Henry recognized her then. “Great God Almighty,” he whispered. He reached out and gripped her arm. Her teeth showed white in a kind of smile. Her face was black as a miner’s.
“How about your family?” Lenore asked. She was hoarse from much shouted talk.
Henry felt the pain again. “I don’t know, dear! I don’t know!” He held his head close to reduce the need for bellowing every word. “Ted’s under a brick slide….”
“I’m sorry.”
“Mother’s up at the First Aid. Nora—search me! Chuck reported yesterday at Hink Field.”
She nodded. She looked, briefly but in a special way, at the fire storm. Henry knew what she was thinking: Chuck was not in there; he hadn’t been caught downtown as she’d feared. But she didn’t mention her feelings. “Gotta get cracking,” she said and left.
He looked, now, at the tunnel. That was where she’d been. In that hole through hell.
There, where the roof might fall, where there could be a gas explosion, where she might be burned alive or slowly baked alive, suffocated, smothered, crushed, even drowned, pinned in some spot where a pipe leaked.
The crew was clearing out in cars and trucks, going someplace unknown to Henry. He hadn’t asked where. There were more assignments than people. And his people, he reflected grimly, were being reduced in numbers now to aid River City.
“Shall we get along?” Lacey asked.