Aftermath Read online

  Martin reluctantly went back to where his wife was waiting with his family. Jamie swiped through her phone, looking for more news about what was happening less than a mile away.

  “Let’s get to the office before they start blockading the streets,” John said, and she followed him down the steps and out to the parking lot.

  From here, they could see more smoke up the street and people running from the direction of the concert hall.

  “I’ll see if I can find out more about what happened,” John said as he got into her passenger seat.

  She put her briefcase in the back seat of her Lexus and slid in behind the wheel. “Couldn’t have been too long ago, but I didn’t hear anything, did you?”

  He didn’t look up from his phone. “No, nothing. Maybe it was while we were still inside.”

  She turned on the radio and switched it to a local FM station. An announcer was talking rapid-fire.

  “. . . Trudeau Hall, where Ed Loran was holding a political rally. The place was full, and people have been calling in and telling us that they heard an explosion from the front of the room. We’re told there were many fatalities. First responders are on the scene. We’re trying to get information right now about where family members can get word about their loved ones. Stay tuned, and we’ll keep you updated as we learn more.”

  Her stomach sank as she thought about the mayhem that must be happening in that building right now. Please, God, take care of those who are still alive . . .

  John cursed. “You can’t go that way. Turn right here.”

  She whipped into the right lane and barely made the turn that took them farther from the concert hall. But traffic was nearly at a standstill there, too, as more ambulances sirened through.

  John’s phone rang, and he put it to his ear. “John Brackton.”

  As he talked, Jamie’s mind raced. An explosion in a crowded concert hall? Loran was popular, but the band who played at his rally today was even more popular. The crowd was probably young. How many of them had died? What must their families be going through? Were there people still trapped, in need of rescue?

  Suddenly she wanted to get to her mother’s house, pick up Avery, and hold the seven-year-old tight until she complained. She wanted to smell her daughter’s hair and savor her safety.

  It took twenty minutes to get five miles back to her office. They were almost to the firm’s parking garage when Jamie’s phone rang. She checked it. It was a line at the city jail.

  “I have to take this,” she told John, who was still on the phone. “I can let you out here if you want.”

  He nodded and got out, still talking on the phone, and disappeared through the front door.

  Jamie swiped the phone on as she pulled into the parking garage. “Jamie Powell.”

  “Hey, kiddo.”

  She couldn’t quite place the voice, but it had the warm, nostalgic sound of familiarity. “Who’s this?”

  “Dustin Webb.”

  She caught her breath. Of course. That deep, raspy voice, and he was the only one who’d consistently called her kiddo. “Dustin? Why are you calling from the jail?”

  “I’m in trouble. I need a lawyer.”

  She shook her head, as if trying to adjust her brain. “What happened?”

  “I was pulled over, and I let them search my car. I had nothing to hide . . . that I knew of.”

  Her heart jolted. “That you knew of? What did they find?”

  “Explosives, apparently.”

  She drew in a breath and tried to think. Explosives? After a local bombing? This wasn’t good. “Dustin, listen to me very carefully. Do not talk to them. Don’t say a single word until I get there.”

  “When can you come?”

  “I’m in my car now. I’ll be there in a few minutes. But I’m serious, Dustin. No sarcasm, no smart-aleck comebacks, no jokes. Nothing. Tell them you’re waiting for your attorney, then don’t say another word.”

  “Got it.”

  Still holding her phone, she almost ran into a post as she pulled into a wheelchair space, then backed out of it and turned around. She headed for the exit signs. “Why did they pull you over in the first place?”

  “They said they’d gotten a tip. They had a search warrant on the way. I didn’t put those boxes in my car. I didn’t even know they were there, so I told them to go ahead and search.”

  She frowned, her mind racing. “Do you know who could have put them there?”

  “No idea. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “Okay, not a word, Dustin. I’m on my way.”

  She navigated her way down the twisting ramp of the parking garage and pulled into traffic, heading toward downtown. This morning when she’d gotten out of bed, she had believed anything could happen today. Martin Ash could be found guilty and be dragged out of the courtroom, providing all the drama that the media had come for. Or he could be found not guilty and set free. But she had never once thought that Dustin Webb might come back into her life.

  They hadn’t been in touch in the past fifteen years, through no fault of her own. He had ignored all of her letters, her phone calls, and her texts in those first couple of years after he left for boot camp. She had tried to find him on social media, but he wasn’t the type to put himself out there like that. Even when her husband died of a drug overdose, he hadn’t come to the funeral. He had sent flowers and a card that said he was praying for her. She hadn’t even known he prayed. That was the last she had heard from him.

  But the end of their relationship didn’t negate the beginning, no matter how improbable their friendship had been when it began, when she was nine.

  She would never forget the thirteen-year-old boy who’d moved in with the family next door to her and sat on the porch or bounced a basketball in the driveway for hours a day. She’d heard neighbors talking to her mom about his four foster homes and the fact that his aunt and uncle had finally moved him in with them. She didn’t know what a foster home was, or why he wasn’t with his parents, but she knew he was lonely. She left him alone since he never looked up at her when she was out playing.

