map showing the paths of the tornadoes. Twenty had touched down in the Metroplex. They were confirmed for Arlington, Mesquite, Irving, Kennedale, Wildhorse Heights, Grand Prairie, Lancaster and several other locations. Each one was numbered on the map with notes on their length, width and ratings. The tracks they left looked like a huge claw had gouged the metro area.
Another wall showed dozens of photos, twisted cars in trees, destroyed homes, a roof on a highway, and there was Kate’s photo of Jenna Cooper, searching for her baby while holding his warped stroller and her daughter.
Every TV in the bureau was locked on live storm coverage. The coffee table from reception was brought in and buried with take-out pizza, salads, wings, chips and sodas.
Phones were ringing.
Roy Webster and Mandy Lee, who’d returned from Arlington and Irving, left a huddle at Dorothea’s desk and turned to Kate. Mandy’s eyes went to Kate’s hiking boots.
“Where did you get those?”
“I had them in my trunk.”
“Well, aren’t you prepared?”
“I saw what you filed from the flea market,” Roy said. “Not bad, Kate.”
Chuck, who’d been moving from desk to desk, guiding the bureau’s coverage, spotted Kate.
“Get yourself some food. It might be hard finding a place to work. We’ve brought in help from our other bureaus.” He stared over his bifocals. “You’ve got thirty minutes to give Dorothea and me whatever unused stuff you still have from today, then we’re meeting on next steps for coverage.”
Kate found a clear spot on the floor against a far wall. She passed on food. Her insides were still churning. She zoned out the activity as she wrote amid the room’s tension. When she finished, she glanced at the skyline, glittering in the early evening. She got a soda, kept an eye on the TVs and read Newslead’s wire stories online to get the full picture and the latest developments.
Today, several tornadoes had ripped through Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. So far the death toll was estimated at two hundred, with most in Texas around the Dallas area. Counting all the states that were hit, more than three thousand people were believed to be injured. Some six hundred were listed as missing, most around Dallas. At least twelve thousand homes, businesses and properties were destroyed. Power outages were widespread. Damage was pegged to surpass three billion dollars. All numbers were expected to climb in what was one of the worst storms on record.
The Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex was hardest hit, particularly in Arlington, Lancaster, Wildhorse Heights, Irving and several other communities. The bureau’s phones continued ringing. In the worst areas roads were torn up, cell towers were down. People needed specific information but couldn’t get through to the Dallas Morning News, or the local TV and radio stations, so they called news bureaus in Dallas.
As reporters worked, Kate overheard snatches of conversations.
“My cousin in Irving lost his house.”
“You were in your bedroom when the entire wall disappeared?”
“But they found your dog, and he’s okay? That’s a miracle.”
Then someone shouted, “Here we go!” All eyes went to the TVs and live coverage of the President at a microphone in Ottawa, Canada, where he was at a global summit. He was making a live statement on the storm.
“We send our profound condolences to the loved ones of those who lost their lives today in the tornadoes and severe weather that struck the Dallas–Fort Worth area and communities in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. We commend all the people who are helping their friends and neighbors during this terrible time. I have spoken with the governors of the affected states and have directed all available federal resources to respond. The nation stands ready to help our fellow Americans in this time of need. You are all in our thoughts and prayers.”
The networks then showed a moving montage of the devastation, giving pause to the bureau reporters who lived there. Most knew someone who’d been hit, underscoring to Kate that she was an outsider. In that moment she ached to be back in Canton, holding Grace.
But she had a job to do, with a lot riding on it.
“Okay, people, meeting time. Squeeze in here.” Chuck and Dorothea herded the staff into the bureau’s boardroom. Seats around the table filled and others stood against the wall.
“First, thanks, everyone, all of you from our other bureaus,” Chuck said. “Thanks for making the long drives from Oklahoma City, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. We appreciate the help.”
“And, if I may, Chuck,” Dorothea said, “I want to applaud our bureau, Moe, Harley, Tilda, Annalee, Tommy, Eduardo, Maria and Sue for outstanding work on the breaking coverage. So far, with updates, we filed more than one hundred stories, and two hundred photos. Some of our bureau people are still out in the field. One way or another, most us at the bureau are connected to the storm. I also want to thank our interns, Roy Webster and Mandy Lee, for their fine work.” Dorothea nodded to both of them just as a ringing cell phone interrupted her.
The reporter with the phone took the call while leaving the room.
The meeting resumed without mention of Kate.
She swallowed the slight of being overlooked.
Other people were facing worse, she thought, like the young mother she’d found searching for her missing baby.
Chuck flipped pages of his notebook as he gave an overview of coverage requirements for the next morning, ticking off search and rescue of the missing, updating the lists of the dead, injured and missing; relief and recovery. Coverage had to include the economic and psychological toll. He said the governor would be visiting the worst areas.
“Our Washington bureau confirms that the White House is arranging for the President to visit.”
Chuck noted that he had people on overnight shifts covering rescue efforts. Then he began assigning reporters from the other bureaus to specific tasks for the next day and then advised his people to return to the same areas early in the morning and continue covering the storm.
“Headquarters in New York is telling us what we already know. This is the top story in the country and a lead story around the world. Our copy is in demand. You’re all pros—you all know what to do,” he said. “Give us the facts and the human drama, the heartbreak and the heroes.”
The meeting broke up with people leaving, or wrapping up work, making calls, or talking with Dorothea or Chuck.
When Chuck was clear, Kate approached him.
“I think I’ve got a strong dramatic story coming out of the flea market. I’d like to follow it tomorrow.”
“What is it?”
Kate’s glance shifted to Dorothea, who’d overheard and joined them.
“A young mother, Jenna Cooper,” Kate said. “She’s searching for her five-month-old son, Caleb. She lost him when the tornado hit the Saddle Up Center. He vanished.”
“Right, she was in the copy you filed today,” Chuck said. “Sounds like a good one to follow. But first check with Dorothea on what she’ll need from you tomorrow.”
Chuck checked his phone for messages then left to talk to another reporter.
“Yes, that’s a sad one,” Dorothea said, “but there are a hundred others like it out there. I’ve got something else in mind for you tomorrow, Kate.”
“But I’d really like to follow up on Jenna Cooper. My gut tells me this story could be strong. A stranger was helping with the baby and the stranger’s missing, too. It’s very tragic and I think—”
Kate was now staring at Dorothea’s forefinger, held up to silence her.
“Roy and Mandy will go back out to cover the flea market. I need you here for an evening shift starting at three tomorrow afternoon. Please and thank you.” Dorothea’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me, I have to take this.” She turned away.
Kate stood there dumbfounded for several moments. Then she collected her things.
Before leaving, she glanced at the wall of photos, returning to the image of Jenna Cooper, holding her daughter and her baby’s contorted stroller, and gazing into the end of the world.
10
Dallas, Texas
The wire service had put Kate up at the Marriott City Center.
In the elevator to her twelfth-floor room she texted her friend Heather, who was watching her daughter in Ohio.
Hi Heather, I’ll be online in 5 min if Grace is still up.
Heather responded:
She and Aubrey are up. Saw the news, it looks horrible. How are you doing?
Hanging in there.
Moments later, Kate was in her room making the connection and her tablet’s screen blossomed with her daughter’s bright face.
“Hi, Mom! I miss you!”
“Miss you, too, honey. What’re you doing up so late?”
“Aubrey and I are putting sparkly stuff on our fingernails, see?”
Grace wiggled ten little fingers in front of her face.
“I see, very pretty.”
“Mom, were there really tornadoes where you are?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Was it like the Wizard of Oz and was there a flying witch?”
“No, not like the movie. It was real. It was very bad... People got hurt.”
“But you’re okay, right?”
“I’m okay, sweetie.” Kate smiled for her. “So tell me, what’s new today?”
“Aubrey and I got invited to Kayla’s birthday party. Can I go and can I wear my new flower dress? Please say yes, pull-ease!”
“I’ll talk to Aubrey’s mom. Are you being a good girl for me?”
“Uh-huh.”
They talked for the next thirty minutes until Grace began yawning and Kate wound things down.
“I miss you and I love you, kiddo.”
“Miss you too and love you more.” Grace puckered and kissed the screen to meet Kate’s kiss.
Talking with her daughter was balm for Kate’s heart, but the strain of the day had turned her neck and shoulders to stone. After her call with Grace, Heather told her that a woman from a collection agency had called that morning looking for a Ms. or Mrs. Kate Page.
Kate thanked her for the warning. She’d follow up on the partial payment she’d already sent electronically from Dallas.
After the call, she took a shower.
Needles of hot water soothed her tired muscles but couldn’t wash away the day’s images of walking among the dead, the dying, the injured and all that devastation.
Kate let go.
She sobbed as steam clouds rose around her, letting them pull her back through her life, back to that night when she and Vanessa, her little sister, were together with her babysitter, Mrs. Kawolski, when she’d answered the door of their creaky old house.
Mrs. Kawolski’s hand covering her mouth. The police officers filling the small kitchen, their utility belts making leathery squeaks as they cleared their throats. The policewoman giving Kate and Vanessa little stuffed bears to hold, a teddy for her, a polar bear for Vanessa. I’m so sorry, she said. There was a terrible fire, I’m so very sorry, your mommy and daddy won’t be coming home. They’re with the angels now. Mrs. Kawolski taking them both in her arms, rocking them, whispering a prayer over and over.
In the aftermath, Kate and Vanessa pinballed through a succession of homes belonging to increasingly distant relatives. Ultimately, they lived with strangers. Pretty much all Kate remembered from that part of her childhood was how she and Vanessa were forever moving.
Until the accident.
Kate and Vanessa were in the backseat of a car, driving in the mountains. Suddenly their car was flying, rolling upside down before it crashed in a river. The water rushed in. It was so cold, so dark, except for the dome light in the car as it banged against the rocky riverbed.
Everything moved in slow motion.
The windows had broken open. Kate had Vanessa’s hand; she got them both out of the car and tried to pull Vanessa to the surface with her but felt the cold numbing her fingers, felt them loosening. She was unable to hang on.
Vanessa slipped away.
Why couldn’t I hold her?
Kate was the only one who survived. She was nine years old; Vanessa was six. They never found Vanessa’s body. It may have gotten wedged in rocks, they said. Vanessa’s little white polar bear was still in the car. When they found it they gave it to Kate.
After the accident, Kate was sent to live in a never-ending chain of foster homes. Some were good, some weren’t.
As soon as she was old enough, she ran away.
She did what she could to survive. She panhandled, lied about her age and took any job she could get. She cleaned toilets, washed cars, washed dishes, landscaped, waitressed, did night shifts in an office sending out spam, she even worked as a phone sex operator. She learned about life the hard way, but she never stole, never used drugs or got drunk. She never prostituted herself.
Somehow Kate managed to follow an internal moral compass, which she believed—no, hoped—she’d inherited from her parents. Relatives had told her that they were honest, hardworking people. Her mom was a supermarket cashier who loved to read and kept a journal; her dad worked in a factory that made military truck parts. They were living near Washington, D.C., at the time they died in the hotel fire.
Kate never really knew them.
She had vague memories of her mother’s voice and how she smelled like roses. How the month before she died she gave Kate and Vanessa each a tiny guardian angel necklace with their names engraved. How Vanessa wanted to trade them so she wore the one with her big sister’s name on it and Kate had the angel bearing Vanessa’s name.
She still had it.
Whenever she looked at it, she’d remember how happy they all were, and how she felt so safe in her father’s big, strong hands whenever he lifted her up, and she could not forget how Vanessa’s eyes shone like stars when she laughed.
They were all ghosts to her now.
But at times, Kate would stare at the few photos she had of her with Vanessa, hugging her little polar bear she had named “Chilly,” dreaming that Vanessa might be alive somewhere. She knew it was impossible but she couldn’t help it. She kept reading news stories about people finding long-lost relatives after enduring years of pain. Those stories and the reporters who wrote them gave Kate hope and direction.
She knew deep in her heart that she needed to become a journalist, someone who helped people find the answers to the most important questions in their lives.
At age nineteen she was living on her own in Chicago, where she took night classes to finish high school.
She wrote an essay about how in her heart her sister would always be alive and that she would never stop yearning to know what really happened the night Vanessa’s little hand slipped from hers.
Did she die that night in the mountains? Or did she survive and wander off miraculously into another life?
Kate’s teacher showed it to David Yardley, an editor at the Tribune, telling him of Kate’s desire to be a reporter. A meeting was arranged. Astounded by Kate’s natural writing talent, and her life, David helped her with a part-time news job. She remembered him saying, “You’re like something out of a Dickens novel.”
She was forever grateful for his help.
Kate graduated from high school and worked her way through community college, which led to news reporter jobs in Syracuse, New York, for a short time before she went to California. She was still pretty green working on the crime desk at the San Francisco Star when she fell for a cop. It was after she got pregnant that she learned he was married.
Kate was crushed.
How could he lie to her? How could she be so stupid?
She’d confided to a reporter friend that she wanted to keep her baby but needed to leave the city. She got a job with the Repository in Canton, where she had Grace at age twenty-three.
Kate thrived on the paper’s crime beat where she was honored for tracking down a fugitive killer. While her work was shut out for a Pulitzer and other national prizes, she did win a regional award for journalistic investigative excellence. But the glory didn’t last.
One day after several years, Kate was called into the office of Ed Brant, her managing editor. He removed his glasses and said her job, along with a dozen others, was gone. It was a dark time for her but Kate did the best she could. She searched everywhere but news jobs were drying up.
Weeks then months passed. She waitressed while applying for public relations positions with corporations. She got one in Canton that lasted three weeks. Kate just did not fit in.
She was a reporter. Period.
Things got dire. Kate was juggling bills when she learned that Newslead, the worldwide wire service, had an opening in its Dallas bureau.
Kate’s application got her a teleconference phone interview with Chuck Laneer and Dorothea Pick in Dallas, and a human resources woman in New York. A week later, Chuck called Kate back. She’d made the short list. He invited her to a three-week internship at the bureau with two other candidates. The strongest candidate would get the full-time job at the bureau. It paid nearly double what she’d earned at the Repository, and came with great benefits.
Kate arranged for Grace to stay with her friend Heather Baines, whose daughter, Aubrey, went to school with Grace. It tore at Kate to leave Grace for three weeks, but she had to do it for both of them. She’d promised they’d talk on Skype every day. Kate loaded up her Chevy then made the twelve-hundred-mile drive to Dallas in just over two days. She stayed in cheap motels and ate fast food to save money.
The trip was a lonely one, and at this moment, in the shower, Kate longed to be in Ohio. She ached to be home watching a movie on the sofa with Grace, something funny, something happy, because the day’s tragedies were overwhelming.
Kate stepped from the shower, toweled off then brushed her teeth and her hair. She put on her pajamas, killed the lights then got into bed, exhausted. She reached for her phone. The screen glowed in the dark as she studied her favorite picture of Grace.
I’d die if I lost you.
Then she cued up her photo of Jenna Cooper amid the horror, searching for her baby, her words replaying, “I had him but I let him go. Oh God, it’s my fault!”
Kate knew this anguish, this guilt. She’d felt it throughout her whole life, after she’d let Vanessa slip away in the river.
As she looked out her hotel window at the buildings and the highways twinkling in the night, she was overwhelmed with self-reproach, for Vanessa, for leaving Grace, for being in this room while people out there were enduring so much loss and pain.
Kate stared hard at her photo of Jenna Cooper.
Like you, I can only imagine what’s going through your mind.
Was her baby dead? Was he hurt, buried under debris? Did someone find him and take him to a hospital?
Kate continued looking at Jenna’s picture.
I’ll help you find the truth.
11
Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
The next morning, across the city, in Room 16 of the Dreamaway Motor Inn, the TV glowed in the predawn darkness.
The window shades were drawn, blocking the neon sign flashing Vacancy out front. The room’s air reeked of cigarettes and stale beer as Remy Toxton sat at the edge of the bed teasing her spiky red hair while watching coverage of the disaster.
Dallas stations showed the storm’s aftermath and interviews with shell-shocked survivors in neighborhoods that had been hit hard. When the report went to the flea market, Remy, still a little shaky, concentrated on it until she was satisfied that no threat had surfaced from what she’d done.
“This is going to work out for us, babe,” she said.
Mason Varno, Remy’s boyfriend, was standing shirtless in his sweatpants at the window. He’d gently moved the shade to watch the parking lot while rubbing his lips and constantly checking his cell phone for messages. They had service here. Remy threw him a look over her shoulder, loving how his muscles rippled under his prison tattoos, loving that he was her man, flaws and all.
No one was perfect. Mason didn’t talk much. He had a lot on his mind.
So did Remy.
They’d been through hell lately, but now their dreams were within their grasp. They were going to get enough money to get a place along the Oregon coast and start their new life, the real life they both deserved. It was going to happen. They were beating the odds, and now Remy believed that they could overcome anything.
Even a dead baby?
Yes. No. I don’t know.
An alarm bell went off in her skull, her brain convulsed. She held her head to keep it from splitting open and took deep breaths.
Stop thinking about that! It’s in the past! Leave it there!
Her jaw tensed as she counted backward from one hundred until she recovered.
Okay, okay.
She was all right.
Just one of her little spells.
She turned back to the TV.
We were so lucky to get out with nothing but a few scrapes.
It’s all meant to be.
