When the shaking subsided, Chloe lifted her head. Mateo stared at her, breathing hard. They were still alive. There was no tsunami. He stood, studying their surroundings. This quake hadn’t felt as strong as the others.
“We’re okay,” she said, hugging Emma to her chest. “We’re okay.”
They kept moving away from the coast. Chloe’s thigh ached. She was becoming numb to the pain. Instead of being alert and focused, she felt drowsy. Her mind couldn’t handle sharp acuity. Her body wanted to quit.
Mateo stopped for a short rest, sharing a bottle of water that he must have picked up at the gift shop. Then he dug into his supplies for a little bag of magic: gummy bears. Emma accepted a handful with delight. Mateo was her new favorite person. The candy was a real lifesaver. He offered a few gummy bears to Chloe, who popped them into her mouth. The instant sugar rush lifted her spirits.
She could do this. She could keep going.
They continued their staggering journey toward the park at the end of the peninsula. Emma walked beside Chloe, holding her hand. The little girl was tired of being carried, and the extra weight on Chloe’s injured side was uncomfortable. She hoped the tsunami warning was a false alarm.
Embarcadero Park was a grassy area interspersed with picnic tables and domed pavilions. It was on higher ground, so that was good. But also bad, because climbing would be difficult for Chloe.
Whoosh-boom.
Air sucked out and pressure slammed in as something exploded in the distance. It sounded as if a pile of fireworks had gone off, or the guys on the naval base had decided to test everything in their artillery at once.
She swooped up Emma and looked over her shoulder in dismay. The bay was on fire. The
water
in the bay was on fire.
Chloe was no science expert, but she understood the basics. Water didn’t burn. So there was something on the surface, a type of fuel or chemical. More explosions followed the first. Huge clouds of fire burst on the shore like atomic bombs. There had been a major malfunction at the military base. Maybe the airport.
It didn’t really matter. The important part was that a lot of stuff was on fire. Everywhere. Flaming debris was flying through the air, catching the branches of nearby trees. The earthquake had probably caused some pipelines to break, because the downtown area was going off like bottle rockets.
Forget the tsunami—they needed to escape the
fire.
Mateo pulled her toward the only shelter available. It was some kind of heavy-duty storage shed made of concrete blocks. The roof might be flammable, but they didn’t have much choice. They’d get incinerated if they stayed out in the open. The pavilions were already burning. Orange cinders were dancing on the wind and floating across the sky, like monarch butterflies. Her nostrils stung from chemical fumes.
The door must have been damaged in the quake, because it came right off the hinges. They scrambled inside, coughing. She squinted at the strange interior. There were fat blue pipes, wider than her waist in circumference, imbedded in the concrete floor.
“Are these gas pipes?” she gasped, horrified.
“Agua,”
Mateo said.
That meant water. Blue pipes. It made sense. She tried to shush a distraught Emma by pressing her lips to the little girl’s forehead. To Chloe’s left, there was a set of aluminum steps leading down to a second floor. Chloe was worried about the pipes exploding, but she was more worried about being able to breathe, and the main room was filling with smoke. They went down the steps, moving carefully. The lower section was similar to the upper, with blue pipes. It was dark and cramped, but the air was clean. For the time being, they were safe.
Her knees almost buckled with relief.
Mateo helped her sit down in the corner. When their eyes adjusted to the meager light, he supplied Emma with more gummy bears, chatting in a cheerful voice. Chloe could have kissed him. But she was tired, and suddenly cold. Her T-shirt and jeans were still damp. She touched the wet sock around her thigh, hoping the bleeding had slowed.
Mateo removed a hooded sweatshirt from his beach bag.
“Thank you,” she said in a hoarse voice, putting it on.
He also had a child’s T-shirt for Emma. Chloe took off her ladybug top first. She tucked the fabric under her bottom like a diaper, figuring any barrier was better than none. Then she helped Emma don the dry shirt.
“Flower,” Emma said, touching the hibiscus decal on the front.
