Page 69 of Dirty Desires
Chapter Twenty–Eight
Ashton
With the picnic cleaned up, I walked toward the bedroom to get undressed and ready for my new fiancée. I laughed as I thought about the expression on her face when she first saw the ring.
Getting into the bedroom, I thought I would open up a window to let in a little fresh air. And as I did, I could hear the sounds of sirens filtering through from the street below.
Looking down, I could see that things didn’t look right. People were moving oddly. Running or stumbling in every direction. And then my eyes went to something that just shouldn’t have been there. An armored truck was up on the sidewalk.
My heart stopped as I saw police cars stopped on every side of the vehicle. Officers got out with guns drawn, aiming them at the vehicle. Then a loud voice came up to me as one of the officers used a bullhorn, “Get out of the car with your hands up.”
Pulling my cell out of my pocket, I found my hands were shaking as I swiped Nina’s name. The phone rang, and I could hear it in the apartment. She’d left her phone on the nightstand. “Fuck!”
Hauling ass, I ran to get to the elevator. I had to get to Nina. I couldn’t sit there and wait.
But I wasn’t the only one rushing out to check on someone they cared about on the outside of that building. It took no time at all for the elevator to be filled with people, all trying to get to the ground floor.
The doorway became jammed as everyone tried to get out at the same time. “Everyone, just calm down,” some man called out. “One at a time, people.”
Panic had set in, and everyone was out for their own self. Finally, I made it out and moved in the direction I knew Nina had gone. Then everyone froze when the sound of a gunshot rang out.
I climbed up on a pole to see what I could. The police were moving fast toward the armored truck. Then I saw an officer waving, and more came in. An ambulance pulled up, and the officers took the person, who had obviously shot himself, to the back of it.
It was only then that I saw the people lying on the sidewalk. I couldn’t make any one of them out. I looked around at the people around me in the crowd, searching desperately for Nina’s face.
When I didn’t find it, I got off the pole and tried my best to get to that truck. Praying the whole time that she was safe inside the store, I pushed my way through the mass of people.
When I got close to where I wanted to go, a strong arm stopped me. “No one can go any further than this.” An office had stopped me.
“My wife is down here. I need to find her,” I implored him.
“There are lots of wives and husbands down here, mister. You’ll have to wait, just like everyone else.” He gave me a slight push to get back, and it only made me mad.
“Listen to me,” I said through gritted teeth.
The sound of more ambulances made me look up. Three stopped, and the paramedics got out. They swarmed through the people who were standing around. “Clear this entire area,” one of them said. “We’ve got to be able to see to the wounded.”
My heart stopped when someone called out, “We’ve got an unresponsive civilian over here.”
Another called out, “No pulse here.”
“Get them on the trucks,” someone else shouted.
I watched as people were placed on stretchers, strapped down then taken to the backs of the waiting ambulances. Those three drove away, and three more came in right behind them.
The same thing followed. The paramedics searched, found, and took away. But this time I saw dark blonde hair falling across the top of the stretcher. “Hey, wait!”
The cop turned to give me a frown. “I thought I told you …”
“I think that’s her.” I pointed at the moving stretcher that was about to be put into the ambulance. “Please just let me see if it’s her.”
He moved his arm then jerked his head. “Hurry up.”
I ran toward the stretcher and every step I took made my blood drop a degree colder. When I got all the way to them, I finally saw her face. Blood ran in tiny rivers from her forehead and nose. “Oh, God!” I felt my knees buckle.
“Do you know her?” one of the paramedics asked.
“She’s my wife.” I knew that they wouldn’t let me see her if I told them anything else—I had learned that the hard way once before.