The newswoman was talking about the number of dead, missing, injured, homeless, and where tornado victims could get help. The screen showed a graphic with information and websites on locations across the Metroplex for emergency shelters providing medical services, food, water, clothing, trauma support and other aid.
This was important. Remy took notes, got her laptop and resumed checking the locations for shelters and medical help. Then she searched online news sites focusing on reports about the flea market, scanning them for one thing.
Nothing surfaced in the stream of stories until a certain picture blurred past. Remy went back to a photograph of a woman holding an empty, beat-up stroller and a child standing with her before the devastation. The cutline read: “Jenna Cooper holds her daughter, Cassie, and the empty stroller of her five-month-old son, Caleb, who is missing after a tornado destroyed the Saddle Up Center where scores of people were killed.”
The article with the picture was by Newslead, the wire service. The section on Jenna Cooper was only a few short paragraphs. Remy scrutinized every word.
Among the tragic stories emerging from the Saddle Up Center is that of Jenna Cooper, who lost her five-month-old baby, Caleb, when the tornado hit.
“I had him, but I couldn’t hold on.”
Cooper’s baby vanished in the fury along with a man and a woman, the two strangers who’d helped Cooper, her son, and daughter, Cassie, to what they believed was a safe corner of the center.
Officials have listed Caleb as missing, acknowledging that the baby could’ve been located and taken to a hospital. There is also fear that Caleb, along with the people who’d helped his mother, could be among the injured or dead still buried under debris.
“I’ll keep searching for him until I find him,” Cooper said.
Remy glared at Jenna Cooper’s picture.
That’s right, keep searching, like the fool you are. I went to that market looking for someone like you. You weren’t fit to be his mother. I’m sending him to a better place.
“Hey, are you going to do something about that?” Mason asked.
Remy had been so absorbed by her work she’d been oblivious to the crying from the far side of the room. She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she looked at her laptop.
“Mason, read this article while I take care of him.”
Massaging her temples Remy went to the area where she’d taken extra blankets, towels and sheets to fashion a crib on the floor where Caleb Cooper was stirring. He was a beautiful baby, she thought, still wearing his blue-and-white-striped romper with the tiny elephant. She blinked at the small bloodstains near the neck of the fabric. Now he was turning his little bandaged head, opening his mouth, bringing his tiny fist to it and making sucking motions.
“Hungry again?”
Remy went to the kitchenette and prepared a fresh bottle of formula. As it warmed, she thought of how things had gone at the market. It was her determination that had led her to the right baby. They’d hunted the previous nights in vain at a mall and the bus depot before Remy had considered a flea market, where right off she’d found a suitable candidate. She’d stalked the mother, talked with her, winning her trust so she could do what she had to do.
And the tornado?
It was scary. But it was a godsend.
As the winds waned after it had destroyed the Saddle Up Center, Remy saw that the mother and daughter weren’t moving. Remy was stiff and pinned under some wood, but she was okay. She took the stroller with the baby. It was hanging upside down but the baby was strapped in. Mason had a cut on his arm and a bruised left leg. She screamed at him to dig them out. The baby was bleeding. She soon tossed the stroller because it was useless in the mess. With Remy carrying the baby in her arms and Mason limping, they hurried through the wreckage, seeing bodies everywhere.
It was gruesome.
Mason stopped to check on a few. “To help,” he said, but he was taking cash and credit cards from dead people. “They ain’t going to need it,” he said. They continued on to the far end of the market and their pickup truck, hoping it was still there and still working. They found it with a broken side window, a spiderweb fracture on the upper right corner of the windshield, and the rear left quarter was crumpled, but otherwise it had survived undamaged.
Now, in the motel room, the baby’s crying was getting louder.
“Shut that kid up!” Mason barked at her from the computer.
“You shut up! What do you think I’m doing? His bottle’s not ready.”
Remy had been prepared for the baby.
Days earlier she’d bought the essentials: formula, the ready-to-use kind, rice cereal, applesauce, diapers, wipes and hair dye. But driving away from the destruction at the flea market she’d worried about the baby’s little wound on his forehead. She got Mason to stop at a drugstore for bandages and disinfectant.
Still, she had a feeling that she’d forgotten something.
Remy tested the temperature of the formula by squirting some on her wrist, then took Caleb in her arms. She had given him a bottle when they arrived yesterday afternoon. He fussed at first when she held him and rooted around for her breast, but eventually took the bottle; then another one in the night. He was a good eater, she thought, watching him suck hard, almost chomping, on the nipple.
As she held him, inhaling his sweet baby scent, a wave of hormonal emotion rolled through her, and she shuddered.
He was such a beautiful baby boy.
My baby was a boy.
Caleb nuzzled against her. Remy was growing increasingly concerned about the bump on his head from the tornado. Was it a scrape, a surface cut or something nastier? After she was done feeding and changing him, she cleaned his cut and put on a fresh bandage.
Mason was still at her laptop, reading news stories and rubbing his lips a little harder. Remy braced for what was coming. She knew his cravings, his mood swings and his irritability.
He’d made her a lot of promises about their future and struggled to keep them. Remy and Mason didn’t always see eye to eye, but deep down they were welded to the same philosophy: whatever life takes from you, you take it back.
“What’re you thinking, babe?” she asked him.
“I never thought you’d do it. You’re seriously going through with this?”
“We have to.”
He blinked hard, the way he did when he was battling not to lose it with her, especially because of all they’d endured lately. He strained to keep his temper and his voice gentle.
“We’ve got a lot at stake here, and this doesn’t help, Remy.”
“We’re running out of money. We’re running out of time. Do you see any other options? I had to do something. Besides, the article says they think we’re likely all dead. It’s perfect for us.”
“This kid is five months old. You think you can pass him off as a one-month old?”
“Yes, because it’s all meant to be. We’ll just say he’s big.”
“All right, are you going to make the call?”
“Not just yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a plan. We need to keep him a little while longer.”
“What for? If we’re going to do this, let’s move fast, get it done.”
“First, I want to have a doctor look at the bump on his head. To make sure he’s healthy, so nothing will come back on us.”
“What? Where? That could be dangerous. We’ve already got people looking for us, Remy. I think we should just get away from here, now.”
“You gotta trust me, babe. Let me play this my way. We’re going to do this—it’s going to work. Then we’ll be done running. It’ll be over and we’ll get our little place in the sun. We’ll start our new lives, our real lives, and make all of our dreams come true.”
Mason ran his hands over his stubbled face.
“Hey.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m hungry. Why don’t you go get us some breakfast, babe? Then we’ll get rolling.”
He looked at her, internally confronting their situation. Then he washed up, dressed and left.
Remy returned to Caleb, lowered herself to the floor, smiling at him.
“You’re so lucky. Yes, you are. Your mother was weak, unworthy. She couldn’t face up to her responsibilities to protect you. You’ll never have to worry about seeing her again. You’re so lucky I was there to save you from certain death in that storm. Yes, you are. Now, very soon I’m going to put you in a better place. Yes, I am. It’s all meant to be.”
12
Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
Sitting behind the wheel of his battered pickup truck at the traffic light, Mason Varno gritted his teeth.
Everything’s gone to hell. Everything’s closing in.
He looked at the surrounding traffic, checked his mirrors.
Sure as shit more people would be looking for them now.
He hammered his palms against the wheel.
I’m not going down for this. I’m not going back to prison for some whacked-out—
The light changed.
Calm down. Think this through. Take care of first things first.
He looked around. Other than a scattering of branches and trash, he saw no storm damage in this neighborhood. He wheeled into a McDonald’s parking lot, taking a spot out of sight in a far corner, under the shade of a maple tree. He fished out a small glass tube and a stamp-sized square of tinfoil. He unfolded the foil to reveal the small heap of crystals, almost tasting the anticipation as he heated the underside with his disposable lighter. The crystals crackled, liquefied and vaporized. He savored the smell as he inhaled the rising smoke through the pipe.
Sweet Jesus, yes.
In seconds, Mason floated on a euphoric cloud. All his troubles lightened and drifted away as he shut his eyes to embrace the bliss.
That’s what I needed. Now I can think.
Review and assess, as his counselor used to say.
Mason guided his pickup through the back of the long drive-through line.
He’d never expected Remy to kidnap a baby. All this time he’d thought that her odd behavior was a reaction to the stillbirth last month. That these past couple of weeks she’d needed to cozy up to other women and their babies in malls and such because it was a kind of therapy for her.
At the hospital, a few days after it had happened, the doctor had informed Mason that Remy was having trouble dealing with the loss and could experience “borderline postpartum psychosis.” It meant she’d sometimes have “delusions, hallucinations and other thought disturbances.” They gave her medication, but every so often Remy had a spell, a headache accompanied by a lot of crying.
Mason never thought her condition would go beyond her having the blues and ogling other people’s babies then—BAM—she grabbed that kid after the storm, then screamed at him that the mother’s dead and the kid’s bleeding and they have to get out.
But the mother ain’t dead, is she, Remy? She’s on the damn news looking for her baby, and we’re in a world of trouble.
He shook his head as he inched his truck along the drive-through line.
Oh, but Remy had a plan.
She had a way out of their situation, and she wanted him to trust her. Un-freaking-believable. She was an unstable psychotic, and he had to trust her plan?
He struggled to get hold of the situation, which was getting worse by the second. The baby’s got that bump on his head. That can’t be good. What if it dies? He’ll just dump the thing and Remy and run, find his way out of it all. I should do it now. Just hit the gas, he thought. Dump her now and never look back.
But he couldn’t.
He was handcuffed to her by circumstance.
How in hell had he let this happen? He had planned things so carefully while doing his eighteen months in Hightower Unit. His time was for a drug deal that involved a lot of players and went wrong. A lot of money was lost, and Mason took the fall with the understanding that he would be cut loose, left alone. Then word got to Mason inside that a wronged party, a guy by the name of DOA, might seek payback or retribution from Mason. DOA had a lot of associates. Mason knew some of them, and he could trust a few but not all of them. One thing Mason knew about DOA was that he was big on threats, liked to talk them up but didn’t always follow through. Still, as month after month passed, Mason kept his ear to the ground for talk about DOA reaching inside to seek vengeance on him. So far, nothing had come of his threat.
Remy had started writing to him through a social network. Then she’d started visiting. She was a looker, no doubt about it. And he’d decided that of all the women who’d written to him, she was the one he’d use for his plan.
In Hightower he needed to show the system that he had something stable set up on the outside to be eligible for early release and a minimum level of supervised parole. Inside, he stayed out of trouble, enrolled in carpentry school and took several reentry programs dealing with addiction, conflict and confrontation, learning how to “cage your rage.” His clear, stated objective was to settle into a stable life with his new woman, Remy Toxton, and get a carpentry job with the goal of eventually starting his own carpentry business in Oregon, where Remy wanted to get married and begin a family. It was what the Texas Department of Criminal Justice needed to hear from inmate #01286413.
But it was all bullshit.
Sure, once Mason got out, he’d play along with the straight life until he activated his real plan, which he’d kept secret from Remy. In prison, trusted friends told Mason that for $25,000 he could buy into an import-export start-up company run by an American player known only as Garza. This business would be based in Belize, then expand in the Caribbean and Central America. It was going to be huge. With the $25,000 investment Mason was guaranteed $250,000 return in the first two months.
Word got back to Mason that Garza would let him into the enterprise as a favor for a friend. Garza was moving fast so he’d set a deadline for Mason’s delivery of $25,000 cash: within three months of Mason’s release.
Trouble was Mason had lied about having the cash.
He’d said he had it stashed from the deal he was doing time for, just so Garza would hold a place for him in the deal when he got out.
Truth was Mason had no cash.
He’d told no one, but when Mason got out he intended to pull a few quick freelance deals to secure the cash for his investment. It was risky, but it was the best he could do.
Whenever Remy visited Mason at the prison he’d tell her he needed $25,000 to start his carpentry business. Then they could live their dream in Oregon. That’s when she stunned him.
“I can get the cash for us,” she said.
A couple of months after that, she beamed from the other side of the glass, telling him that she was pregnant, how she’d answered an ad online to be a surrogate. When she delivered and signed off she’d get $60,000.
Mason couldn’t believe his ears.
But there Remy was, smiling, saying it was all legal, all handled by international adoption lawyers through a global network. They took care of everything. They’d flown her to one of their clinics overseas for the procedure. Remy would be due around the time of Mason’s release. She said giving up the baby was not a big deal for her. As a teen she’d had a baby and given it up to some couple. This time it was all planned, and again she’d help a childless couple.
“And I’ll be helping us get closer to our dream, too. It’s all meant to be, babe,” Remy told him.
This was a long way from the fifty dollars in gate money and the bus ticket the prison gave Mason when he got out. It left him thinking how now he wouldn’t have to pull off any risky deals. When Remy delivered the baby, he’d take $25,000 and dump her.
Hard.
Let her learn a valuable life lesson.
He had other plans that did not include carpentry, kids or any white picket fences in freaking Oregon.
When Mason was released from Hightower, Remy had things nicely set up. She already had a clean apartment for them in Lufkin where Mason started his first carpentry job, through a prison reentry program with a faith-based outreach group, the Fellowship of the Good Thief Society. They’d already helped him get the low-interest loan on his truck, which he needed for work, and they were very protective of an ex-con’s privacy.
As part of the surrogate deal, Remy’s agency would pay all her medical costs and ensure regular home visits by nurses, and provide a small living allowance. But, if the mother backed out of the deal, or lost the baby, all coverage would cease and the mother could be responsible for repaying the agency fifty percent of what they’d paid out to cover medical costs so far.
“They told me they deal with repayment by the mothers on a case-by-case basis,” Remy said.
Remy and Mason kept the surrogacy secret and kept to themselves. Everything went well until the night he woke to Remy’s screams as she held herself in agony.
“Something’s wrong, Mason! Take me to a hospital!”
His first thought was to alert Remy’s agency nurse.
“No! They can’t know! If I lose it, we lose everything! We’ve got to do this without them knowing at all! Hurry, call the people you work for. I saw in your file papers, the church fellowship that supported you, they’re connected to a medical network. There’s a twenty-four-hour emergency number.”
Mason’s people were helpful and discreet. They’d immediately arranged for an ambulance to rush Remy and Mason to the Beau Soleil West Medical Center, a faith-based nonprofit hospital in Shreveport, a little over one hundred miles away.
That’s where she lost the baby.
The church group quietly covered all the costs and arranged to bring them back to Lufkin, protecting Remy and Mason’s privacy while they mourned their loss. Few people knew what had happened.
Remy said they had to leave before the agency nurse came for her next visit. Once the agency found out what had happened, Remy would not only lose out on all that cash, but the agency would demand she repay them half of the thousands they’d spent on her.
“We have to get away, Mason, so I can decide what to do.”
He told his employer and parole officer what had happened and that they needed time away, for a “spiritual retreat,” to begin to heal.
They pulled together all the cash they had and hit the road. They both tried to find a solution in between Remy’s postpartum bouts of psychosis.
That’s how Mason got here.
The speaker atop the menu board crackled.
“May I take your order?”
He ordered, and as he moved on down the line he wondered if his situation could get any worse. While idling, he reached under his seat and felt his Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol and the magazine, taking comfort in the fact it was there if he needed it. Then he licked the residue off of the small square of foil as he always did in a bid to prolong his comedown. There was no shortage of challenges.
He glanced at the letters on the console, one reminding him of his monthly meeting with his parole officer, another from the Parole Division saying he’d been randomly selected for drug and alcohol testing. He had twenty-four hours to report to a District Parole Office to submit a urinalysis. Failure to appear would result in a case conference, which was not a good thing.
Mason stopped at the first window and paid for the food.
While waiting to pick up his order, he saw a new message on his phone. The number was blocked.
Heard you are out and got access to 25k—about what you owe. DOA’s comin for your ass.
13
Dallas, Texas
Stiff from five hours of hard sleep, Kate woke with adrenaline pumping through her. She sat up and switched on the TV news.
Still live with wall-to-wall coverage of the storm.
While watching, she checked her phone for new messages. Nothing. Again, she came to her photo of Jenna Cooper searching for her baby. Could I help her find him? Again, Kate felt like she had been punched in the gut. It had only been a few hours since Dorothea Pick dismissed her desire to follow Jenna’s tragic story.
Why is she sidelining me and not the others? I need this job as much as they do. I can’t sit here until three in the afternoon to work in the bureau when one of the biggest stories in the world is happening all around me.
Kate showered, dressed and bit into a stale bagel for breakfast as she went online and searched the long list of emergency shelters across the Metroplex. After making notes on those located near the flea market, she went to her car, determined to deliver a solid story today.
I’ll prove that I’m as good as the others.
Early-morning traffic was manageable. Thankfully she was familiar with her destination. First, she went to the flea market, where she’d learned that security had been tightened. For safety reasons, access was now limited to officials and media with valid accreditation.
After Kate showed her Newslead ID, she headed across the debris-covered grounds to the Saddle Up Center, concerned that she was not going to find Jenna and Cassie Cooper here.
Amid the barks of dog teams, search-and-rescue efforts were still continuing before the operation evolved into debris removal, Fire Captain J. B. Langston told her.
“We’ve been going all night and we haven’t recovered a baby so far. We’ve extracted more injured survivors and fatalities. Several children and more adult victims, but no baby,” Langston said. “You know that people were swept up into the winds. I heard our guys found one of the center’s vendors in a tree, seven miles from here.”