The firestorm raged on outside. Chloe could hear trees falling and wind blowing. Again, she wondered if the world was ending. It was a maudlin thought, but her mind often traveled that direction. She’d suffered from depression after Emma was born. Before, as well, although her parents had called it “teen angst.” Getting involved with Lyle had fed her self-destructive tendencies. Breaking up with him sent her into a downward spiral.
Why was she alive?
She hadn’t wanted to be, for months at a time. Her mother had taken care of Emma while Chloe slept all day. She hadn’t gone to school or work. She hadn’t even left the house. She’d done nothing but lay in bed.
It was difficult for her to believe she deserved to be here. Someone who’d tried to take her own life had been spared above others. For what? To witness the real end? Maybe this was the ultimate punishment for her carelessness and self-harm. Watching her child suffer and witnessing a fiery apocalypse.
She began to tremble, overwhelmed with emotion. They’d just survived another incredibly traumatic event. She didn’t know if they’d make it out of this temporary hideaway. The city was burning down around them. People who’d been trapped inside their homes, who hadn’t been able to escape fast enough, were now dying.
Chloe wasn’t equipped to take this in stride. She didn’t have the temperament to stay strong during a catastrophe. She couldn’t handle seeing Emma in pain or in danger. Shrugging off death and destruction was beyond her.
Mateo gave Emma a keychain with a red penlight. She pointed it at the wall, making red dots dance across the surface.
Chloe kept shivering.
Mateo sat down beside her. After a short hesitation, he put his arm around her. He thought she was cold, and she was. The warmth of his body felt pleasant, but it was the basic human contact that soothed her. The same way his support had kept her going, and the candy revived her spirits, his touch lifted her up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
H
ELENA’S WARNING CAME
a second too late.
She watched in horror as Josh froze on the ladder, midstep. The lower half of his body was beneath the safety guard, about four feet off the ground. He couldn’t avoid Zuma’s stealth attack. The lioness rushed from the shadows and leaped into the air, pouncing on Josh’s dangling foot.
Helena swallowed a scream, expecting to see sharp teeth, gore and bits of flesh attached to a shinbone. Instead the lioness let out a playful growl and held his boot between her paws as if she’d just caught a mouse.
Josh made the high-pitched yelp of a man who’d been goosed. He jerked his foot back and forth, trying to shake loose from the big cat’s paws. Zuma didn’t put up much of a fight; she was just toying with him. He broke free and high-tailed it back up the ladder so fast Helena didn’t have time to move to make room for him.
“Fuck,” he said, crowding in behind her.
Directly below them, Zuma sniffed at the weapons and rubbed her cheek against the lowest ladder rungs. After circling the pole a few times, she batted a pile of leaves on the ground. Then she rolled in them.
Helena wasn’t fooled; this was not a cute kitty.
Lions were social animals, even in captivity. Some were friendly with their handlers, docile at all times. Not Zuma. She was an aggressive member of the species, difficult to work with and picky about food. She could be gentle one minute and nasty the next. Her jowls were stained red with Greg’s blood.
Helena pressed her forehead against the cool metal rung, her heart pounding. She pictured Josh kicking wildly and shooting up the ladder. His panicked whoop echoed in her ears. The scene played over and over in her mind like a Three Stooges reel. She imagined it set to a slapstick soundtrack, with a lively piano riff as he raced along the rungs.
There was nothing the least bit funny about a lion attack, or anything else they’d experienced today. But Josh’s freak-out struck her as hilarious, and her attempts to smother the giggles didn’t work. Maybe it was the stress of the situation. Maybe she was having a mental breakdown. She couldn’t seem to get a grip on herself, so she just surrendered to the moment and laughed like a madwoman.
Josh seemed baffled by her outburst. He glanced down at Zuma, who was stretched out in the shade. Then he shifted his position on the ladder so he could examine Helena’s face. It was probably red and splotchy. She was almost crying.
“Are you laughing?”
She nodded and laughed some more. Ugly laughing. Her nose was running.
“You’re laughing at me. Witnessing my near-death amuses you.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped, trying to get a hold of herself. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt. I almost pissed my pants, but I’m not hurt.”
That set her off again. She giggled until she was out of breath. Then she sagged against the ladder, belly aching.
“Are you done?”