  But one day her black Lab puppy dug under the fence and got into his aunt’s yard. Dustin captured him and brought the squirming dog back. He found her sitting in the tree in her front yard. “Hey, kiddo, you missing someone?”

  “Coco, what are you doing out?” she asked, climbing down. “Thanks for catching him.”

  “It wasn’t easy. He’s fast. You know he dug a hole under the fence?”

  She dropped to the ground and reached for the dog. He licked Dustin’s face. “He likes you. Do you have a dog?”

  “Nope. Never have. Aunt Pat is allergic.”

  “She had one before her son went to college. He took him with him.”

  “Figures.” His face changed. “Anyway, if he comes over again, I’ll bring him back.”

  As he started to walk away, she called out, “Is your name Dustin?”

  “Yeah,” he said, turning around.

  “Mine’s Jamie.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Do you like it here?”

  He gave her a half-amused smile, then said, “It’s okay.”

  “What’s a foster home?” she asked.

  He looked around, as if to see if anyone could hear, then came back closer to her. “How did you know that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I heard somebody say it.”

  “Look it up.”

  “I did. Is it like when you live with strangers?”

  He grinned again. “Something like that.”

  “How come you lived with them?”

  “Because my parents died.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay,” he cut in. “Car wreck, a long time ago.”

  “Do you like living with your aunt?”

  “She doesn’t like living with me.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Y
ou ask a lot of questions, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been told.”

  “So how do you get on her good side?”

  “Whose?”

  “My aunt Pat. If you saw her with her kids, maybe you know better than I do.”

  “She was nice to them,” Jamie said. “She probably just needs some time to get used to you.”

  “Nobody ever gets used to me,” he said.

  “I’m going to, now that we’re friends.”

  He smiled fully now, but she knew he was just amused. “Keep thinking that, kiddo. We’ll see how you feel in a few months.”

  She watched him go back to his yard and wondered if he’d ever talk to her again.

  But the next day, when he was in the backyard, she yelled at him over the fence. “Hey, Dustin!”

  “Hey, kiddo,” he said.

  She climbed up on a bench beside the fence and looked down at him. “Do you feel better today?”

  “I didn’t feel bad yesterday.”

  “You weren’t too happy. Did I hurt your feelings?”

  “No. I don’t get hurt feelings that easy.”

  “My questions didn’t make you mad?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then can I ask some more?”

  He sighed and sat down on a chair at a patio table. “Go for it.”

  “Do you have a grandma?”

  “Both of them died.”

  She got that feeling again that she was making him mad. “Do you like art?”

  He laughed. “Do I like what?”

  “Art. Or music? You look like a musician.”

  “What does a musician look like?”

  “I don’t know. Kind of cool.”

  “I look cool.”

  “I didn’t say you did. Just . . . musicians.”

  “It’s okay. I like art and music, I guess.”

  “Do you play checkers?”

  “I have.”

  “Want to play?”

  “Not right now,” he said.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “You’re pushy, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not like you have anything to do. It’s summer and you just got here, and you don’t know anybody.”

  “Maybe tomorrow,” he said.

  The memory made her smile now, because they had played checkers often after that, even though he preferred video games. But her mom wouldn’t let her go in his aunt Pat’s house, because she liked to keep it just so, and besides, her mother thought he was too old for them to hang out inside each other’s houses. So they wound up sitting in the driveway and playing.

  Their friendship started out grudgingly on his part, but over the months, he stopped acting like he was just walking by when he happened on her, and he seemed to grow less embarrassed to be caught playing with someone so much younger. He tolerated her questions more and more, and even started questioning her.

  They’d remained friends into her teen years and through his college era, through all their dating experiences and relationships. She had relied on him as more than a friend, and he seemed to rely on her as a trusted confidante. That was why his cool departure had been so disruptive, and why his silence since had been so painful.

  She hadn’t even been aware that he had moved back to Atlanta. Her mother still lived next door to his aunt Pat, and she had never mentioned it.

  None of that mattered now, she thought as she zigzagged her way up the outermost streets of downtown Atlanta, trying to avoid the emergency traffic and roadblocks. He needed her now, and she wasn’t going to hold those years against him. She had to put all that aside and lean on the professionalism she had fostered over the last years. None of her history with Dustin—finished or unfinished—should affect what she did now.

  04

  Dustin sat alone in the interview room at the police station, knowing he was being watched via the camera in the corner of the room across from him and through the two-way glass window next to him.

  Who would enjoy seeing him pulled over like a criminal and detained for having explosives in his trunk? Who would benefit from that? He couldn’t think of anyone in his life right now who would do such a thing, unless it was a prank that had gone wrong. But if it was, the prankster would have called it off long before this.