“Yeah, that was terrible. I read that in an Associated Press story,” Kate said. “Captain, do you have any idea where shelter survivors and their families were taken?”
“Try Rivergreen Community Hall. There are a few others but Rivergreen’s your best bet.”
It was a short drive, some two miles south. The community hall, a square one-story building, had been designated an emergency shelter for the area.
Emergency vehicles, buses, news vans, along with trucks delivering food, water and other aid, filled the parking lot. Clearly, this shelter had been operating nonstop through the night, Kate thought as she entered.
Inside, the hall droned with activity. Banners from a Retirement & Appreciation banquet, planned for last night, waved like a memory over rows of cots and mats occupied by people recovering from the storm. They filled the large central area. Some were sleeping, some were huddled comforting others. Some were reading government application forms or talking on cell phones. Although spotty, there was service.
Tables staffed by emergency workers, aid agencies, church groups and other volunteers lined the walls. They offered medical help, advice on insurance claims and counseling. Signs pointed to showers, extra toilets, laundry facilities, toiletries, towels, clothing and toys. There was a station to donate blood. At one end of the hall, people lined up for hot food. Several large TVs were turned to storm news and there were computers with internet service donated by local companies.
Kate came to a heartbreaking sight in one corner: a Missing/Displaced Persons sign. Under it were a few dozen photographs of women, children and men of all ages hastily taped to the wall like a patchwork quilt of hope. A few had little notes with contact information attached to them.
The effort was run by the Missing Person Emergency Search System—MPESS—a national agency based in Washington, D.C. When Kate arrived, several staff members at three tables were using laptops, maps and cell phones as they took information from anguished people.
A bleary-eyed man in his late forties with salt-and-pepper hair turned to her. He was wearing a navy MPESS polo shirt. The ID tag hanging from his neck said Frank Rivera, Supervisor.
“Sure, I got a minute,” Rivera said after Kate had requested someone with the group speak to the press. “What do you need?”
She asked for a rundown on the search system, how it was helping to find missing people, because she’d thought that the process was already being handled by local relief workers.
“That’s correct,” Rivera said, “we’re helping local groups and the Dallas Police Department and Sheriffs for surrounding counties. We’re coordinating their ‘missing persons’ work and their database. We’re an experienced national nonprofit agency, with expertise in this area of crisis response. We’ve got retired cops, federal agents and investigators. The federal Justice Department and FEMA arranged for us to come. Once they got the airports running, most of our teams flew in overnight from all over the country. We’re set up at emergency shelters at all the hardest-hit communities.”
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Rick Mofina
An anguished mother loses her baby in a deadly storm…A kind stranger helps Jenna Cooper protect her baby boy when a killer tornado rips through a Dallas flea market. But in the aftermath, Jenna can't find her son or the woman who'd been holding him.A journalist under pressure breaks the story…Upon discovering the tragedy, reporter and single mom Kate Page, battling for her career and trying to hold her life together, vows to determine what happened to tiny Caleb Cooper.A vortex of life-and-death forces…As the FBI launches an investigation amid the devastation, Kate uncovers troubling clues to the trail of the woman last seen with the baby…clues that reveal a plot more sinister than anybody had imagined. Against mounting odds, Kate risks everything in the race to find the truth…before it's too late.
An anguished mother loses her baby in a deadly storm…
A kind stranger helps Jenna Cooper protect her baby boy when a killer tornado rips through a Dallas flea market. But in the aftermath, Jenna can’t find her son or the woman who’d been holding him.
A journalist under pressure breaks the story…
Upon discovering the tragedy, reporter and single mom Kate Page, battling for her career and trying to hold her life together, vows to determine what happened to tiny Caleb Cooper.
A vortex of life-and-death forces
As the FBI launches an investigation amid the devastation, Kate uncovers troubling clues to the trail of the woman last seen with the baby—clues that reveal a plot more sinister than anybody had imagined. Against mounting odds, Kate risks everything in the race to find the truth…before it’s too late.
Praise for the novels of Rick Mofina
INTO THE DARK
“This is a one-day read (most likely a two-to-four-hour read,
depending on how fast your eyes can soak all this in),
but with the exciting plot and a conclusion that is a true surprise
to one and all, this is one book that has to be seen ASAP.”
—Suspense Magazine
THEY DISAPPEARED
“Mofina is one of the best thriller writers in the business.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
THE BURNING EDGE
“Rick Mofina’s tense, taut writing makes every thriller he writes
an adrenaline-packed ride.”
—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author
IN DESPERATION
“A blisteringly paced story that cuts to the bone.
It left me ripping through pages deep into the night.”
—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author
THE PANIC ZONE
“Taut pacing, rough action and jagged dialogue feed a relentless pace.
The Panic Zone is written with sizzling intent.”
—Hamilton Spectator
VENGEANCE ROAD
“Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit! It’s a great read!”
—Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author
SIX SECONDS
“Six Seconds should be Rick Mofina’s breakout thriller.
It moves like a tornado.”
—James Patterson, New York Times bestselling author
Also from Rick Mofina and Harlequin MIRA
INTO THE DARK
THEY DISAPPEARED
THE BURNING EDGE
IN DESPERATION
THE PANIC ZONE
VENGEANCE ROAD
SIX SECONDS
And watch for Rick Mofina’s next Kate Page thriller,
coming soon from Harlequin MIRA!
Other books by Rick Mofina
A PERFECT GRAVE
EVERY FEAR
THE DYING HOUR
BE MINE
NO WAY BACK
BLOOD OF OTHERS
COLD FEAR
IF ANGELS FALL
Whirlwind
Rick Mofina
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To the memory of John Gradon
The clouds poured out water; The skies sent out a sound; Your arrows also flashed about. The voice of Your thunder was in the whirlwind;
The lightnings lit up the world; The earth trembled and shook.
—Psalms 77:17–18
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u04356ab2-9f0f-56c5-bb94-aa4de22bf9ac)
Chapter 2 (#ue0fe102f-8536-537d-a31f-564caf66c1e1)
Chapter 3 (#ubbc37a01-3f5f-5ef4-adaa-d463fde995e2)
Chapter 4 (#u35e5d534-f496-5956-ac98-c1ce2ca1366b)
Chapter 5 (#u58b8d945-bad8-502c-b6de-c7ca638eb289)
Chapter 6 (#u3b8586dc-de7b-58c4-971d-75986626908c)
Chapter 7 (#u6018b858-64c1-5138-827a-371f9b8ea699)
Chapter 8 (#u5cd0ff9f-6f30-5ca9-a3e9-0c79d3e9e513)
Chapter 9 (#ufa6c403f-4426-5d75-a499-2ad97721f7d0)
Chapter 10 (#uafc1b2d0-4378-5beb-95b0-4a0c52f7321d)
Chapter 11 (#u106e26dc-4b56-5296-b69d-03377b2d197b)
Chapter 12 (#u2924cd70-118d-54ca-aec4-ed9b2fc98985)
Chapter 13 (#u9a27eb27-767a-599b-a91a-acae43b9e58a)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 63 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 64 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 65 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 66 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 67 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 68 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
1
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Death was near but Jenna Cooper was not aware.
No one was.
Like the thousands of other people at the Old Southern Glory Flea Market, in the southeastern part of the Dallas– Fort Worth Metroplex, she was hunting for bargains.
Jenna liked coming here. With more than nine hundred vendors in buildings and open-air sections spread over forty acres at the Hawn and LBJ freeways, Old Southern was one of the biggest flea markets in Texas.
Whatever Jenna needed, she could always find a deal on it.
“Can I make you an offer on these?”
Jenna touched the folded baby clothes she’d selected and piled on the vendor’s table. The fleece hoodie, the footed pajamas, a romper, T-shirts, bibs, the lace tops and the skorts, which were so cute.
The vendor was wearing a Cowboys ball cap, rose-tinted sunglasses and a T-shirt that read: Verna’s Clothes for Kids. Jenna guessed her to be in her late sixties.
“What’s your offer, dear?”
Jenna figured the clothes would cost fifty to sixty dollars if she were to buy them new. But the items, as tagged on the table, would run about thirty-five dollars. She was not very good at negotiating, but these days she had no choice. For her, Blake and the kids, money was an issue.
“Would you take twenty-five for all of them?”
The woman took stock of Jenna’s daughter, who was holding on to the stroller where her baby brother was waking up from a nap.
“How old are your little ones?” she asked, weighing Jenna’s offer.
“Cassie’s four, almost five, and her baby brother Caleb’s five months.”
“I bet they’re a handful.”
“They are.”
“All right, dear, for you and your angels, twenty-five.”
“Thank you.” Jenna handed her the cash from her wallet.
While the vendor rummaged under the table for a bag, the old transistor radio hanging from her wooden sign that also read Verna’s Clothes for Kids, crackled faintly with an updated weather report.
But few people were listening about the possible tornado watch.
The sky was overcast with flashes of lightning on the horizon. It was hot and humid. Jenna pressed the back of her hand to her moist forehead then checked on Caleb. He was going to be hungry and she’d have to find a place to feed him. She gave Cassie a sip of bottled water, intending to finish shopping and get home before it rained.
“Your little girl’s beautiful.”
Jenna’s attention shifted to the end of the table, where another woman had stopped browsing to pay her the compliment. She was about Jenna’s age, mid-twenties, with short spiky red hair and a nice smile.
“Thank you,” Jenna said.
“And—” the stranger nodded to the stroller “—I overheard, your baby boy’s five months old?”
“Yes.” Jenna beamed.
“May I?” The woman stepped closer, lowering herself to Caleb’s stroller. “Oh, he’s brand-new! What a sweetheart!”
“Here’s your bag,” the vendor said to Jenna.
“Thanks.” She reached out for it.
“Who does he take after?” The stranger stood.
“His dad. He’s got his father’s eyes.”
For the first time, Jenna noticed a man at the other end of the table. He seemed about the same age as the woman and by the way he was watching, appeared to be with her.
“You’re so blessed. They’re beautiful children,” the woman said.
“Thank you.” Jenna stowed the clothes in the stroller’s basket.
That woman was right, Jenna thought, while making her way through the bustling market. Jenna was blessed, but this past year had been hard for her family. A week after she’d learned that she was pregnant, Blake was laid off from his ground-crew job at DFW International Airport. As weeks and months passed, Blake took any work he could find. He’d come home, hands callused from a long day on a construction site, or he’d fall asleep in front of the TV after a day making dozens of deliveries as a courier. But that was all low-paying, temporary work.
Blake couldn’t find a good, steady job.
Jenna was a part-time teller and worked as many hours as she could before she was due. They were burning through the little savings they had, and she feared they would lose their home, right up until six weeks ago. That’s when Blake was hired by American Journey Movers. It was full-time, and luckily there were health benefits, which helped when she had Caleb.
The downside was that Blake was always on the road. He started in Florida one week then was in Minnesota the next. Thankfully, Jenna’s sister, Holly, came in from Atlanta for two weeks when Caleb was born, because the day after Jenna brought him home from the hospital, Blake was on the road again to Kentucky and Virginia.
Now he was in Alaska.
Jenna missed him.
“You’ll tough it out, Jen,” Blake would tell her. “You’re not a quitter. We’ll get through this. Look at all we’ve faced so far.”
He was right, and she was grateful. Things were turning around for them. She had a healthy baby boy and a beautiful daughter. Blake had found a good job. It was true, she was blessed. They’d kept their house and were clearing their debts.
To help with their finances, Jenna was trying to get a data-processing job that would let her do extra work at home. She was also careful with money, never spending beyond their budget. That’s why she had buckled Cassie and Caleb into the family’s ten-year-old Ford Focus and come here.
But before heading out this morning, she’d hesitated. The forecast had called for a slight risk of severe weather later this afternoon. Standing in her driveway, she thought the sky looked fine, and she planned to be home by early afternoon. Besides, she needed to get some things now, and this was the best time for her to go.
They’d had good luck so far, Jenna thought, as she maneuvered through the crowded market lanes. Along with the baby clothes, she’d bought towels and bedsheets for a steal. They had factory flaws that weren’t even noticeable. Now she needed a desk lamp. She’d spotted one priced at two dollars. The same one in the store was going for fifteen.
Caleb was starting to fuss. Jenna needed to feed him but wanted to get the lamp first. She was trying to recall the row where the lamp was when she felt the first raindrop.
Then a wind kicked up some papers and dirt. Vendors began throwing tarps and plastic sheets over their wares, others unrolled canvas walls. Jenna unfolded the canopy on Caleb’s stroller, got Cassie into her rain jacket and opened her umbrella just as the downpour started.
Hunched against the rain they hurried to take cover under the tent roof of a large picnic area. They crammed in with other shoppers just as hail in golf-ball-sized chunks smashed into the ground, pelting the roof with such ferocity Jenna feared it would tear through.
“Mommy I’m scared!” Cassie slid her arms around her.
Jenna pulled her closer and tightened her grip on her stroller. She bit her lip watching the storm and lightning, regretting not leaving earlier.
“Mommy, I want to go home!”
“Me, too, honey. It’ll stop soon. Then we’ll get you a cookie, I’ll feed Caleb and we’ll go home, okay?”
Jenna felt Cassie’s little face nodding against her as the hail relented.
“What! Baby, I can’t hear you!”
Jenna’s head snapped to a man in the gathered crowd with his cell phone pressed to his ear. “Baby!”
Others under the canopy turned to a woman as she said, “For real?” into her cell phone.
“Baby.” The man was staring helplessly at the sky, then at his phone. “I can’t hear you!” Then to the rest of the group he said, “My wife’s east of Lancaster. She said a tornado hit, then her phone died.” He flipped up his hood. “I gotta find her. Y’all better take cover!”
As if on cue, a siren wailed. Jenna knew that sound. The city had about a hundred warning sirens throughout Dallas and tested them once a month.
Only this one was not a test.
The steady signal was an alert to seek immediate shelter.
“Mommy!”
Jenna was transfixed.
A massive wall of black cloud in the shape of a wedge had suddenly risen in the west where the sky had turned an otherworldly shade of green. All the saliva in Jenna’s mouth suddenly evaporated as she fought to contain the wave of panic rising in her gut.
“My God!” an old man said, adjusting his glasses as he pointed to the sky. “That’s a school bus spinning up there, hundreds of feet in the air!”
Crushing Cassie to her, Jenna whispered a prayer.
2
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Jenna’s heart was racing.
Numbed by disbelief, she stared through the rain at the towering wall of black cloud swirling toward the market.
Vendors were scrambling to protect their goods; people hurried in all directions. The siren’s cry underscored the panic vibrating among those huddled under the tent; some ran off to the nearest building. Horns blared.
Beyond the rows of tables, Jenna saw the cars gridlocked in a futile struggle to leave. She calculated her chances of getting her children to their car in the distant parking lot before the storm hit.
We won’t make it in time.
“Mommy!” Cassie covered her ears with her hands. “I want to go, Mommy! I’m scared!”
Caleb was crying.
We have to find a safe place, now!
The nearest building was their best hope. She’d keep Caleb in his stroller; that way she could move faster with the kids. Quickly, she tightened the straps holding him, then she hoisted Cassie onto her hip, carrying her with one arm while steering Caleb’s stroller with her free hand.
As they headed into the rain, the tent canopy blew away behind them.
“Hang on to me, Cassie!”
Jenna bent against the wind, determined to make it to the building some forty yards off. She saw the scores of people clogging the entrance and prayed that she could get her children inside.
There’s no turning back, nowhere else to go.
Items from the market started shooting through the air around them, a lawn chair, a bookcase and a folding table, ricocheting off the ground, trees and structures.
Above the siren and all the noise Jenna heard a scream, turned and saw an older man knocked down by a flying piece of lumber. People who’d stopped to help him were suddenly in the path of a large Dumpster, tumbling at top speed before it hit them like they were bowling pins.
Jenna agonized over stopping to help when Caleb’s stroller began shaking and lifting slightly as gusts tried to wrench him from her grip. She fought to hold on to Caleb and Cassie and kept moving to the building, praying with each yard she covered until she made it to the entrance where she joined the others inching their way inside.
“Please hurry, please!” Jenna pleaded over the rushing winds.
Known as the Saddle Up Center, the large square building had been constructed decades ago in a pole barn design with a concrete floor, wooden frame, metal walls and a metal roof. It housed rows of vendors’ tables displaying clothes, furniture and collectables. Hundreds of worried shoppers were jamming into it.
Foreboding filled the air. The warning siren was accompanied by the furious, staccato bombardment of debris striking the walls and roof. The building shook as if under artillery attack.
People with working cell phones shouted out reports.
“A lot of injuries in Lancaster!”
“Transformers are blowing, fires everywhere!”
“A tornado is heading this way!”
There was a loud bang; a streetlight pierced the roof, its large arm swaying perilously above the crowd.
The center’s lights began flickering as debris hammered the building and the wind howled.
“She ain’t gonna hold much longer!” a man shouted.
As Caleb cried, Jenna stared at the roof. The wooden trusses supporting the roof began bending and cracking. She craned her neck, searching for someplace, anyplace, to go.
“Mommy!” Cassie was sobbing.
She was heavy in Jenna’s arm and she had to put her down.
“Mommy, please, no! I’m scared. Hold me!”
“Sweetie, we have to find someplace safe.”
Jenna’s heart was pounding as she looked for a stairway to a basement, a cellar, a grandstand, anything to protect her children.