She blotted her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “Yes.”
“You sure?”
“You must think I’m crazy.”
“No.”
“Weird, then.”
“Not at all. I’m just glad we found your sense of humor. It went missing for a few years.”
“Ha-ha,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“You should laugh more often. It looks good on you.”
She sobered at this statement, said in a warm tone. His gaze was admiring, even eager. He’d clearly enjoyed her loss of control, and not just because it broke the tension between them. There was a sexual element to his reaction. He liked seeing her flushed with pleasure.
She’d learned to be wary of male coworkers at her first job as a stable hand. Brusque tomboys weren’t immune to crude advances. It was an unpleasant life lesson she’d never forgotten.
Some men preyed on vulnerable women. Others harassed the ones they felt the most threatened by. Helena placed herself in that second category. But Josh wasn’t either type of man, despite his suggestive comments. His humor was good-natured and impulsive, not degrading. She’d been too busy avoiding him to acknowledge that.
She’d never acknowledged the chemistry between them, either. She hadn’t been forced to confront it. The earthquake had shaken her up and busted down her guard, exposing a desire she’d been trying to suppress. She wasn’t worried about Josh cornering her behind the vending machines or stealing a kiss. If anything, the idea excited her.
She
liked
him.
Well, maybe
like
wasn’t the right word. Physical attraction didn’t require her to like him. He might be smarter and more dependable than she’d given him credit for, but he wasn’t her respected colleague. He wasn’t best-buddy material. Josh Garrison was some other kind of material. One-night-stand material. Stumbling-home-from-the-bar material. Guilty-pleasure, mindless-hookup, shower-fantasy material.
Heat flooded her cheeks at the mental picture, which seemed twice as pornographic in his proximity. It was one thing to entertain dirty thoughts in private. Conjuring them while he was staring right at her was quite another.
Because of their respective positions on the ladder, his eyes were level with her mouth. His right foot was on a lower ladder rung, his left propped up on the guard. Their bodies were almost touching in several places. His chest rose and fell with steady breaths. She could feel the warmth of his hand next to hers and see beads of perspiration at his temple. A crease formed between his brows, as if he could read her mind.
Instead of teasing her further, he cleared his throat and glanced away. He looked a bit flushed himself. The temperature had risen between them. He smelled good, like ocean and clean sweat and salty male skin. She wondered how he would taste.
Time to move.
He couldn’t go down; she had to go up. Feeling awkward, she ascended a few rungs. When her raging hormones subsided, she grabbed her radio to call Trent at the reptile house. “Trent, this is Helena. We’ve got a lion issue.”
He didn’t respond.
“The code one is confirmed,” she said into the receiver. “We’re on tram pole number three, in need of assistance.”
Still nothing.
“Try yours,” she said to Josh.
He lifted his radio and repeated the same information. With the same results. They spent the next few minutes trying to get through to Trent and Louis, to no avail. Josh sent a text on his cell phone. They waited. Zuma waited with them, napping in the shade.
“Maybe they left,” Helena said.
“Without saying goodbye?”
It seemed unlikely. Trent and Louis were both dedicated herpetologists. They often traded pranks with Josh and Cordell, but the ongoing rivalry was grounded in friendship. The four of them were bros. “I hope they’re okay,” she said. Then a terrible thought occurred to her. “What about Tau?”
Josh looked down at Zuma. “I thought only female lions hunted.”
“They hunt more often.”
“Maybe I should make a grab for the gun.”
“I wouldn’t risk it,” Helena said. “She could jump up and attack you in a flash. Lions can move incredibly fast.”
“How fast?”
“Fifty miles an hour, in short sprints.”
He touched one of the pouches on his belt. “I have pepper spray.”
“How far does it go?”
“Ten feet.”
Zuma was at least twenty feet away from the pole.
“I’ll give you the spray,” he said. “You keep an eye on her while I get the gun. If she comes at me, blast her.”
Helena wasn’t on board with this plan. “She might not stop. It’s a deterrent, not a guarantee.”
“So what do you want to do?” he asked, impatient.
“There’s nothing we
can
do.”
He fell silent for moment. “I have another idea.”