Major Nanny. Paula Graves
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to help the injured.” He caught her arm, making her gasp. He loosened his grip, tried to soften his voice. She looked shell-shocked and he didn’t need to spook her any further. “Go find as many able-bodied people as you can. We need to start some sort of triage—”
She straightened, as if she’d found her core of steel. “Okay.” Her chin lifted and her eyes flashed with determination as she headed out in search of help.
He wasn’t surprised when she returned a few minutes later with several people in tow. Most had clearly survived the blast themselves, their clothing covered with grime and fine debris. Some, like Stacy, had cuts and scrapes, but they all seemed relieved to have a purpose—something to take their minds off witnessing their world upended.
Sometimes, Harlan knew, finding something useful to do was the only thing that kept you sane in a crazy world.
He sent Stacy Giordano and her army in search of people who were moving around, while he checked on the ones who weren’t moving. Unlike his civilian helpers, he had plenty of experience in dealing with mortality. Too much experience.
He found two D.O.A.s and a couple more who might not make it. As he moved to the next body—a man in a state trooper uniform lying near the mangled remains of the dais—he heard sirens approaching at a clip.
“It’s Chip!” Stacy Giordano rushed past him toward the state trooper. “He’s part of the governor’s security detail.”
Harlan raced to catch up, not sure what she’d find when she reached the trooper’s still body.
Stacy crouched next to the man, her fingers on his carotid. “He’s alive,” she said briskly. Her hands moved over his body, searching for injuries. She moved with a sureness that caught Harlan by surprise.
“You a nurse or something?”
She glanced at him. “No. Search and rescue medic training. There’s a lump here at the back of his head. Skull feels intact, but it may be a concussion.” She checked the man’s eyes with a small penlight attached to a keychain. “Pupils reactive. Good sign.”
The man made a low groaning sound.
“EMTs are arriving. We should back off, let them work,” Harlan suggested.
“There aren’t going to be enough for everybody. Not yet—”
He caught her arm and tugged her to a standing position. “We’ll be in the way. And we don’t know that we’ve seen the last of the blasts.”
Her eyes widened. “You think there could be more coming?”
“It’s possible,” he admitted. “Sometimes there’s a secondary device—”
“To hit the first responders.” Stacy’s jaw squared. “Then we’d better find the governor and get her out of here.” She started toward the back of the dais before he could stop her.
He jogged to catch up.
“She was standing back here,” Stacy called over her shoulder, “so if she dropped with the dais—”
Harlan spotted a flash of pale blue under the tangle of metal piping and wooden slats that had once constituted the bunting-draped platform where Lila Lockhart had declared her intention to run for higher office. Lila had been wearing a light blue suit, hadn’t she?
“Lila!” Stacy dashed forward. “Lila, can you hear me?”
“I’m stuck under this damned mess!” Lila called out, her voice surprisingly strong. “I must’ve bumped my head—I was out a few seconds—”
“Hold still—you don’t want to cause yourself more injury,” Harlan warned. “Did you see what happened to Bart?”
“He was right behind me—”
“I’m over here.” A man’s voice, weak and strained, came from somewhere behind Harlan.
Harlan turned to see a large chunk of the dais had broken off and flown backward in the blast, landing sideways in a shallow rill in the capitol grounds. “Bart?”
“Knocked me clean on my backside!” Bart called out, his voice a little stronger. “But I can’t get my chair up.”
“Keep her from moving,” Harlan ordered Stacy before he hurried to the second debris site. To his relief, Bart had been thrown clear of the twisted tangle of wood and metal, but the old man and his wheelchair both lay on their sides in the grass beyond the rill.
“I’m afraid this is probably a goner,” Harlan said as he picked up the wheelchair, pushing it away from Bart’s useless legs to free them. He grimaced as his scarred right hand twinged where he gripped the chair handle.
“Is Lila okay?” Bart asked.
“She’s alive. She’s trapped under the debris, but she sounds good. The paramedics are on the way.”
“Who did this? Frank Dorian’s in jail.”
“I don’t know.” Harlan ran his hands over Bart’s body, looking for injuries. He didn’t feel any obvious broken bones, and the old man seemed bright-eyed and lucid. “Do you have any pain anywhere?”
Bart shook his head. “The explosion flung me like a rag doll, but I reckon I landed that way, too. Probably saved me a broken bone or two.” He clapped his hand on one useless leg. “Not that I’d have noticed.”
Harlan looked again at the wheelchair. The control panel had been damaged by the impact, but the wheels and frame looked surprisingly sturdy. “Let’s get you into the chair and see if we can’t do this the old-fashioned way.”
He picked up Bart and set him in the wheelchair, taking another chance to look him over. Bart’s well-seamed face was scraped and dirty, but he didn’t seem to have any worrisome injuries, to Harlan’s relief.
“Quit lookin’ at me like I’m about to keel over any minute,” Bart groused.
Harlan bit back a grin. “Let’s go check on Lila.”
The wheelchair wasn’t easy to push over the uneven, grassy terrain, especially with Harlan’s hand starting to ache as if he’d taken the shrapnel injury moments earlier rather than months ago. But Harlan was so relieved Bart seemed to be okay that he barely felt the pain.
When they reached the edge of the debris pile, Stacy was crouched outside near the governor, peering through the maze of steel and splintered wood. “It looks as if the main thing trapping her is that crossbeam,” Stacy told Harlan as he hunkered down beside her. She pointed to a large steel support bar that once had been one of the stabilizing structures for the dais. It didn’t look particularly heavy, but the way the bar was wedged between the ground and clumps of the fallen platform, it wouldn’t budge. Lila was effectively pinned in place, unable to move more than a couple of inches in any direction.
“You’re a big, strappin’ fellow. Can’t you move it?” Lila asked.
Harlan smiled. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid it’s probably going to have to be cut apart to get you out.” Especially with his hand being half-useless.
“What about coming at it from the back side?” Stacy asked. “Lila can’t turn around because of the debris blocking her, but if I could crawl in and move some of the looser pieces out of the way—”
“No way I’m letting you go under there,” Harlan said.
“Now you’ve done it,” Lila murmured.
“Letting me?” Stacy stared at him as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “Not your call, Mr. McClain. If there’s even a chance there’s a secondary explosive device—”
“There probably isn’t.”
“But if there is, and someone timed it to go off when it would do the most damage, the governor needs to be out from under there now.”