There was nothing.
Oh God, please help us!
The roof began shifting. A steel trash drum punctured it like a bullet, smashing into a vendor’s stall. Then a small car with terrified people inside hurled through the top of one wall, crashing down onto the sea of helpless shoppers. People screamed while others tried to lift it from the victims.
The building’s walls began to ripple from the pulverizing wind. Jenna’s breathing quickened, the blood rush in her ears keeping time with her heart. She got down on her knees and pulled Cassie and Caleb’s stroller closer to her.
We’re not going to die here.
Someone grabbed her shoulder.
“This way!” a woman shouted into her ear. “Come with me! It’s safer this way!”
Jenna recognized the red-haired woman she’d met earlier, who’d fussed over Caleb.
“You look like you need a hand! Let me take him for you—we need to cut across the floor!”
Jenna had no time to think. She let the woman take control of Caleb’s stroller. Jenna carried Cassie while the man accompanying the woman cleared the way for them. Her pulse galloping, Jenna still savored a degree of relief.
Amid the noise and confusion they found a corner where four huge concrete planters were stored against a wall. Keep us safe here! Please keep us safe! The planters were about three feet tall and three feet square with a narrow gap between them that no one was using.
The roar grew so intense Jenna felt vibrations in her rib cage as the earth began trembling.
The woman pushed Caleb’s stroller into the gap between the planters; Jenna followed, holding Cassie. They hunkered down as chunks of wood began raining from the roof.
Adrenaline pumping, Jenna’s body quaked and she begged Heaven to keep her family safe.
As the man tried to pull a canvas over them, Jenna saw the winds suck the doors from the building, then some people.
The roof began twisting as trusses gave way and large beams fell on helpless people. Chunks of the building’s wall started ripping away, then the roof was gone, people vanished up into black swirling clouds. Metal, wood and debris rained down on Jenna and the others.
Tears streamed down Jenna’s face.
Please help us! Keep my children safe! Don’t let us die!
The heavy planters began shifting.
During horrible chaos Jenna held Cassie tight and held the stroller’s frame as the wind tried to tear it away. The kind stranger was holding on, too.
Lord, please help me!
The last thing Jenna remembered was hanging on to her children and praying before something struck her head. She saw stars before everything went black.
* * *
Jenna Cooper was floating.
She was adrift under a brilliant sun as diamond waves of warm water lapped on a white-sand beach. Blake was beside her, Caleb was napping between them, shaded by their towels. Cassie was making sand castles.
Totally content, Jenna watched the gulls gliding above them, circling, shrieking, inviting her...
...the shrieking...pulling her up from the beach...taking her higher, farther and farther from Blake and the children...no...she can’t leave them...the shrieking...no...she’s not ready to leave them...she’s rising faster...this can’t be happening...
Jenna’s eyes flicked open, squinting and adjusting to shafts of light piercing the latticework above. Where am I? A million muddled thoughts streaked across her mind as she blazed through an inventory of sensations. She was on her back. She wiggled her toes, her fingers, took a deep breath. No discomfort. Where’s Blake, the children? She thought she heard the clamor of radios in the distance. She coughed, twisted grit from her eyes, feeling warmth next to her and a familiar snuggle.
“Mommy!”
“Cassie!” Jenna moved to check her in the weak light. Cassie had cuts on her little cheeks. “Are you hurt, sweetie? Are you okay?”
“I think so. You got a big ouchy on your head.”
Jenna felt some swelling on her forehead and touched her fingers just at the hairline. It was tender, sticky and her fingertips glistened with blood.
“I guess I got a little bump, honey.”
Cassie’s chin crumpled and she cried. “I’m scared. What happened, Mommy?”
Images flashed before Jenna: The market, the storm, seeking shelter, a red-haired woman helping with Caleb, taking cover by the planters, everything going dark, the building breaking apart, Jenna’s hand holding the stroller.
Now her hand was empty.
She searched the area around her.
Where’s my baby?
“Caleb?” she said. Then, the scream ripped from her throat: “Caleb!”
3
Dallas, Texas
In the hour before the storm, Kate Page, an intern reporter at the Dallas bureau of the global news service, Newslead, was at her desk on the phone.
She’d taken a cold call from Cody Warren, a sixteen-year-old high school student whose father had been killed last week in a hit-and-run case just south of Dallas.
“Can you help us find my dad’s killer, please, ma’am?”
Kate adjusted her grip on her handset as he continued.
“We got to get the word out. Police say they have no leads, nothing.” Cody’s voice broke. “We buried him yesterday.”
Over the years, Kate had kept an emotional distance from the people she’d faced while reporting on tragedies. But she never lost her compassion and her heart went out to this teenager who’d been calling every newsroom in Dallas–Fort Worth.
He deserved kindness and the truth.
“Cody, I am so sorry for what’s happened. You have my condolences.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“I can’t guarantee that we’ll do a story, but I give you my word I’ll look into it, okay?”
There was a pause.
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay, thank you, ma’am.”
After hanging up, Kate took a moment then took a breath. Her attention shifted briefly when the chatter of the bureau’s emergency radio scanners blared from across the floor where Tommy Koop, a news assistant, was monitoring the stream of coded transmissions.
Kate thought she’d heard the word, tornadoes, until Tommy lowered the volume, and she guessed it was just a spurt of firefighter cross talk about weather forecasts.
Ten people worked at the bureau; most of the reporters were out. Kate had an hour before her next assignment, enough time to keep the promise she had made to her caller. She did a quick online search of the suburban news outlets for the last reports on the hit-and-run. Not much had surfaced. She made a round of quick calls to the highway patrol, the sheriffs for Ellis and Dallas counties, and Cedar Hill PD, which had jurisdiction. Kate got through to a sergeant, who updated her.
“Cody’s father had stopped to help a driver, an elderly woman, change a flat on Bear Creek Road when he was hit by a car,” the sergeant said.
“He was being a Good Samaritan.” Kate was taking notes.
“That’s correct.”
Investigators had a blurred image of the suspect car from a store security camera but were counting on people who knew about the case to step forward. The sergeant gave Kate details on time and location.
After the call she looked out the bureau’s twenty-second-floor windows. The sky had darkened. It was raining with flashes of lightning.
She called Cody back for more background on his father. Then, pen clamped in her teeth, she crafted a tight three-hundred-word news story on the search for the car tied to the death of a Good Samaritan motorist. She sent it to the news desk, hoping Chuck Laneer, the bureau chief, would see it before Dorothea Pick, the bureau’s news editor.
The scanners grew louder again with dispatches on a storm, and Tommy paced between his desk and the window, then began making calls. A severe weather warning had been issued earlier in the day indicating a slim chance of tornado conditions. Kate considered it for a moment, wondering about the odds of a tornado touching down and thinking that it was a good thing she’d brought her rain jacket. She still had some time before her assignment, a city meeting on parks that Dorothea had given her.
Kate glanced at Tommy. He was a good-hearted, hardworking kid, she thought, before her concern shifted to whether Chuck and Dorothea had assigned a reporter to monitor the possible storm.
She took stock of her temporary “squatter’s” desk, at the artifacts left by the previous occupant; the torn city map pinned to the fabric half wall, alongside the calendar and the fading list of contact numbers.
She had worked at a newspaper in Ohio before she was laid off. Now she was a week into a three-week “internship” at Newslead’s Dallas bureau. Internship? It’s an all-out job competition.
Kate was one of three reporters in the program. The other two candidates were experienced and they were Texans.
Roy Webster, 42, had been with the Houston Chronicle for twenty years before he was laid off. His team had been a finalist for a Pulitzer for its coverage of Hurricane Ike.
When they had all first met, Webster had extended his hand. “You’re not from Texas, are you, Kate?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You chose a helluva way to get to know the state.” He winked.
The other candidate, Mandy Lee, 33, was a general assignment reporter and former teen beauty queen, who’d won two state news awards before she’d taken a buyout from the Dallas Morning News.
She was cool to Kate when they’d met.
“Canton, Ohio? I didn’t know they even had a paper in that itty-bitty town.” Mandy showed Kate her pageant-winning smile.
Kate knew she was at a disadvantage. She’d also sensed that Dorothea Pick had disapproved of her being on the short list.
“You’re fortunate to be here,” Dorothea had said. “There were so many strong candidates right here in Dallas.”
For his part, Chuck Laneer, impressed by Kate’s doggedness when she’d worked in Ohio, had been firm but fair.
“Just show us your best,” he’d told her.
Oh, she’d do more than that.
Roy and Mandy may be better qualified but Kate was a never-say-die fighter. At the end of the internship, one of them would have a job. The others would go home unemployed.
Losing out was not an option for Kate. These days most newsrooms across the country were cutting staff. Few were hiring. This was Kate’s best shot at a full-time job, maybe her only shot, and so far it was not looking good.
So far, her work had received little play, or had resulted in inserts in other peoples’ stories. She’d had her name on only one item that had been picked up nationally. She’d put a lot on the line to be here.
She could not fail.
Kate met the eyes of Grace smiling from her screen saver, and a wave of guilt rolled over her.
Did I make the right decision, doing this?
Grace, Kate’s six-year-old daughter, was back home in Canton, staying with friends. Lord, how Kate missed her; she hated being away from her but she needed a full-time job. She was laid off from the Repository six months ago and this Dallas internship was her best shot at a new start.
But so far, it was not going well. She needed to deliver stronger stories.
Kate’s phone rang. It was Dorothea.
“Got your story. Come see me.”
When Kate got to Dorothea’s desk, the news editor patted a chair she’d rolled next to hers. Kate’s story was up on her monitor.
“Have a seat,” Dorothea said. “I want you to see what I’m going to do.”
Dorothea Pick, second in command at the bureau, was in her late forties. Kate thought she wore a little too much makeup and with her overarching eyebrows, appeared to be in a state of perpetual surprise, or anger. She had a lovely voice that dripped with Southern charm that bordered on condescension whenever she addressed Kate about her work.
“This is well written but it’s not a national news item.” Dorothea’s extension rang. She glanced at the number. “Hang on, I need to take this.” Into the phone, she said, “Where are you? Okay, what do you have? Yes, yes...but did it touch down?” After waiting for the answer, Dorothea glanced to Chuck Laneer’s glass-walled office. They could see him on the phone, standing at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, bifocals pushed atop his forehead and pointing a remote at his flat-screen TV. “I’m going to pass you to Chuck.”
Dorothea transferred the call and resumed her work with Kate’s story. Her mouse and keyboard clicked as she removed line after line.
“As you know, this tragedy was reported regionally, so at best this is an updated regional brief and regional briefs are one hundred words, maximum.” With surgical precision, she’d reduced Kate’s story to ninety-five words. “And, as we know, briefs don’t run with bylines.”
Kate watched Dorothea delete her name.
“There we go,” Dorothea said. “How’s that?”
“I don’t understand why this is not a story,” Kate said. “This man was a volunteer firefighter, an ex-Marine who’d done duty in Afghanistan. He stopped to help a woman who’d been visiting her dying husband in the hospital and paid for it with his life. The person responsible for killing him has so far gotten away with it.”
Dorothea nodded and smiled. “Sorry, it’s a traffic accident. Now you should get moving to the assignment I gave you.”
“The one about the meeting on city parks?”
“It concerns Dealey Plaza.”
“But there’s a severe storm approaching, possibly with tornadoes. Maybe I could help cover the outcome? The meeting doesn’t sound like hard news. I could pick it up later.”
“We’re fine with the storm. We need someone at the parks meeting.”
“But—” Kate shot glances at the news assistant monitoring the scanners and Chuck Laneer in his office on the phone “—I really think—”
“Are you refusing an assignment, Kate?”
“No, not at all.”
“Did you read the report on Dealey Plaza that I gave you?”
“Yes. But all it suggests is planting some trees.”
“You’re not from Texas, so you can be forgiven for not understanding that Dealey’s a national historic landmark. Anything concerning the plaza interests editors across the country. You’d better hurry along.”
Kate returned to her desk for her things.
Biting back her frustration, she pulled on her raincoat, unable to dismiss the niggling feeling that Dorothea was attempting to thwart her. In the past week she’d given the two other interns bigger stories that got major national play. It seemed Dorothea went out of her way to feed Kate scraps and soft news.
“Everybody stop what you’re doing!” Chuck’s voice boomed.
He stood in the doorway of his office holding a notebook in one hand and his glasses in the other. Thirty-nine hard years in news were written in the lines that creased his rugged face.
“We have confirmation that tornadoes are cutting across the metropolitan area. We have casualties and destruction.” Laneer glanced at his notebook. “We’ve got people going to Arlington, Grand Prairie and Lancaster.”
Laneer pointed his glasses at Kate.
“I want you to get to Wildhorse Heights, to the Old Southern Glory Flea Market, south of LBJ and Hawn. It got hit. New York wants everything we’ve got and they want it fast, people. Stand down from all other assignments. There is only one story today. Let’s get on it.”
4
Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
Kate took the elevator down to the building’s parking garage.
She hurried to her car, a 2007 Chevy Cobalt that started with a rattle, reminding her that she had to get it to the shop one of these days. She reset her mileage counter then keyed the flea market address into the GPS on her dash.
Newslead’s bureau was in Bryan Tower. The flea market was about twelve miles southeast.
She switched on her hands-free speakerphone and wheeled out of the garage. Her wipers swept at the rain as Chuck’s orders echoed in her head.
“Get us the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes.”
Kate got onto the expressway with her stomach tightening, as it always did whenever she’d rushed off to a breaking story. No matter how many tragedies or disasters she’d covered, Kate never got used to it.
No reporter did.
You never knew what you were heading into. But it was up to you to pull a story out of the chaos, to make sense of whatever was unfolding and to do it as a clock ticked down on you. And if that wasn’t enough pressure, Kate knew that she and her two competitors would be judged by their performance on this story.
The prize was a full-time job.
She adjusted her grip on the wheel as she worked through traffic.
I’ll do whatever it takes, she vowed to her daughter’s snapshot on the visor as the radio news broadcasted tornado updates, confirming: “A large number of fatalities,” shifting Kate’s thoughts to the victims and their families. She did not want to land a story, or a job, at the expense of someone else’s pain.
I didn’t mean it that way. Forgive me.
She glanced at the few sparkles Grace had shed from her homemade card onto the passenger seat when she’d taken her to her friend Courtney’s birthday party, a few days before she’d left for Texas.
It was nearly two weeks ago but it seemed like a year.
In her rearview mirror Kate saw Dallas’s skyline, the Bank of America Plaza, the Renaissance and Comerica towers and the Fountain Place prism, all blurring in her rain-streaked rear window.
Would Dallas be her new home?
As the wet road rushed under her car, she considered her life and where she was headed with it. She was a twenty-nine-year-old single mother with a six-year-old daughter. From the beginning, Kate and Grace had been on their own. Grace’s father had never been in the picture. Kate had been a loner most of her life. Her mother and father died in a hotel fire when she was seven years old. After the tragedy, Kate and her little sister, Vanessa, lived with relatives then bounced through foster homes. Two years after her parents’ deaths, she lost Vanessa in a car accident.
Kate’s radio beeped.
“We have confirmation that powerful tornadoes have touched down in Lancaster and Wildhorse Heights. We have reports of fatalities and widespread devastation. This could be one of the worst storms ever....”
Kate took a deep breath and concentrated on her driving when her phone rang with a call from Chuck Laneer.
“Where are you now?”
“A little over halfway.”
“Do you see any pockets of damage?”
“No, nothing but black clouds and rain where I am.”
“We need to move on this.”
Kate passed a line of slower vehicles. As neighborhood after neighborhood rolled by she checked her GPS constantly. She was somewhere at the southern point of Kleberg when the squeak of wipers on the windshield signaled that the rain was letting up.
The sky was clearing.
The area was flat, nearly treeless, but it appeared undisturbed. She saw an aging roller-skating rink, an auto auction yard, an ice-cream stand—but no indication of damage.
None.
Fearing she’d missed a turnoff, she consulted her GPS again. Where was the flea market? It should be here.
Her phone rang. Chuck again.
“Kate, where are you...what’ve you got?”
“Nothing so far.”
“You should be—”
“Chuck, you’re breaking up!”
“—we’re hearing that the Saddle Up Center in the market got—”
When the call died, she tried calling Chuck back, but she’d lost the connection.
Traffic ahead was slowing into a stream of brake lights as troopers and sheriff’s deputies were merging two lanes of southbound traffic into one to keep a clear path for emergency vehicles. Kate got into the single slow lane, which soon crawled to a stop.
In the expressway’s grassy median she saw a large upside-down neon sign for Sanchez Restaurant—Fajita Special Today; she saw a partial splintered wooden structure that may have been a roof, then a crumpled van on its side. Cars had pulled over to aid the van’s passengers. Two solid lanes of traffic flowed in the opposite direction. Kate had to do a double take on several pickup trucks. They were loaded with bleeding people being tended to by others.
Oh, my God...
Then her rearview mirror flashed with wig-wagging emergency lights as she heard the siren of an ambulance, no, three ambulances, coming fast behind her in the emergency lane, followed by an SUV painted with the colorful logo of a radio news station.
Kate’s traffic line was inching along. She had to get to the scene.
She bit her bottom lip and made a decision.
When the radio news truck passed, she wheeled her car into the emergency lane and followed it. She traveled for about a quarter mile before reaching a roadblock at a U-turn. Several marked police cars were parked there. Officers were turning traffic around to the lanes moving northbound.