  He shouldn’t have called Jamie. Of all people, why had he thought of her? He hadn’t even known her phone number, so he’d had to call her mother at her childhood home to get in touch with her. She had given it to him with no apparent reluctance, then tried to strike up a conversation until he’d told her he had to go.

  He stood up just because he was tired of sitting and paced the few steps across the small room, trying to imagine how this would play out. Jamie had always thought the best of him when no one else had. As a kid, she’d been one of the only people who was ever glad to see him. Aunt Pat only yelled and complained, and Uncle Joe sat quietly, pretending Dustin wasn’t there.

  Dustin had gone about his teenaged life wearing boredom like a costume and feigning apathy as a buffer against the accusations that came each day at suppertime. He hadn’t picked up his towel after his bath. He hadn’t done his Tuesday chores right. He hadn’t said “yes, ma’am.” After accusing him, Aunt Pat would launch into a monologue about how her own children had never done such things, how they had shown pride in their surroundings and taken responsibility for their actions. Always she mentioned how he’d been thrown out of four other homes. He had learned to zone out somewhere within the first ten words. When he’d started playing the bad boy role for real—skipping school, sneaking out at night, and drinking in the parking lot of the sub shop that stayed open all night—her vitriol had gone to the next level.

  He thought back on that kid he had been and wondered why the little girl next door had been able to see through the subterfuge. How would it go now? Had she outgrown that skill to see past his actions and into his soul? Would she look at him now and see only the train wreck of the past couple of hours, as if that represented who he’d been for the past fifteen years?

  How could she know that her influence in his life had been more than just friendship at a vulnerable time? There was so much she didn’t know—that he’d excelled in the army and that he’d had his own successful business for years. She had no way of knowing about that day when he’d been discharged from the army, and he’d found himself feeling the way he’d felt when he was thirteen, suddenly thrust into a world that didn’t fit him. His mind had drifted back to her and he’d longed to talk to her, but she was married to her high school boyfriend, Joe, someone Dustin had tried more than once to warn her against.

  His homesickness for Jamie had led him to a church one Sunday night, and he’d found comfort there. The one he chose belonged to her denomination, and the people seemed like her, and he heard familiar words that she had quoted to him often. He’d found himself going back again and again until finally he had his own Bible and had prayed his own prayers, and the words became his, and his faith was owned instead of borrowed.

  How ironic that he found himself in jail after all that. How tragic that the first time she would see him in years was when he was in life-altering trouble.

  He sat back down and closed his eyes. God, I know you see me. I know you’ve got this. I just don’t know what’s happening.

  He heard voices outside the door and looked at the two-way glass, wishing he could see what was going on out there. Then he heard Jamie’s voice, a little deeper than it had been at eighteen, but it still had the same timbre and that satin sound that comforted him.

  He got up and waited to see her face.

  05

  From the corner near her car, Taylor walked slowly toward the concert hall. There it was, strobed by the blue lights flashing on police cars parked haphazardly around it. Ambulances still idled, doors open, their lights punctuating the emergency that had changed so many lives in less than a moment.

  Why weren’t they hurrying? Surely they hadn’t yet loaded and t
ransported all of the injured.

  The answer squeezed her heart and stung her eyes. Maybe there was no hurry. The dead couldn’t be moved.

  Several media people stood on the corner, the microphone-clutching talent glammed and styled. Camera crews pushed as close to the barricades as possible, zooming in on drama they could use on the eleven o’clock news.

  Taylor walked past them, her eyes fixed on the doors she and her friends had gone in. Had Mara and Desiree come out and been herded to some other location? Were they wandering in shock, looking for her car? Had they gotten an Uber?

  “Excuse me,” a reporter said, motioning for her cameraman to follow her. “Are you one of the victims?”

  Taylor didn’t want to be on TV. “No.”

  “But you have blood on your pants.”

  She looked down, stricken at the sight of the blood spatters on her right side. When had that happened? Whose blood was it? Desiree had been sitting to her right . . .

  She stumbled off toward the perimeter, wiping her nose as she ran. She ducked under the tape, and a cop the size of a linebacker grabbed her arm. “Ma’am, you can’t go any farther. We need you to stay back.”

  “I have to find my friends! I don’t know where they are. They may still be in there.”

  “Ma’am, were you in the building when it happened?”

  She felt her lips twisting as she tried to hold back her sobs. “Yes . . . I got out . . . but my friends . . .”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Taylor,” she said, sniffing. “Taylor Reid. I have to find them. I’ve been waiting at my car, but they never came. I’m worried about them.”

  “Taylor, where were you sitting at the rally?”

  She hugged herself to stop her shivering. She was so cold, but it must be ninety-five degrees here in August. “On the third row, near the front.”

  “Can you describe what you saw?”

  “The stage just . . . exploded. I was on the floor. Is Ed Loran dead? The band? I don’t know how they could have survived.”

  The cop’s interest level changed, and he stopped trying to usher her back to the barricade. “Okay, Taylor? I need you to come with me, okay? A detective is going to need to interview you.”