Red Alert. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ he could have jumped in and saved her.

      If he jumped in now, there would be two of them stuck, drowning.

      The flowing cement cut out with a rattle. The last few blobs plopped into the foundation form and were immediately absorbed by the smooth gray surface.

      There was no sign of Meg Corning. No sign of movement.

      Panic spiked through Erik. “Damn it! Where’s that crane?”

      “Here!” a man’s voice shouted, and a weighted ball with a large, dangling hook swung down into the foundation pit.

      Erik was aware of the shouting, gesturing pedestrians cramming close to the disaster site, aware of the rising throb of sirens in the near distance. The local cops would be here any moment, but the trapped woman couldn’t wait that long.

      The thought brought an image of her, a flash of red-gold curls and intelligent hazel eyes, a stacked body hidden beneath a starched white lab coat.

      He’d gone to the meeting in person because he’d needed to put a face to the reams of reports he’d amassed on Meg Corning. He’d told himself it was groundwork, but it had been more than that.

      It had been a compulsion. He’d needed to see her.

      Now he might be the last person to ever see her.

      The crane operator finally swung the line toward Erik, who caught the cable. Cursing, he pulled himself onto the swinging weight, braced his good foot on the hook and let the other leg dangle free. Damn thing wasn’t good for much else.

      “Lower me into the pit,” he shouted, waving at the crane operator. “Stop when I give the signal!”

      He hung on tight as the crane operator swung him out over the slick gray surface and lowered him toward the cement. Please let it still be liquid, he thought. Please let her be holding her breath.

      But that seemed a thin hope. The average person would be struggling. Thrashing. Fighting to get free, only to drive themselves deeper into the muck. The very stillness of the slurry was a problem. Either Meg Corning had professional-level survival skills or she’d lost consciousness.

      Having met the pretty lady doctor, he feared the latter. She didn’t seem like the survivalist type.

      “Okay, stop!” He waved when the hook was barely skimming the surface of the cement, not wanting to drop the heavy weight on top of her. Then he took two quick breaths, aimed off to the side of the form, away from where she’d fallen—

      And jumped.

      The impact was like slamming into a solid floor that became liquid the moment he passed through. His bad leg folded, sending agony up his hip. He ignored the pain and fought through the clinging gray grit, which had started to set.

      It wouldn’t be fully solidified for hours, maybe days, but the partially thickened soup blocked his efforts. She couldn’t be more than three feet away, but he couldn’t get to her.

      Heart pounding, fearing it was already too late, he reached up and grabbed on to the hook, then waved to the operator. “Pull me toward the other side. Slowly!”

      Gravel and grit dug into his hands as the hook moved, dragging him through the resisting cement, sparking tortured howls in his bum leg.

      Not for the first time, he wished they had just cut the damn thing off.

      Then he felt something beneath him. A change in the texture, a hint of cloth and something solid.

      “Hold it!” he shouted. “Stop! I’ve got her.”

      He looped one arm over the hook and reached down with the other. He felt for a handful of cloth, an arm, something he could use to drag her to the surface.

      A strong hand clasped his wrist.

      “She’s conscious!” he shouted. “Pull me up, quick! No,” he contradicted himself, “Slowly. Very slowly.”

      He didn’t want to lose his grip. More importantly, he didn’t want to hurt her. The hold of the cement was stronger than he’d expected.

      He reached down and grabbed her upper arm, near where it joined her body. As though they’d discussed the plan, she wrapped her arms around his legs and hung on tight.

      This time he welcomed the burn of pain that shot up his right hip.

      “Okay, pull!”

      The crane engine revved above him and the weighted hook lifted. Erik’s shoulder joint popped.

      The hook rose, but he didn’t. A human anchor weighted him down. She was stuck fast, and the seconds counting down in his head told him she didn’t have much time left.

      Indeed, he felt her grip slacken, sliding in the grit and the grime.

      Then her hands fell away. Her body went limp against him and the image of her peaches-and-cream complexion went gray in his mind’s eye.

      No!

      The hook continued to lift. Erik’s shoulder and arm burned, but there was no give from below.

      He needed more lift, more strength, more leverage. The man he’d been before would have had the tools and the skills, but the man he was now had nothing but a mangled leg.

      With a roar of anger at things he couldn’t change no matter how much he wanted to, he let go of the trapped, unconscious woman and reached up to grab the ascending hook with both hands. He dragged his legs forward and wrapped them around her body. He locked his good ankle around his bad calf and hung on tight.

      If the pins and screws that ached in the dark of winter nights had ever served a purpose, now was the time.

      “Lift hard!” he shouted to the operator, and tensed every muscle in his body. The moment the engine surged, he scissored his legs forward, curling his body up in an effort to break the cement hold on her body.

      Nothing.

      As the clock ticked down past “too late” in his head, he tried again, summoning all of the strength he’d retained, and maybe some remembered from back when he was whole. He pulled himself up toward the hook with his arms and dragged the woman with him, legs vised around her torso.

      He felt a shift. A give. And then he was moving upward, toward street level, toward safety.

      And he brought Meg Corning along with him.

      He heard cheers from the crowd, whoops of sirens and the shouts of local cops creating order. The crane operator lifted him above the crowd, then back down, lowering Erik and his limp burden onto a hastily cleared section of pavement near the broken barrier.

      Uniformed officers reached up to take the unconscious woman, who was immediately swarmed by emergency personnel. They left Erik to jump down on his own.

      He did, then staggered and nearly fell.

      “I’ve got you.” An overweight, balding stranger grabbed him by his sodden suit jacket, righted him, and shoved СКАЧАТЬ