Sheriff’s deputies waived the ambulances and news truck through southbound, but a big trooper in a raincoat stepped in front of Kate’s car, pointed at her, commanding her to stop. Then he leaned into her window.
“You can’t go any farther, miss. This lane is for emergency vehicles only. We need you to go through the U-turn and head back.”
“I know, but I’m with the press and you just let that radio news guy through.”
As the trooper hesitated Kate noticed officers at the patrol cars nearby contending with six or seven anguished people. They were demanding to be allowed through the roadblock. “My father and mother are there...but we can’t reach them on their phone...please let us by—”
Kate’s trooper glanced at the group, then, as he returned his gaze to her, she said, “I have a job to do, too.”
“Who are you with? Do you have some ID?”
“Newslead.” Kate fumbled for her plastic photo ID and chain, showing it to him. “Our stories go across the country and around the world.”
He studied her ID long enough for her to notice he had blue eyes and rainwater webbing down his jawline.
“All right.” He nodded. “I’ll let you through, but when you get to the next point, park to the side. We need the lanes clear for emergency crews.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ve seen a lot in my time, but nothing like what happened down there. Brace yourself.”
5
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Tense from the trooper’s warning, Kate drove beyond the roadblock.
Her knuckles whitened on the wheel as she navigated around the chunks of plastic, metal and garbage scattered over the two empty southbound lanes. About a hundred yards in, the freeway dipped with a gentle slope, giving her a sweeping view of what used to be the Old Southern Glory Flea Market.
“Oh my God!”
For as far as she could see, the landscape was a graveyard of crushed cars and trucks, punctuated with the ghostly pronglike remnants of trees jutting from a sea of debris.
Small fires flickered amid the destruction.
It looks like a gate to hell.
Ahead, Kate saw the long line of ambulances, fire trucks, police cars and emergency crew vehicles, their lights flashing. She parked between a fire truck and a TV news van. The rain had stopped. She was dressed in fitted jeans and a belted top, but her flat leather shoes wouldn’t do. Metal, wood and glass covered the ground. She got a pair of old hiking boots and woolen socks she kept in the trunk, put them on quickly and tied the laces tight. She pulled on her rain jacket, grabbed her phone and tried to call Chuck. Nothing happened. She tried texting. It didn’t work. No service. The cell towers must be down. Damn. She tested her phone’s camera. It worked. She tested the keyboard, created a file called Storm-1. Okay, she could still write and take pictures.
She gathered her spare phone battery, notebook and pens, slipped the chain with her press ID over her neck and recalled Chuck’s orders.
Get us the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes.
Her pulse quickened as she rushed into the chaos. Rounding a heap of splintered lumber and smashed Sheetrock, she stopped in her tracks at the scene before her.
With a funereal air, two firefighters were placing a yellow tarp over the bodies of four dead people: two adult men and two adult women, side by side on the ground, in a neat row. Nearly stripped of their clothes, their battered bodies were blood soaked. One of the women was missing a foot. One of the men had a shard of glass sticking out of his stomach. Not far off, she saw another yellow tarp on the ground with three more pairs of feet extending from it. Two of the pairs belonged to children.
Kate steadied herself on a picnic table until she found her composure.
She offered a silent prayer for the dead, then thought of her daughter in Ohio, wishing she could be with her now. After blinking back her tears, Kate opened her notebook, made notes and moved on.
I have to do this.
Everywhere, people staggered in wide-eyed shock, shouting names of loved ones at the debris.
Kate came upon an overturned car with a metal signpost rammed through the windshield. The car had a large white X sprayed on it. Two women sat on the ground next to it draped in a tattered blanket. They were on the road but much of the asphalt near them had been peeled away.
She lowered herself and sat with them.
“Hi, I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead. May I talk to you?”
The women were in their twenties, their faces were scraped and their eyes were tearful. One of them gave a little nod.
“Can you tell me where you were when the storm hit and what happened?” Kate asked.
The first woman had short blond hair. She looked at the horizon as if the tragedy were replaying there and trembled as she spoke.
“My sister and I were stuck in the traffic, trying to get out, when we saw it coming—the hail, everything going black. Things started hitting the car.”
“Lawn chairs, tables, steel poles,” the second woman added.
“I thought we were going to die,” the blonde woman said. “We heard this roaring, like ten freight trains. The ground shook and this pressure came, this huge pressure, like something trying to crush us. Our windows shattered. We could hear the metal of our car literally crumpling.”
“We just hugged each other and prayed,” the second woman said.
The blonde woman said: “Then the car rocked back and forth and the tornado picked it up. We spun and flew for about fifteen seconds then it dropped us and the air bags popped. We were upside down... I screamed for my sister. But we were alive, thank God. People pulled us out. Our legs and shoulders hurt but we’re all right...but other folks—” The woman stared at the sky like she no longer trusted it. “Others weren’t so lucky.”
Kate steeled herself, offered words of empathy, moved on and talked to more survivors. All the while her deadline was ticking down. She needed to find the Saddle Up Center, get official comment from the scene, write up what she had and find a way to get her story to the bureau.
Everywhere people were calling for help.
Rescuers worked to pull people out of the rubble. They used their hands, pipes, pieces of wood, whatever they could as emergency radios blared. The air smelled of churned earth, fresh-cut lumber and desperation.
Helicopters thumped far off overhead, paramedics moved out the injured on gurneys, others used doors or sheets of plywood as makeshift stretchers while volunteers held IV bags.
Kate saw several firefighters huddled at a table, talking on radios, poring over rolled-out maps. She identified herself and asked for a status report from the most senior member of the group, Station 9 Captain Vern Hamby.
“We don’t have a lot to report right now.”
“Can you give me what you know, please, Captain?”
His weary face creased with experience and concern when he yielded and gave Kate an on-the-record summary.
“We’ve got a significant number of casualties. The dead could be in the hundreds, or higher.”
Kate wrote as he spoke.
“We’ve been told it was an EF5 tornado. That’s the strongest on the scale, with winds in the 260 to 300 miles per hour range. On a day like today, there might be upward of three thousand visitors to the market. The grounds offer little shelter.”
Kate absorbed the information.
“Our priority is to rescue people in the rubble,” the captain said. “We’ve got spot fires from ruptured gas lines, blown transformers. It’s treacherous. We’ve got apparatus coming in from all over the region. We’re setting up triage units, shelters, missing-persons centers and morgues, some on-site. See the flags? Others will be near schools and community halls. We’ve got reports that a number of tornadoes touched down in the Metroplex, across Texas and in other states.”
Hamby’s radio burst with cross talk. He had to go. Kate walked with him, posing her last questions.
“The Xs on the vehicles?” She nodded to a van with X3 sprayed on the side. “It means you looked at them, right?”
“An X means no one inside, an X with a number, tells you how many confirmed dead inside and that you should move on to help those you can help.”
Kate cast a sad glance at the van. A hand was protruding from a door frame.
“Which way to the Saddle Up Center?” she asked.
“The Saddle Up?” Hamby shook his head slowly. “A lot of casualties there.” He spoke into his radio’s shoulder microphone. After a static-filled response, the captain stopped and pointed Kate’s attention to a distant landmark. “See that car that looks like it’s standing on its rear bumper against that pole down there, like a rocket ready to launch?”
Kate nodded.
“It’s way down there.”
Making her way to the center took time.
Kate stepped slowly through the remains of a destroyed building, taking care because pink insulation hid the jagged sections of the broken wooden walls. Midway, a hand seized her ankle.
“Help me!”
Kate had almost stepped on a woman entangled in the ruins. Dirt and glass fragments were embedded in the woman’s face. Kate got her free and into a sitting position. The woman was holding a cloth to the blood oozing from her leg.
“Let me have a look.” Kate lifted the blood-drenched rag.
The woman’s lower left calf had a twelve-inch gash to the bone. The woman was losing blood. Kate’s first aid was rusty, but she knew they had to clean that wound and get pressure on it to stem the bleeding. She pressed the woman’s hand back on the cloth.
“Hold it down firm.”
Kate looked around, called for paramedics, for firefighters, but none were near. Nothing that looked clean, no fabric, nothing was at hand. Kate removed her shirt’s belt, then cut the bottom of her shirt against a broken window and tore long strips from it. She used her shirt to treat the wound then wrapped the clean strips around it and used her belt for pressure.
“Please don’t leave me,” the woman said.
Kate took her hand and sat with her while calling for help.
“I was in the office,” the woman said. “Everything outside went black. The whole office twisted off the ground, the windows exploded, the walls started wobbling like rubber. I was hurled around like a doll in a blender. The desk, the chair, smashed into me. Broken glass flew like bullets. I was going to die.” Tears were streaming down the woman’s face. “Bless you for helping me.”
Kate consoled her until paramedics arrived.
As Kate continued to the Saddle Up Center she spotted a satellite truck for WFGG-TV News, reminding her that she needed to get a story to Chuck at the bureau.
I need to file now, before I get to the center.
She sat near two crushed cars with Xs, paged through her notes and began writing on her cell phone. She had the story structured in her head and her fingers moved fast. The screen smeared with blood as she typed, finishing at the five-hundred word mark.
There’s no cell service. How will I get this to the bureau?
The answer was in the distance.
She hurried to the WFGG-TV satellite truck with its dish extended on the pole above. Satellite phones didn’t need cell phone networks, they worked anywhere. No one was around. She pounded on the doors. A man in his mid-twenties with a stubbled face opened a side door. Jaw clenched, he stared at Kate.
“What is it?”
“I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead.”
“Yeah, so? I’m busy.”
“What’s your name?”
“Fitch, but I’m busy.”
She saw the array of small monitors, computers and equipment.
“You guys have a satellite phone, right, Fitch?”
“We’ve got satellite everything.”
“There’s no cell service. I need your help now. I need you to take a file off my phone and send it to my desk over your sat system.”
“Sorry, I’m busy.”
“Fitch, please, I’ll give you twenty bucks.”
He looked at her, considered the deal.
“Thirty.”
“Come on, where’s the professional camaraderie?”
“Thirty.”
“Okay, thirty. Deal.”
“Let me see your phone.”
Kate gave it to him. He examined the ports.
“I should have a transfer cable for that. What is it you need to move?”
Kate took the phone, showed him her file named “Storm-1”.
“Just text?” He turned to his workstation, rummaged through a box of wires and adapters, fished out a cable, connected one end to Kate’s phone, the other to a laptop.
“Yes, no images.”
He typed a few commands, and seconds later Kate’s story appeared on his laptop.
“Where’s it going?” he asked. “You can email it.”
Kate gave him the newsroom email address for filing stories.
“Type ‘Urgent from Kate Page’ in the subject line.”
Fitch angled the laptop to Kate.
“You go ahead, write what you need. Keep it short.”
She stepped inside, set her things down and typed:
No phone service at the flea market. WFGG let me use their satellite. Will file more soon, Kate Page.
After sending her story, Kate typed another email to her friend Heather in Ohio.
“Hey, what’s that?”
“Just letting my daughter know I’m okay.”
Kate was fast, hit Send then went through her wallet. All she could find were twenties. She checked her pockets. No cash there. She passed Fitch forty dollars.
“I need the change, buddy.”
He slid his hand into his jeans and pulled out a five.
“That’s the best I can do. Sorry.”
“Whatever. Thanks for helping me, Fitch.”
“Otherwise you would’ve hurt me. I sensed that about you.”
“Ha-ha.”
Kate collected her things then took several steps from the truck.
“Hold on!” Fitch called. “You’ve got a reply here. Take a look.”
Kate returned and read the email.
Kate: You should’ve tried to reach us sooner. Can you find anything stronger? Your story has no reference to the Saddle Up Center, which you were told to focus on. Benny Lopez, one of our photogs, is on scene, you should find him fast. AP has already filed.—DP.
“What a hard-ass,” Fitch said. “AP has satellite phones.”
Kate’s face flushed at Dorothea’s remarks.
“Want to respond?” Fitch asked.
“No.”
Kate slammed the door like a gunshot when she rushed out of the truck.
6
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
“Help! Somebody help!”
What?
Jenna’s ears pricked to the sound of a faded response.
Someone was out there, far off.
She looked and felt around, clawed at the debris. The stroller was gone. The red-haired woman was gone. The man with her was gone.
No, this isn’t real!
“Caleb! Anybody? Help!”
This can’t be!
“Help! Somebody, over here! Help!”
“Hello!”
Someone was out there and getting closer. Jenna thrust her hands up to the wooden beams that were sealing their tiny cell like pickup sticks. She couldn’t budge them.
Her mind reeled; her head spun.
“Help! Somebody help!”
Something tugged at her shirt.
“Mommy, that lady’s scaring me,” Cassie said.
“What lady?”
“In there.”
Jenna repositioned herself to go as far as she could behind Cassie. She stopped at a bushy mass of white hair belonging to an old woman.
Jenna shot back. Bile gushed along the back of her throat as she battled nausea. A corpse! Oh, God! Jenna touched the back of her hand to her mouth, fought to regain her composure. All the while her scalp tingled.
I’m sorry.
The woman was in her seventies. Her head, shoulders and arms were sticking out from debris as if she’d attempted to swim out. One side of her face was torn off, revealing tissue, her teeth and skull. She was not moving, or breathing.
“Oh God, don’t look, honey.”
Jenna took the woman’s hand to feel for a pulse.
Nothing.
“Is she dead, Mommy?”
“Shh-shh,” Jenna took Cassie into her arms.
“Where’s Caleb? Are we going to be dead, too?”
“Don’t worry, honey. Somebody’s going to help us. We’ll find Caleb.”
“Will Daddy come?”
“We’ll call Daddy.”
Adrenaline-driven fear vibrated through every part of Jenna’s body.
“You’re shaking, Mommy.”
“I know, everything’s going to be o—”
“Can anybody hear us?”
A man’s voice, very close.
“Yes!” Jenna shouted. “Over here! Please help us! My baby’s missing! We have to find him! Please!”
“Can you move something to signal your position?”
Jenna found a length of pipe, shoved it straight up and wiggled it while shouting.
“Here! Over here!”
“We see it. Hold tight.”
More voices and muted radio talk filled the air along with the noise of debris being moved piece by piece. It took time before searchers, about six in all from a Dallas rapid-rescue squad, cleared their way to Jenna and Cassie and lifted them from the ruins.
“Please help me find my baby boy!” Jenna sobbed, pulling Cassie to her. “He’s five months old, he’s in his stroller. A lady was helping me hold him in the storm. I can’t find him! I can’t find her!” Jenna scanned the area, hysterical. “Help me!”
Jenna suddenly lunged toward the area where she and Cassie had been trapped, grabbing, kicking at pieces of wood, metal, plastic, tossing them wildly, causing small sections to shift then collapse, forcing new jagged spearlike sections to dangerously jut from the ocean of debris.
“Caleb! My baby!”
Members of the rescue team pulled her back.
“Ma’am,” said the thirtysomething man who held her shoulders. “Ma’am, my name is Steve Pawson, the squad leader. Try to take it easy. It’s not safe. We’re here to help. Your head’s bleeding. How badly are you two hurt?”
“My daughter’s got cuts on her face. I got bumped, but I’m okay.”
“Anybody else in there with you?”
“A woman. I think she’s dead. I have to find my baby!”
Pawson nodded to other members of the rescue party, who were still searching the area where they’d found Jenna and Cassie, while a female team member studied Jenna with calm concern.
“Ma’am, I’d like to take care of your wound.”
The woman took a pressure bandage from her backpack, wrapped Jenna’s head. “Let me help you and your little girl. My name’s Nancy. Can you tell me your names?” she asked while assessing their conditions.
“Jenna, Jenna Cooper and this is my daughter, Cassie. My baby son is Caleb. He’s missing.” Jenna looked frantically in every direction. “We have to find him now! Please!”
“All right, Jenna,” Pawson said. “We’re going to search everywhere for him. Nancy here will take you and your daughter to the first aid station.”
“No, I need to stay and look for my baby!”
“Jenna...” Pawson was firm and looked directly at her. “It’s not safe. You’re in shock. I give you my word we’ll keep searching everywhere. We have dogs coming to help us find people.”
Jenna stood there, numbed, not moving, not speaking.
“Go with Nancy, Jenna.” Pawson softened his voice. “There’s more help at the first aid station, people to take more information about your son.”
“But I have to look for him.” Her voice trailed. “I’m his mother. He needs me.”
“I know this is hard,” he said. “But you have to trust us.”
Tears rolled down Jenna’s blood-streaked face as she, Cassie and Nancy moved through the debris. With every step, Jenna concentrated, searching intensely for any trace of Caleb, but it was futile as the horror of the Saddle Up Center unfolded around them.
7
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
It was slow going for Jenna, Cassie and Nancy, trying to step through the wreckage of the Saddle Up Center without stumbling.
In every direction, more rescue teams sifted through endless heaps of smashed walls, remnants of vendor stalls, chunks of the building’s roof. The voices of those still buried and hurt called out as search-and-rescue dogs led their handlers, probing the destruction to pinpoint pockets of life. Workers carefully disentangled debris to extricate survivors.
Nancy led Jenna and Cassie to a canvas canopy erected at the edge of where the center had stood. Dozens of bleeding victims were being treated at the busy first aid station. Paramedics loaded those suffering the most serious injuries onto gurneys, hurried them to ambulances and on to hospitals. Victims in critical condition were being rushed to a landing site nearby to be transported by helicopter to hospitals.
