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He took her with him,back into the booth. Brooke just let him. He kept updating the listeners, every ten minutes like clockwork. Brooke manned the satellite phone that he had argued with her father in order to buy four months ago, making notes of all the damages being reported. Of closed roads, and buildings that were opening for the displaced.
Finally, he put a recorded update on and stood. Stretched. Looked at her.
“What have we learned?”
Brooke blinked back the tears. What she was about to say was going to hurt him. “They…The TSP took a direct hit, Houston. It’s been almost leveled. I called the emergency services line. They are saying there are casualties at the TSP. And…one of the hospital emergency departments was struck. They are reporting injuries as well.”
“Which hospital?” He’d paled before her very eyes.
“I don’t know. I’ve got calls out, but the towers…calls are spotty, at best. I’m sorry.” He had a brother, she thought, who worked for the TSP. And…his younger sister, he’d said once. Andhis parents both worked at the same hospital. “You want to try to call your family? I’ll watch the clock.”
He stepped outside to do just that.
Brooke looked up, through the window. Dwight was in there. Watching her.
He blew her a kiss. Made an obscene gesture.
Brooke turned away.
Tonight…she’d get through tonight. Then she and her dad would figure out what to do about him next.
Dwight Hoby wasn’t going to destroy her hard-wonlifenow.
She wasn’t going to let him.
She said a quick prayer that Houston’s family was safe. Said a prayer for her father. And for everyone out there tonight. Anyone facing the storm threat.
But…it was just going to get worse out there, before it got better.
And…she couldn’t find her father. Sheknewhe would be trying to get to her. She’d left him a message about Dwight tonight. She knew…
It terrified her. He could be out there inthis,worried that she was being hurt. And he would be trying to get to her. She knew that.
But the towers were down. Cell phones weren’t working. He didn’t have a satellite phone. He should have a satellite phone. He could afford it.
Panic was setting in.
It was only going to get worse out there before it got better.
CHAPTER 9
It tookhours before they had any answers. It wasn’t his parents’ hospital that had taken a direct hit. It had been Finley Creek Gen, three blocks to the south. Closer to Boethe Street. His parents should be safe now.
Boethe Street, a highly populated, lower socioeconomic residential street that turned into commercial and business district near the north side of the city had been hit hard. Some were saying up to half of that street was just gone.
The TSP building was in that area.
Houston was trying not to panic. Reports were coming in that people were trapped. People were dead.
And he couldn’t get ahold of his brother Mike or his sister A.J.
He wanted to go to them. To find them himself. But he couldn’t. He had a responsibility to communicate with the city around them. To stay calm and reassuring and informative. To helpguidethose in the midst of one of the biggest crises to have ever hit the city.
He was needed. He couldn’t fall apart now.
No one said much. Houston had taken a moment to tell Hoby to keep himself at the controls, and make damned sure not to screw anything up tonight.
He’d kept himself between Brooke and the other man. When all he wanted to do was rip the man to shreds.
