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He knew she couldn’t hear him over the storm, but he had to say it at least once before he died. “I love you, Autumn Jane Evers. And I always will.”
He covered her as best he could as the sounds around them intensified.
And the TSP building came crashing down on top of them.
5
It was completely dark.The air had been sucked out of her lungs—or maybe that had something to do with Sean’s weight crushing her—and it took a moment for A. J. to be able to pull in a breath again. When she did, she wished she’d been a bit less inpatient about it.
Dust and debris filled her lungs.
Just like it had once before.
The internal building warning alarms had stopped. The silence itself was horrible. Like everything had just frozen in that single instant of time.
Or maybe it was just her. Her ears were ringing. That was it.
Sean was pressing her down.
And he wasn’t moving.
She grabbed for her phone. She’d kept her fingers around it somehow. She had no clue how that had happened, but she had her phone.
Not that it was doing her any good—there wasn’t any signal. She didn’t know if it was because they were trapped or because of the storm.
A. J. used the light to check on the man with her.
Sean’s eyes were closed. She screamed his name. It was enough to break whatever strange hold there had been on her ears, to have some of the ringing subsiding.
The sounds of the town sirens were still going off overhead. Thunder still rumbled.
Outside.
Outside somewhere.
The table he’d rolled them under—thank God he had rolled them under the table—had buckled on one end.
It had metal legs, the two five feet to the north of where their heads were had bent like they’d been made out of playdough.
They were in a little cave of debris, and there wasn’t any way out that she could find.
She pulled in another breath, trying to focus on the scent of the man pressed against her and not on the stench of melting rubber and insulation and something almost muddy she could barely define.
And blood. She could smell blood.
She reached one hand up toward his head, praying Sean wasn’t dead. A. J. fought back panic. Panic wouldn’t help either of them.
She found exactly what she expected to find.
Liquid and sticky.
“Sean! Sean, wake up. Please, you have to wake up.”
A. J. slid her fingers down the side of his head toward his neck.
She felt for a pulse. It took her a moment to find it. But there it was, steady and strong. Thank God. “Sean Callum, wake up right now. You are not leaving me trapped under your half-dead body alone. I really need you to wake up, Sean. I really, really need that. Right now. Sean! I need you!”
6