Where is my baby?
Jenna scoured the activity for any sign of her son, all the while thinking how this couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be happening.
“Maybe they found Caleb and took him to a hospital?” she said to Nancy.
“That’s possible. Let’s get you both checked more thoroughly.” Nancy took them to a table where a patient had just been cleared by the nurse there.
“Jenna, this is Margot Tuttle.” Nancy then advised Margot about her initial assessment. “Be right back,” Nancy said. “I’m going to see someone to help with your son.”
Margot, a soft-spoken woman in her mid-thirties, checked Cassie and Jenna’s vital signs, shone a light in their eyes for any indication of brain or nerve injury, then treated Cassie’s face, gently dabbing it with cotton swabs.
“I’m just cleaning your cuts, sweetheart.”
Jenna continued scanning the area and other aid tables where medical people were helping the injured before asking Margot, “Has anyone seen a baby, a five-month-old boy?”
“No, not that young. Not yet. I’m sorry.” Margot glanced to a clipboard. “So far at our station, our youngest patients have been a two-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy. But we’re finding survivors, so we’re hopeful.”
Her heart racing, Jenna continued scanning the area surrounding the station while battling a rising tide of guilt and worry over Caleb.
How could I lose him? Why didn’t I hold him?
When Margot finished with Cassie, she reached under her table into a bag, took out a stuffed teddy bear and gave it to her.
“This guy’s for you. He needs someone to take care of him. Can you do that for me?”
Cassie hugged the bear and nodded. Margot then changed Jenna’s dressing. “Looks like you took a nasty bang to your head,” she said as she cleaned her wound and put on a new bandage.
Afterward, Nancy returned and took Jenna and Cassie to another smaller post nearby where a woman and a younger man were at a table working on laptops. The woman took Jenna’s hands in hers.
“Hi, Jenna. Nancy told us about you. I’m Belle Walker. This is Denton Reeves, my partner. We’re here to help.”
Belle offered Jenna a folding plastic chair next to her so she could see her laptop’s screen. Cassie was given a chair nearby but could not see the screen. She hugged her bear in silence while staring at the ongoing rescue efforts around them.
“We’re working with the Dallas PD, county and state on a preliminary list of missing and people unaccounted for.”
“What does that mean exactly?” Jenna’s voice quivered.
“In these kinds of situations there’s a lot of confusion and chaos. People are hurt, they’re taken to a hospital without loved ones knowing, or they go to a first aid station or an aid post—we’ve got several here. Or they just go home, or to their hotel, or somewhere.”
“Or they’re still trapped?”
“Yes. Or—” Belle lowered her voice “—the storm—”
Jenna revisited images of the tornado tearing the center to pieces, seeing some people sucked up into the winds.
Belle didn’t finish her sentence, but Jenna understood.
“So we’re working on the list,” Belle said. “It will feed into a bigger database that will be shared with fire, police, paramedics, hospital, aid agencies, to help reunite people, okay?”
Jenna nodded, then said, “I’d like to call my husband...I can’t find my cell phone. Can you help me call him?”
“We can. After we’re done here we have buses taking people to the community hall near here—that’s our closest emergency shelter.” Again, Belle took Jenna’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “They’ll have working phones there for you to use, and there will be counselors there if you feel like talking to someone, okay?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Let’s get started,” Belle said.
They took down vital information, names, dates of birth, addresses.
“It’s usually a good idea to give us contact information for relatives in case we can’t reach you. We’ll put it into the system—it’s all confidential,” Belle said.
Jenna gave her the cell number for Blake and her sister, Holly, in Atlanta. Then Belle asked for more details on Caleb, everything she could think of that would identify him.
“He was, is, sorry—” Jenna wiped her tears. “He is wearing a blue-and-white-striped romper with a little elephant crest on it that’s lifting a bit on the right. The bottom snap is loose. He’s got a rocket-shaped birthmark on the back of his left calf. He’s in a folding umbrella stroller, navy with green, red-and-blue polka dots on a white seat. The left front wheel had some white paint on it that I’d spilled when I put a paint can away.”
As Belle entered the information quickly into her laptop the concern on her face deepened.
“You live in Lancaster.”
“Yes.”
“From our information it looks like it was hit hard. I’m sorry.”
Jenna closed her eyes tight.
“I’ll deal with that after I find my son.”
Denton Reeves then gave Jenna a photocopy of a floor plan of the Saddle Up Center.
“Please mark the area you were in when the storm hit.” He gave her a pencil. “As best as you can.”
Jenna marked the spot, recounting how the red-haired woman and her friend helped her, leading up to the time the tornado hit.
“The woman is in her mid-twenties, with short, spiky red hair. I know she had nice teeth, a nice smile,” Jenna said. “I don’t remember much about the man. Same age, wearing a T-shirt with a dog on it, I think. My bag with the clothes I’d bought for the kids was in the stroller’s basket.”
After Belle submitted the details, Denton said to Jenna: “Would you recognize the woman who helped you if you saw her again?”
Belle threw Denton a look of concern.
“I think so, why?” Jenna said.
Belle drew up close to Jenna and dropped her voice so Cassie wouldn’t hear. “We can show you video of the deceased recovered so far from the Saddle Up Center and the area nearby.”
Jenna stared at Belle, who continued in a near whisper.
“You’ve already been through so much and this won’t be easy. Would you be willing to look?”
“What is this? Is this your way of telling me my son’s among the dead?”
“No.”
“You tell me right now if he is because I want to see him. I have a right to see him!”
“No, we’re sorry...we don’t know,” Denton said. “Police made the video. They’re updating it as they recover more fatalities, and they’re requesting we show it to people who’re reporting missing persons. It’s a first step before allowing people into the area where the deceased are before they’re moved. It’s nearby.”
Belle placed her hand on Jenna’s.
Jenna took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I’ll look at it.”
Jenna glanced protectively at Cassie. She couldn’t see Denton’s screen. He made a few keystrokes and a video played. The camera showed bodies arranged on the ground in a neat line, maybe twenty corpses. They were not covered and had varying degrees of damage.
Jenna held her breath and covered her mouth with her hand as her focus went to the smallest victims, seven little children. None looked any younger than two or three. No babies.
Oh God, it’s real! Those dead children! Their poor parents! Please, please don’t take Caleb from me! Please!
As the camera tightened and panned over each one, Jenna looked for any women with red hair, gasping when the camera found one. Instantly she thought of the spiky-haired stranger who’d complimented her on Caleb and Cassie at the clothing table; her smile and how she’d led them to safety in the center, holding Caleb’s stroller.
A kind woman who tried to help me.
But the dead red-haired woman, whose bruised face filled the screen, appeared larger and older. She couldn’t be the woman who’d helped her.
The camera continued its grisly display, evocative of documentary and news footage Jenna had seen of concentration camp and earthquake victims. In this one, many of the bodies looked as if they’d been broken and awkwardly reassembled. Her eyes blurred with tears. Not long ago, these people were living their lives, shopping, just shopping like me, but now—now...
“Oh, no!”
Jenna saw one dead older woman, her neck and face bloodied, still wearing a Dallas Cowboys ball cap and a T-shirt with the words: Verna’s Clothes for Kids.
“That’s the woman I bought my children’s clothes from just before the storm hit.”
“She’s been identified by a relative,” Belle said. “She’s a vendor.”
Jenna was overcome.
As the video played out to the end, the image flowed into Denton’s screen saver: a mountain vista with snowcapped peaks. Jenna stared at it then at the devastation around them, aching for her baby.
I should’ve been holding him. I’m his mother.
Jenna needed Blake, needed his arms around her, to hold her together because she was coming apart. It started with a small cry in a far corner of her mind and grew to a keening as the blood rush hammered in her ears—“Jenna, are you all right?” Bella asked—creating a deafening roar, and the beginning of a colossal scream rose from deep in her stomach when—
Cassie suddenly got up from her chair and stepped away from the table. Her eyes sharpened on heaps of debris in the distance. Clutching her teddy bear with one hand, she raised the other, extending a little finger to point.
“Mommy, I can see Caleb’s stroller!”
8
Wildhorse Heights, Texas
Kate painstakingly picked her way through the debris to the Saddle Up Center.
It had been more than fifteen minutes since she’d left the news truck and the curt email from Dorothea.
Her criticism still burned.
You should’ve tried to reach us sooner.
How? Cell phones aren’t working here and no one at the bureau was handing out satellite phones.
Can you find anything stronger?
What the hell does that mean? Chuck wanted the facts, the heartbreak and the heroes, and that’s what Kate got. She could only interpret Dorothea’s comments to mean the people in her story were “not suffering enough.”
In her years as a reporter, Kate had encountered hard-case editors and unbalanced fools for editors, but Dorothea was in a class of her own. What is it with that woman, making those brainless comments on her work from her downtown office on the twenty-second floor of Bryan Tower? No doubt she was watching TV-news footage and convinced she was tuned in to reality while Kate was here, on the ground, stepping through it.
Feeling the crunch of debris under her boots, Kate looked at the wasteland around her; the air was filled with cries for help, the chaos of rescues, radios and helicopters; the smells of upturned earth, broken timbers and small fires.
As she got closer to the Saddle Up Center it became clear to Kate that for some unknown reason Dorothea did not like her. But Kate would be damned if she’d let that slow her down. If anything, she thought, tapping her notebook to her leg, taking in the destruction, it made her stronger.
“CALEB!!!”
A child’s voice cut through the clamor, yanking Kate’s attention to the scene ahead: a little girl, no older than five or six, with a woman in her twenties, presumably her mother. An empty, twisted stroller stood near them, the mother savagely tearing away debris, tossing pieces as she and the child repeatedly called out: “CALEB!!!”
Even the little girl was lifting smaller pieces and peering under them. Two aid workers in orange fluorescent vests appeared to be helping on the opposite side of the debris pile. The woman was contending with a large section of plywood by herself when she saw Kate at the end of it.
“Please help me move this!”
The panic in the woman’s eyes telegraphed her agony—she was in the fight of her life.
“Please!”
Once more, Kate was being asked to cross a journalistic line. She was well aware that her job was to observe the news, not take part in it, but her conscience would not allow her to ignore another plea for help. She gripped her side of the wood, heaved and helped toss it aside.
“CALEB!”
The woman got on her knees, her hands and fingers were laced with blood as she tugged at scraps and hunks of metal, glass and wood while combing every opening in the ruins.
“Is Caleb your child?” Kate asked.
“He’s my baby boy.”
The woman pulled at a large chunk of wood causing the entire heap to shift precariously toward her daughter. Kate reached to steady it.
“Stop, miss!” A relief worker shouted at Jenna. “Get back! It’s not safe!”
“My baby could be in there!”
“Yes, we’ve got help coming!”
“Hurry, please hurry!”
As Jenna continued searching the debris without touching it, Kate acted.
“I’m Kate Page, a reporter with Newslead. Would you tell me what happened to you when the storm hit?”
Without taking her eyes from the debris to look at Kate, the woman quickly related her story. She held nothing back. “It’s my fault. I should’ve held him to me. I had him, but I let him go. Oh God, it’s my fault!”
I had him, but I let him go.
The words detonated an emotional charge within Kate.
An image flashed.
A tiny hand slipping away from hers in the icy river...
It’s my fault.
Jenna’s words jolted Kate because they were words she’d lived with. She’d known this anguish in her own life long ago. It was why she’d become a reporter. She was haunted.
“I understand,” she said.
Suddenly Jenna met Kate’s eyes and something between the two women fused. In that intense emotional instant Jenna searched Kate’s face for deception. Finding none, she started nodding with the belief that Kate did understand, just as they were overtaken by the arrival of rescuers.
For the next twenty minutes the team worked in the area, searching and moving wreckage with great care, but found no trace of the baby, or anyone else. They were still searching when two TV-news crews hurried by them. An anxious cameraman was saying that a helicopter ambulance had just crashed nearby.
“I have to go,” Kate told Jenna, quickly exchanging contact info with her. “I promise I’ll follow up with you. Where will you be later?”
“An emergency shelter, where they have phones. I need to reach my husband.”
Jenna sobbed as she stood there watching the search team, while holding her daughter and the bent and twisted stroller, struggling not to lose hope of finding her baby.
A portrait of heartbreak.
With Jenna’s permission, Kate used her phone to take a picture before she rushed off after the TV news crews.
Cutting across the market took time. When Kate’s group arrived they found that the helicopter was upright in the temporary medical landing zone. The chopper showed no obvious signs of damage. Kate spotted Barry Lopez, the Newslead photographer, among a knot of journalists. They’d encircled an EMS official, who someone called Dave Wills and who was facing questions under the glare of lights. Some of the arriving TV crews wanted him to “start over.”
“Look, this was not a crash,” Wills said. “It was a hard landing due to a mechanical issue. No one was hurt.”
Wills took questions for another fifteen minutes before wrapping up. News crews dispersed and disappeared into the chaos. Kate hooked up with Lopez. They picked their way back toward the Saddle Up Center but were unable to find Jenna Cooper.
For the rest of the day Kate went flat out, writing the stories of the victims and getting updates on the toll. Heartbreak after heartbreak, there seemed to be no end to the tragedies emerging from the flea market. Fitch at the WFGG satellite truck helped her free of charge when he had time.
At one point in the day, Kate realized that she’d not eaten for at least eight hours. She accepted an egg salad sandwich and cup of water from a church group that had set up a table, “for anyone who needs it,” one of the white-haired ladies said with a smile.
By late afternoon, Kate had lost count of how many times she’d filed to the bureau but the last one ended with a new order from Chuck.
We need you at the bureau to help with the day’s wrap-up piece. Come in now, Kate.
9
The bureau’s staff had doubled by the time Kate returned.
People she didn’t recognize were working side by side at every desk, including hers. Others were sitting on the floor, typing on phones, laptops, tablets, consulting notes, or talking to Dorothea.
One wall was papered with a massive map showing the paths of the tornadoes. Twenty had touched down in the Metroplex. They were confirmed for Arlington, Mesquite, Irving, Kennedale, Wildhorse Heights, Grand Prairie, Lancaster and several other locations. Each one was numbered on the map with notes on their length, width and ratings. The tracks they left looked like a huge claw had gouged the metro area.
Another wall showed dozens of photos, twisted cars in trees, destroyed homes, a roof on a highway, and there was Kate’s photo of Jenna Cooper, searching for her baby while holding his warped stroller and her daughter.
Every TV in the bureau was locked on live storm coverage. The coffee table from reception was brought in and buried with take-out pizza, salads, wings, chips and sodas.
Phones were ringing.
Roy Webster and Mandy Lee, who’d returned from Arlington and Irving, left a huddle at Dorothea’s desk and turned to Kate. Mandy’s eyes went to Kate’s hiking boots.
“Where did you get those?”
“I had them in my trunk.”
“Well, aren’t you prepared?”
“I saw what you filed from the flea market,” Roy said. “Not bad, Kate.”
Chuck, who’d been moving from desk to desk, guiding the bureau’s coverage, spotted Kate.
“Get yourself some food. It might be hard finding a place to work. We’ve brought in help from our other bureaus.” He stared over his bifocals. “You’ve got thirty minutes to give Dorothea and me whatever unused stuff you still have from today, then we’re meeting on next steps for coverage.”
Kate found a clear spot on the floor against a far wall. She passed on food. Her insides were still churning. She zoned out the activity as she wrote amid the room’s tension. When she finished, she glanced at the skyline, glittering in the early evening. She got a soda, kept an eye on the TVs and read Newslead’s wire stories online to get the full picture and the latest developments.
Today, several tornadoes had ripped through Texas, Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. So far the death toll was estimated at two hundred, with most in Texas around the Dallas area. Counting all the states that were hit, more than three thousand people were believed to be injured. Some six hundred were listed as missing, most around Dallas. At least twelve thousand homes, businesses and properties were destroyed. Power outages were widespread. Damage was pegged to surpass three billion dollars. All numbers were expected to climb in what was one of the worst storms on record.
The Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex was hardest hit, particularly in Arlington, Lancaster, Wildhorse Heights, Irving and several other communities. The bureau’s phones continued ringing. In the worst areas roads were torn up, cell towers were down. People needed specific information but couldn’t get through to the Dallas Morning News, or the local TV and radio stations, so they called news bureaus in Dallas.
As reporters worked, Kate overheard snatches of conversations.
“My cousin in Irving lost his house.”
“You were in your bedroom when the entire wall disappeared?”
“But they found your dog, and he’s okay? That’s a miracle.”
Then someone shouted, “Here we go!” All eyes went to the TVs and live coverage of the President at a microphone in Ottawa, Canada, where he was at a global summit. He was making a live statement on the storm.
“We send our profound condolences to the loved ones of those who lost their lives today in the tornadoes and severe weather that struck the Dallas–Fort Worth area and communities in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi. We commend all the people who are helping their friends and neighbors during this terrible time. I have spoken with the governors of the affected states and have directed all available federal resources to respond. The nation stands ready to help our fellow Americans in this time of need. You are all in our thoughts and prayers.”
The networks then showed a moving montage of the devastation, giving pause to the bureau reporters who lived there. Most knew someone who’d been hit, underscoring to Kate that she was an outsider. In that moment she ached to be back in Canton, holding Grace.
But she had a job to do, with a lot riding on it.
“Okay, people, meeting time. Squeeze in here.” Chuck and Dorothea herded the staff into the bureau’s boardroom. Seats around the table filled and others stood against the wall.
“First, thanks, everyone, all of you from our other bureaus,” Chuck said. “Thanks for making the long drives from Oklahoma City, Houston, Austin and San Antonio. We appreciate the help.”
“And, if I may, Chuck,” Dorothea said, “I want to applaud our bureau, Moe, Harley, Tilda, Annalee, Tommy, Eduardo, Maria and Sue for outstanding work on the breaking coverage. So far, with updates, we filed more than one hundred stories, and two hundred photos. Some of our bureau people are still out in the field. One way or another, most us at the bureau are connected to the storm. I also want to thank our interns, Roy Webster and Mandy Lee, for their fine work.” Dorothea nodded to both of them just as a ringing cell phone interrupted her.
The reporter with the phone took the call while leaving the room.
The meeting resumed without mention of Kate.
She swallowed the slight of being overlooked.
Other people were facing worse, she thought, like the young mother she’d found searching for her missing baby.
Chuck flipped pages of his notebook as he gave an overview of coverage requirements for the next morning, ticking off search and rescue of the missing, updating the lists of the dead, injured and missing; relief and recovery. Coverage had to include the economic and psychological toll. He said the governor would be visiting the worst areas.
“Our Washington bureau confirms that the White House is arranging for the President to visit.”
Chuck noted that he had people on overnight shifts covering rescue efforts. Then he began assigning reporters from the other bureaus to specific tasks for the next day and then advised his people to return to the same areas early in the morning and continue covering the storm.
“Headquarters in New York is telling us what we already know. This is the top story in the country and a lead story around the world. Our copy is in demand. You’re all pros—you all know what to do,” he said. “Give us the facts and the human drama, the heartbreak and the heroes.”
The meeting broke up with people leaving, or wrapping up work, making calls, or talking with Dorothea or Chuck.
When Chuck was clear, Kate approached him.
“I think I’ve got a strong dramatic story coming out of the flea market. I’d like to follow it tomorrow.”
“What is it?”
Kate’s glance shifted to Dorothea, who’d overheard and joined them.
“A young mother, Jenna Cooper,” Kate said. “She’s searching for her five-month-old son, Caleb. She lost him when the tornado hit the Saddle Up Center. He vanished.”
“Right, she was in the copy you filed today,” Chuck said. “Sounds like a good one to follow. But first check with Dorothea on what she’ll need from you tomorrow.”
Chuck checked his phone for messages then left to talk to another reporter.
“Yes, that’s a sad one,” Dorothea said, “but there are a hundred others like it out there. I’ve got something else in mind for you tomorrow, Kate.”
“But I’d really like to follow up on Jenna Cooper. My gut tells me this story could be strong. A stranger was helping with the baby and the stranger’s missing, too. It’s very tragic and I think—”
Kate was now staring at Dorothea’s forefinger, held up to silence her.
“Roy and Mandy will go back out to cover the flea market. I need you here for an evening shift starting at three tomorrow afternoon. Please and thank you.” Dorothea’s cell phone rang. “Excuse me, I have to take this.” She turned away.
Kate stood there dumbfounded for several moments. Then she collected her things.
Before leaving, she glanced at the wall of photos, returning to the image of Jenna Cooper, holding her daughter and her baby’s contorted stroller, and gazing into the end of the world.
10
Dallas, Texas
The wire service had put Kate up at the Marriott City Center.
In the elevator to her twelfth-floor room she texted her friend Heather, who was watching her daughter in Ohio.
Hi Heather, I’ll be online in 5 min if Grace is still up.
Heather responded:
She and Aubrey are up. Saw the news, it looks horrible. How are you doing?
Hanging in there.
Moments later, Kate was in her room making the connection and her tablet’s screen blossomed with her daughter’s bright face.
“Hi, Mom! I miss you!”
“Miss you, too, honey. What’re you doing up so late?”
“Aubrey and I are putting sparkly stuff on our fingernails, see?”
Grace wiggled ten little fingers in front of her face.
“I see, very pretty.”
“Mom, were there really tornadoes where you are?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Was it like the Wizard of Oz and was there a flying witch?”
“No, not like the movie. It was real. It was very bad... People got hurt.”
“But you’re okay, right?”
“I’m okay, sweetie.” Kate smiled for her. “So tell me, what’s new today?”
“Aubrey and I got invited to Kayla’s birthday party. Can I go and can I wear my new flower dress? Please say yes, pull-ease!”
“I’ll talk to Aubrey’s mom. Are you being a good girl for me?”
“Uh-huh.”
They talked for the next thirty minutes until Grace began yawning and Kate wound things down.
“I miss you and I love you, kiddo.”
“Miss you too and love you more.” Grace puckered and kissed the screen to meet Kate’s kiss.
Talking with her daughter was balm for Kate’s heart, but the strain of the day had turned her neck and shoulders to stone. After her call with Grace, Heather told her that a woman from a collection agency had called that morning looking for a Ms. or Mrs. Kate Page.
Kate thanked her for the warning. She’d follow up on the partial payment she’d already sent electronically from Dallas.
After the call, she took a shower.
Needles of hot water soothed her tired muscles but couldn’t wash away the day’s images of walking among the dead, the dying, the injured and all that devastation.
Kate let go.
She sobbed as steam clouds rose around her, letting them pull her back through her life, back to that night when she and Vanessa, her little sister, were together with her babysitter, Mrs. Kawolski, when she’d answered the door of their creaky old house.
Mrs. Kawolski’s hand covering her mouth. The police officers filling the small kitchen, their utility belts making leathery squeaks as they cleared their throats. The policewoman giving Kate and Vanessa little stuffed bears to hold, a teddy for her, a polar bear for Vanessa. I’m so sorry, she said. There was a terrible fire, I’m so very sorry, your mommy and daddy won’t be coming home. They’re with the angels now. Mrs. Kawolski taking them both in her arms, rocking them, whispering a prayer over and over.
In the aftermath, Kate and Vanessa pinballed through a succession of homes belonging to increasingly distant relatives. Ultimately, they lived with strangers. Pretty much all Kate remembered from that part of her childhood was how she and Vanessa were forever moving.
Until the accident.
Kate and Vanessa were in the backseat of a car, driving in the mountains. Suddenly their car was flying, rolling upside down before it crashed in a river. The water rushed in. It was so cold, so dark, except for the dome light in the car as it banged against the rocky riverbed.
Everything moved in slow motion.
The windows had broken open. Kate had Vanessa’s hand; she got them both out of the car and tried to pull Vanessa to the surface with her but felt the cold numbing her fingers, felt them loosening. She was unable to hang on.
Vanessa slipped away.
Why couldn’t I hold her?
Kate was the only one who survived. She was nine years old; Vanessa was six. They never found Vanessa’s body. It may have gotten wedged in rocks, they said. Vanessa’s little white polar bear was still in the car. When they found it they gave it to Kate.
After the accident, Kate was sent to live in a never-ending chain of foster homes. Some were good, some weren’t.
As soon as she was old enough, she ran away.
She did what she could to survive. She panhandled, lied about her age and took any job she could get. She cleaned toilets, washed cars, washed dishes, landscaped, waitressed, did night shifts in an office sending out spam, she even worked as a phone sex operator. She learned about life the hard way, but she never stole, never used drugs or got drunk. She never prostituted herself.
Somehow Kate managed to follow an internal moral compass, which she believed—no, hoped—she’d inherited from her parents. Relatives had told her that they were honest, hardworking people. Her mom was a supermarket cashier who loved to read and kept a journal; her dad worked in a factory that made military truck parts. They were living near Washington, D.C., at the time they died in the hotel fire.
Kate never really knew them.
She had vague memories of her mother’s voice and how she smelled like roses. How the month before she died she gave Kate and Vanessa each a tiny guardian angel necklace with their names engraved. How Vanessa wanted to trade them so she wore the one with her big sister’s name on it and Kate had the angel bearing Vanessa’s name.
She still had it.
Whenever she looked at it, she’d remember how happy they all were, and how she felt so safe in her father’s big, strong hands whenever he lifted her up, and she could not forget how Vanessa’s eyes shone like stars when she laughed.
They were all ghosts to her now.
But at times, Kate would stare at the few photos she had of her with Vanessa, hugging her little polar bear she had named “Chilly,” dreaming that Vanessa might be alive somewhere. She knew it was impossible but she couldn’t help it. She kept reading news stories about people finding long-lost relatives after enduring years of pain. Those stories and the reporters who wrote them gave Kate hope and direction.
She knew deep in her heart that she needed to become a journalist, someone who helped people find the answers to the most important questions in their lives.
At age nineteen she was living on her own in Chicago, where she took night classes to finish high school.
She wrote an essay about how in her heart her sister would always be alive and that she would never stop yearning to know what really happened the night Vanessa’s little hand slipped from hers.
Did she die that night in the mountains? Or did she survive and wander off miraculously into another life?
Kate’s teacher showed it to David Yardley, an editor at the Tribune, telling him of Kate’s desire to be a reporter. A meeting was arranged. Astounded by Kate’s natural writing talent, and her life, David helped her with a part-time news job. She remembered him saying, “You’re like something out of a Dickens novel.”
She was forever grateful for his help.
Kate graduated from high school and worked her way through community college, which led to news reporter jobs in Syracuse, New York, for a short time before she went to California. She was still pretty green working on the crime desk at the San Francisco Star when she fell for a cop. It was after she got pregnant that she learned he was married.
Kate was crushed.
How could he lie to her? How could she be so stupid?
She’d confided to a reporter friend that she wanted to keep her baby but needed to leave the city. She got a job with the Repository in Canton, where she had Grace at age twenty-three.
Kate thrived on the paper’s crime beat where she was honored for tracking down a fugitive killer. While her work was shut out for a Pulitzer and other national prizes, she did win a regional award for journalistic investigative excellence. But the glory didn’t last.
One day after several years, Kate was called into the office of Ed Brant, her managing editor. He removed his glasses and said her job, along with a dozen others, was gone. It was a dark time for her but Kate did the best she could. She searched everywhere but news jobs were drying up.
Weeks then months passed. She waitressed while applying for public relations positions with corporations. She got one in Canton that lasted three weeks. Kate just did not fit in.
She was a reporter. Period.
Things got dire. Kate was juggling bills when she learned that Newslead, the worldwide wire service, had an opening in its Dallas bureau.
Kate’s application got her a teleconference phone interview with Chuck Laneer and Dorothea Pick in Dallas, and a human resources woman in New York. A week later, Chuck called Kate back. She’d made the short list. He invited her to a three-week internship at the bureau with two other candidates. The strongest candidate would get the full-time job at the bureau. It paid nearly double what she’d earned at the Repository, and came with great benefits.
Kate arranged for Grace to stay with her friend Heather Baines, whose daughter, Aubrey, went to school with Grace. It tore at Kate to leave Grace for three weeks, but she had to do it for both of them. She’d promised they’d talk on Skype every day. Kate loaded up her Chevy then made the twelve-hundred-mile drive to Dallas in just over two days. She stayed in cheap motels and ate fast food to save money.
The trip was a lonely one, and at this moment, in the shower, Kate longed to be in Ohio. She ached to be home watching a movie on the sofa with Grace, something funny, something happy, because the day’s tragedies were overwhelming.
Kate stepped from the shower, toweled off then brushed her teeth and her hair. She put on her pajamas, killed the lights then got into bed, exhausted. She reached for her phone. The screen glowed in the dark as she studied her favorite picture of Grace.
I’d die if I lost you.
Then she cued up her photo of Jenna Cooper amid the horror, searching for her baby, her words replaying, “I had him but I let him go. Oh God, it’s my fault!”
Kate knew this anguish, this guilt. She’d felt it throughout her whole life, after she’d let Vanessa slip away in the river.
As she looked out her hotel window at the buildings and the highways twinkling in the night, she was overwhelmed with self-reproach, for Vanessa, for leaving Grace, for being in this room while people out there were enduring so much loss and pain.
Kate stared hard at her photo of Jenna Cooper.
Like you, I can only imagine what’s going through your mind.
Was her baby dead? Was he hurt, buried under debris? Did someone find him and take him to a hospital?
Kate continued looking at Jenna’s picture.
I’ll help you find the truth.
11
Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
The next morning, across the city, in Room 16 of the Dreamaway Motor Inn, the TV glowed in the predawn darkness.
The window shades were drawn, blocking the neon sign flashing Vacancy out front. The room’s air reeked of cigarettes and stale beer as Remy Toxton sat at the edge of the bed teasing her spiky red hair while watching coverage of the disaster.
Dallas stations showed the storm’s aftermath and interviews with shell-shocked survivors in neighborhoods that had been hit hard. When the report went to the flea market, Remy, still a little shaky, concentrated on it until she was satisfied that no threat had surfaced from what she’d done.
“This is going to work out for us, babe,” she said.
Mason Varno, Remy’s boyfriend, was standing shirtless in his sweatpants at the window. He’d gently moved the shade to watch the parking lot while rubbing his lips and constantly checking his cell phone for messages. They had service here. Remy threw him a look over her shoulder, loving how his muscles rippled under his prison tattoos, loving that he was her man, flaws and all.
No one was perfect. Mason didn’t talk much. He had a lot on his mind.
So did Remy.
They’d been through hell lately, but now their dreams were within their grasp. They were going to get enough money to get a place along the Oregon coast and start their new life, the real life they both deserved. It was going to happen. They were beating the odds, and now Remy believed that they could overcome anything.
Even a dead baby?
Yes. No. I don’t know.
An alarm bell went off in her skull, her brain convulsed. She held her head to keep it from splitting open and took deep breaths.
Stop thinking about that! It’s in the past! Leave it there!
Her jaw tensed as she counted backward from one hundred until she recovered.
Okay, okay.
She was all right.
Just one of her little spells.
She turned back to the TV.
We were so lucky to get out with nothing but a few scrapes.
It’s all meant to be.
The newswoman was talking about the number of dead, missing, injured, homeless, and where tornado victims could get help. The screen showed a graphic with information and websites on locations across the Metroplex for emergency shelters providing medical services, food, water, clothing, trauma support and other aid.
This was important. Remy took notes, got her laptop and resumed checking the locations for shelters and medical help. Then she searched online news sites focusing on reports about the flea market, scanning them for one thing.
Nothing surfaced in the stream of stories until a certain picture blurred past. Remy went back to a photograph of a woman holding an empty, beat-up stroller and a child standing with her before the devastation. The cutline read: “Jenna Cooper holds her daughter, Cassie, and the empty stroller of her five-month-old son, Caleb, who is missing after a tornado destroyed the Saddle Up Center where scores of people were killed.”
The article with the picture was by Newslead, the wire service. The section on Jenna Cooper was only a few short paragraphs. Remy scrutinized every word.
Among the tragic stories emerging from the Saddle Up Center is that of Jenna Cooper, who lost her five-month-old baby, Caleb, when the tornado hit.
“I had him, but I couldn’t hold on.”
Cooper’s baby vanished in the fury along with a man and a woman, the two strangers who’d helped Cooper, her son, and daughter, Cassie, to what they believed was a safe corner of the center.
Officials have listed Caleb as missing, acknowledging that the baby could’ve been located and taken to a hospital. There is also fear that Caleb, along with the people who’d helped his mother, could be among the injured or dead still buried under debris.
“I’ll keep searching for him until I find him,” Cooper said.
Remy glared at Jenna Cooper’s picture.
That’s right, keep searching, like the fool you are. I went to that market looking for someone like you. You weren’t fit to be his mother. I’m sending him to a better place.
“Hey, are you going to do something about that?” Mason asked.
Remy had been so absorbed by her work she’d been oblivious to the crying from the far side of the room. She closed her eyes and sighed. Then she looked at her laptop.
“Mason, read this article while I take care of him.”
Massaging her temples Remy went to the area where she’d taken extra blankets, towels and sheets to fashion a crib on the floor where Caleb Cooper was stirring. He was a beautiful baby, she thought, still wearing his blue-and-white-striped romper with the tiny elephant. She blinked at the small bloodstains near the neck of the fabric. Now he was turning his little bandaged head, opening his mouth, bringing his tiny fist to it and making sucking motions.
“Hungry again?”
Remy went to the kitchenette and prepared a fresh bottle of formula. As it warmed, she thought of how things had gone at the market. It was her determination that had led her to the right baby. They’d hunted the previous nights in vain at a mall and the bus depot before Remy had considered a flea market, where right off she’d found a suitable candidate. She’d stalked the mother, talked with her, winning her trust so she could do what she had to do.
And the tornado?
It was scary. But it was a godsend.
As the winds waned after it had destroyed the Saddle Up Center, Remy saw that the mother and daughter weren’t moving. Remy was stiff and pinned under some wood, but she was okay. She took the stroller with the baby. It was hanging upside down but the baby was strapped in. Mason had a cut on his arm and a bruised left leg. She screamed at him to dig them out. The baby was bleeding. She soon tossed the stroller because it was useless in the mess. With Remy carrying the baby in her arms and Mason limping, they hurried through the wreckage, seeing bodies everywhere.
It was gruesome.
Mason stopped to check on a few. “To help,” he said, but he was taking cash and credit cards from dead people. “They ain’t going to need it,” he said. They continued on to the far end of the market and their pickup truck, hoping it was still there and still working. They found it with a broken side window, a spiderweb fracture on the upper right corner of the windshield, and the rear left quarter was crumpled, but otherwise it had survived undamaged.
Now, in the motel room, the baby’s crying was getting louder.
“Shut that kid up!” Mason barked at her from the computer.
“You shut up! What do you think I’m doing? His bottle’s not ready.”
Remy had been prepared for the baby.
Days earlier she’d bought the essentials: formula, the ready-to-use kind, rice cereal, applesauce, diapers, wipes and hair dye. But driving away from the destruction at the flea market she’d worried about the baby’s little wound on his forehead. She got Mason to stop at a drugstore for bandages and disinfectant.
Still, she had a feeling that she’d forgotten something.
Remy tested the temperature of the formula by squirting some on her wrist, then took Caleb in her arms. She had given him a bottle when they arrived yesterday afternoon. He fussed at first when she held him and rooted around for her breast, but eventually took the bottle; then another one in the night. He was a good eater, she thought, watching him suck hard, almost chomping, on the nipple.
As she held him, inhaling his sweet baby scent, a wave of hormonal emotion rolled through her, and she shuddered.
He was such a beautiful baby boy.
My baby was a boy.
Caleb nuzzled against her. Remy was growing increasingly concerned about the bump on his head from the tornado. Was it a scrape, a surface cut or something nastier? After she was done feeding and changing him, she cleaned his cut and put on a fresh bandage.
Mason was still at her laptop, reading news stories and rubbing his lips a little harder. Remy braced for what was coming. She knew his cravings, his mood swings and his irritability.
He’d made her a lot of promises about their future and struggled to keep them. Remy and Mason didn’t always see eye to eye, but deep down they were welded to the same philosophy: whatever life takes from you, you take it back.
“What’re you thinking, babe?” she asked him.
“I never thought you’d do it. You’re seriously going through with this?”
“We have to.”
He blinked hard, the way he did when he was battling not to lose it with her, especially because of all they’d endured lately. He strained to keep his temper and his voice gentle.
“We’ve got a lot at stake here, and this doesn’t help, Remy.”
“We’re running out of money. We’re running out of time. Do you see any other options? I had to do something. Besides, the article says they think we’re likely all dead. It’s perfect for us.”
“This kid is five months old. You think you can pass him off as a one-month old?”
“Yes, because it’s all meant to be. We’ll just say he’s big.”
“All right, are you going to make the call?”
“Not just yet.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a plan. We need to keep him a little while longer.”
“What for? If we’re going to do this, let’s move fast, get it done.”
“First, I want to have a doctor look at the bump on his head. To make sure he’s healthy, so nothing will come back on us.”
“What? Where? That could be dangerous. We’ve already got people looking for us, Remy. I think we should just get away from here, now.”
“You gotta trust me, babe. Let me play this my way. We’re going to do this—it’s going to work. Then we’ll be done running. It’ll be over and we’ll get our little place in the sun. We’ll start our new lives, our real lives, and make all of our dreams come true.”
Mason ran his hands over his stubbled face.
“Hey.” She touched his shoulder. “I’m hungry. Why don’t you go get us some breakfast, babe? Then we’ll get rolling.”
He looked at her, internally confronting their situation. Then he washed up, dressed and left.
Remy returned to Caleb, lowered herself to the floor, smiling at him.
“You’re so lucky. Yes, you are. Your mother was weak, unworthy. She couldn’t face up to her responsibilities to protect you. You’ll never have to worry about seeing her again. You’re so lucky I was there to save you from certain death in that storm. Yes, you are. Now, very soon I’m going to put you in a better place. Yes, I am. It’s all meant to be.”
12
Dallas–Fort Worth Metroplex, Texas
Sitting behind the wheel of his battered pickup truck at the traffic light, Mason Varno gritted his teeth.
Everything’s gone to hell. Everything’s closing in.
He looked at the surrounding traffic, checked his mirrors.
Sure as shit more people would be looking for them now.
He hammered his palms against the wheel.
I’m not going down for this. I’m not going back to prison for some whacked-out—
The light changed.
Calm down. Think this through. Take care of first things first.
He looked around. Other than a scattering of branches and trash, he saw no storm damage in this neighborhood. He wheeled into a McDonald’s parking lot, taking a spot out of sight in a far corner, under the shade of a maple tree. He fished out a small glass tube and a stamp-sized square of tinfoil. He unfolded the foil to reveal the small heap of crystals, almost tasting the anticipation as he heated the underside with his disposable lighter. The crystals crackled, liquefied and vaporized. He savored the smell as he inhaled the rising smoke through the pipe.
Sweet Jesus, yes.
In seconds, Mason floated on a euphoric cloud. All his troubles lightened and drifted away as he shut his eyes to embrace the bliss.
That’s what I needed. Now I can think.
Review and assess, as his counselor used to say.
Mason guided his pickup through the back of the long drive-through line.
He’d never expected Remy to kidnap a baby. All this time he’d thought that her odd behavior was a reaction to the stillbirth last month. That these past couple of weeks she’d needed to cozy up to other women and their babies in malls and such because it was a kind of therapy for her.
At the hospital, a few days after it had happened, the doctor had informed Mason that Remy was having trouble dealing with the loss and could experience “borderline postpartum psychosis.” It meant she’d sometimes have “delusions, hallucinations and other thought disturbances.” They gave her medication, but every so often Remy had a spell, a headache accompanied by a lot of crying.
Mason never thought her condition would go beyond her having the blues and ogling other people’s babies then—BAM—she grabbed that kid after the storm, then screamed at him that the mother’s dead and the kid’s bleeding and they have to get out.
But the mother ain’t dead, is she, Remy? She’s on the damn news looking for her baby, and we’re in a world of trouble.
He shook his head as he inched his truck along the drive-through line.
Oh, but Remy had a plan.
She had a way out of their situation, and she wanted him to trust her. Un-freaking-believable. She was an unstable psychotic, and he had to trust her plan?
He struggled to get hold of the situation, which was getting worse by the second. The baby’s got that bump on his head. That can’t be good. What if it dies? He’ll just dump the thing and Remy and run, find his way out of it all. I should do it now. Just hit the gas, he thought. Dump her now and never look back.
But he couldn’t.
He was handcuffed to her by circumstance.
How in hell had he let this happen? He had planned things so carefully while doing his eighteen months in Hightower Unit. His time was for a drug deal that involved a lot of players and went wrong. A lot of money was lost, and Mason took the fall with the understanding that he would be cut loose, left alone. Then word got to Mason inside that a wronged party, a guy by the name of DOA, might seek payback or retribution from Mason. DOA had a lot of associates. Mason knew some of them, and he could trust a few but not all of them. One thing Mason knew about DOA was that he was big on threats, liked to talk them up but didn’t always follow through. Still, as month after month passed, Mason kept his ear to the ground for talk about DOA reaching inside to seek vengeance on him. So far, nothing had come of his threat.
Remy had started writing to him through a social network. Then she’d started visiting. She was a looker, no doubt about it. And he’d decided that of all the women who’d written to him, she was the one he’d use for his plan.
In Hightower he needed to show the system that he had something stable set up on the outside to be eligible for early release and a minimum level of supervised parole. Inside, he stayed out of trouble, enrolled in carpentry school and took several reentry programs dealing with addiction, conflict and confrontation, learning how to “cage your rage.” His clear, stated objective was to settle into a stable life with his new woman, Remy Toxton, and get a carpentry job with the goal of eventually starting his own carpentry business in Oregon, where Remy wanted to get married and begin a family. It was what the Texas Department of Criminal Justice needed to hear from inmate #01286413.
But it was all bullshit.
Sure, once Mason got out, he’d play along with the straight life until he activated his real plan, which he’d kept secret from Remy. In prison, trusted friends told Mason that for $25,000 he could buy into an import-export start-up company run by an American player known only as Garza. This business would be based in Belize, then expand in the Caribbean and Central America. It was going to be huge. With the $25,000 investment Mason was guaranteed $250,000 return in the first two months.
Word got back to Mason that Garza would let him into the enterprise as a favor for a friend. Garza was moving fast so he’d set a deadline for Mason’s delivery of $25,000 cash: within three months of Mason’s release.
Trouble was Mason had lied about having the cash.
He’d said he had it stashed from the deal he was doing time for, just so Garza would hold a place for him in the deal when he got out.
Truth was Mason had no cash.
He’d told no one, but when Mason got out he intended to pull a few quick freelance deals to secure the cash for his investment. It was risky, but it was the best he could do.
Whenever Remy visited Mason at the prison he’d tell her he needed $25,000 to start his carpentry business. Then they could live their dream in Oregon. That’s when she stunned him.
“I can get the cash for us,” she said.
A couple of months after that, she beamed from the other side of the glass, telling him that she was pregnant, how she’d answered an ad online to be a surrogate. When she delivered and signed off she’d get $60,000.
Mason couldn’t believe his ears.
But there Remy was, smiling, saying it was all legal, all handled by international adoption lawyers through a global network. They took care of everything. They’d flown her to one of their clinics overseas for the procedure. Remy would be due around the time of Mason’s release. She said giving up the baby was not a big deal for her. As a teen she’d had a baby and given it up to some couple. This time it was all planned, and again she’d help a childless couple.
“And I’ll be helping us get closer to our dream, too. It’s all meant to be, babe,” Remy told him.
This was a long way from the fifty dollars in gate money and the bus ticket the prison gave Mason when he got out. It left him thinking how now he wouldn’t have to pull off any risky deals. When Remy delivered the baby, he’d take $25,000 and dump her.
Hard.
Let her learn a valuable life lesson.
He had other plans that did not include carpentry, kids or any white picket fences in freaking Oregon.
When Mason was released from Hightower, Remy had things nicely set up. She already had a clean apartment for them in Lufkin where Mason started his first carpentry job, through a prison reentry program with a faith-based outreach group, the Fellowship of the Good Thief Society. They’d already helped him get the low-interest loan on his truck, which he needed for work, and they were very protective of an ex-con’s privacy.
As part of the surrogate deal, Remy’s agency would pay all her medical costs and ensure regular home visits by nurses, and provide a small living allowance. But, if the mother backed out of the deal, or lost the baby, all coverage would cease and the mother could be responsible for repaying the agency fifty percent of what they’d paid out to cover medical costs so far.
“They told me they deal with repayment by the mothers on a case-by-case basis,” Remy said.
Remy and Mason kept the surrogacy secret and kept to themselves. Everything went well until the night he woke to Remy’s screams as she held herself in agony.
“Something’s wrong, Mason! Take me to a hospital!”
His first thought was to alert Remy’s agency nurse.
“No! They can’t know! If I lose it, we lose everything! We’ve got to do this without them knowing at all! Hurry, call the people you work for. I saw in your file papers, the church fellowship that supported you, they’re connected to a medical network. There’s a twenty-four-hour emergency number.”
Mason’s people were helpful and discreet. They’d immediately arranged for an ambulance to rush Remy and Mason to the Beau Soleil West Medical Center, a faith-based nonprofit hospital in Shreveport, a little over one hundred miles away.
That’s where she lost the baby.
The church group quietly covered all the costs and arranged to bring them back to Lufkin, protecting Remy and Mason’s privacy while they mourned their loss. Few people knew what had happened.
Remy said they had to leave before the agency nurse came for her next visit. Once the agency found out what had happened, Remy would not only lose out on all that cash, but the agency would demand she repay them half of the thousands they’d spent on her.
“We have to get away, Mason, so I can decide what to do.”
He told his employer and parole officer what had happened and that they needed time away, for a “spiritual retreat,” to begin to heal.
They pulled together all the cash they had and hit the road. They both tried to find a solution in between Remy’s postpartum bouts of psychosis.
That’s how Mason got here.
The speaker atop the menu board crackled.
“May I take your order?”
He ordered, and as he moved on down the line he wondered if his situation could get any worse. While idling, he reached under his seat and felt his Smith & Wesson .40-caliber pistol and the magazine, taking comfort in the fact it was there if he needed it. Then he licked the residue off of the small square of foil as he always did in a bid to prolong his comedown. There was no shortage of challenges.
He glanced at the letters on the console, one reminding him of his monthly meeting with his parole officer, another from the Parole Division saying he’d been randomly selected for drug and alcohol testing. He had twenty-four hours to report to a District Parole Office to submit a urinalysis. Failure to appear would result in a case conference, which was not a good thing.
Mason stopped at the first window and paid for the food.
While waiting to pick up his order, he saw a new message on his phone. The number was blocked.
Heard you are out and got access to 25k—about what you owe. DOA’s comin for your ass.
13
Dallas, Texas
Stiff from five hours of hard sleep, Kate woke with adrenaline pumping through her. She sat up and switched on the TV news.
Still live with wall-to-wall coverage of the storm.
While watching, she checked her phone for new messages. Nothing. Again, she came to her photo of Jenna Cooper searching for her baby. Could I help her find him? Again, Kate felt like she had been punched in the gut. It had only been a few hours since Dorothea Pick dismissed her desire to follow Jenna’s tragic story.
Why is she sidelining me and not the others? I need this job as much as they do. I can’t sit here until three in the afternoon to work in the bureau when one of the biggest stories in the world is happening all around me.
Kate showered, dressed and bit into a stale bagel for breakfast as she went online and searched the long list of emergency shelters across the Metroplex. After making notes on those located near the flea market, she went to her car, determined to deliver a solid story today.
I’ll prove that I’m as good as the others.
Early-morning traffic was manageable. Thankfully she was familiar with her destination. First, she went to the flea market, where she’d learned that security had been tightened. For safety reasons, access was now limited to officials and media with valid accreditation.
After Kate showed her Newslead ID, she headed across the debris-covered grounds to the Saddle Up Center, concerned that she was not going to find Jenna and Cassie Cooper here.
Amid the barks of dog teams, search-and-rescue efforts were still continuing before the operation evolved into debris removal, Fire Captain J. B. Langston told her.
“We’ve been going all night and we haven’t recovered a baby so far. We’ve extracted more injured survivors and fatalities. Several children and more adult victims, but no baby,” Langston said. “You know that people were swept up into the winds. I heard our guys found one of the center’s vendors in a tree, seven miles from here.”
“Yeah, that was terrible. I read that in an Associated Press story,” Kate said. “Captain, do you have any idea where shelter survivors and their families were taken?”
“Try Rivergreen Community Hall. There are a few others but Rivergreen’s your best bet.”
It was a short drive, some two miles south. The community hall, a square one-story building, had been designated an emergency shelter for the area.
Emergency vehicles, buses, news vans, along with trucks delivering food, water and other aid, filled the parking lot. Clearly, this shelter had been operating nonstop through the night, Kate thought as she entered.
Inside, the hall droned with activity. Banners from a Retirement & Appreciation banquet, planned for last night, waved like a memory over rows of cots and mats occupied by people recovering from the storm. They filled the large central area. Some were sleeping, some were huddled comforting others. Some were reading government application forms or talking on cell phones. Although spotty, there was service.
Tables staffed by emergency workers, aid agencies, church groups and other volunteers lined the walls. They offered medical help, advice on insurance claims and counseling. Signs pointed to showers, extra toilets, laundry facilities, toiletries, towels, clothing and toys. There was a station to donate blood. At one end of the hall, people lined up for hot food. Several large TVs were turned to storm news and there were computers with internet service donated by local companies.
Kate came to a heartbreaking sight in one corner: a Missing/Displaced Persons sign. Under it were a few dozen photographs of women, children and men of all ages hastily taped to the wall like a patchwork quilt of hope. A few had little notes with contact information attached to them.
The effort was run by the Missing Person Emergency Search System—MPESS—a national agency based in Washington, D.C. When Kate arrived, several staff members at three tables were using laptops, maps and cell phones as they took information from anguished people.
A bleary-eyed man in his late forties with salt-and-pepper hair turned to her. He was wearing a navy MPESS polo shirt. The ID tag hanging from his neck said Frank Rivera, Supervisor.
“Sure, I got a minute,” Rivera said after Kate had requested someone with the group speak to the press. “What do you need?”
She asked for a rundown on the search system, how it was helping to find missing people, because she’d thought that the process was already being handled by local relief workers.
“That’s correct,” Rivera said, “we’re helping local groups and the Dallas Police Department and Sheriffs for surrounding counties. We’re coordinating their ‘missing persons’ work and their database. We’re an experienced national nonprofit agency, with expertise in this area of crisis response. We’ve got retired cops, federal agents and investigators. The federal Justice Department and FEMA arranged for us to come. Once they got the airports running, most of our teams flew in overnight from all over the country. We’re set up at emergency shelters at all the hardest-hit communities.”
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Rick Mofina
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Триллеры
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: An anguished mother loses her baby in a deadly storm…A kind stranger helps Jenna Cooper protect her baby boy when a killer tornado rips through a Dallas flea market. But in the aftermath, Jenna can′t find her son or the woman who′d been holding him.A journalist under pressure breaks the story…Upon discovering the tragedy, reporter and single mom Kate Page, battling for her career and trying to hold her life together, vows to determine what happened to tiny Caleb Cooper.A vortex of life-and-death forces…As the FBI launches an investigation amid the devastation, Kate uncovers troubling clues to the trail of the woman last seen with the baby…clues that reveal a plot more sinister than anybody had imagined. Against mounting odds, Kate risks everything in the race to find the truth…before it′s too late.