Fan Fic 100: After Shocks, Part 2
Title: After Shocks, Part 2
Author: kosmickway
Rated: R for language and sexuality
Summary: Grace's backstory continues as we learn about Zane, the man before Morgan, and Grace's first major case.
======
Grace and Zane had just come back into the house after a killer 11 to 7. Miami’s version of Mardi Gras had started the previous night and the calls had been copious. The most unusual call of the night was from a member of a sorority house who thought that someone has spiked their Mardi Gras punch with acid- whole rooms of party-goers were tripping in the Alpha Zeta Psi house.
“What a nightmare!” Grace groaned, sinking down on the sofa. “120 acid-tripping frat students constitutes a descent into hell.”
“Never, ever, again.” Zane pulled off his sweaty t-shirt and tossed it into a corner. “When the hell are we going to get the A.C. fixed? It feels like a fucking greenhouse in here!” He grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and downed it.
“Zane, drinking beer at 7:45 am clearly constitutes alcoholism.”
“Fuck off, Doctor Alvarez. Beer is my very best friend right now ... even more so than you.”
“Toss me a water. I’m too tired to get up.”
Zane obliged and Grace laid the cool bottle against her forehead. “Next paycheck,” she said, in response to his query. “Next paycheck we’re springing to get the AC fixed even if we have to live on spaghetti for the next month to do it. Comprende?”
“No argument here.” Zane cracked open another beer. “What do you think about a cold shower?”
“I think you’re insane. I’m not moving from this couch.” Grace pulled off her own t-shirt to reveal a tank top underneath. She mopped her forehead with her t-shirt and pulled her hair into a ponytail using the elastic band around her wrist. “Can you believe it actually snows in some parts of the country in February?”
“You’d never know it living here.” Zane flopped down on the sofa next to her. “Want me to carry you out back and spray you with the hose?”
“If you’re carrying me anywhere it’s to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“Shower first, Gray. Rules of hygiene and all that.” He leaned close to her and smiled winningly. “Come on, make my day. Let me turn the hose on you.”
“As long as I don’t have to walk to get there, fine,” Grace answered, not moving.
True to his word, Zane lifted her up and carried her out the sliding glass door into the back yard. There was a small pool that they filled up on particularly hot nights. It was big enough for the four of them to sit in and relax with a cold beer each.
Zane set her down inside the pool and grabbed the nearby hose. Grinning, he turned the water on high and proceeded to pelt Grace with blast after blast of cold water.
“Ack!” Grace shrieked and laughed helplessly. “Okay! I’m awake! Mercy! Truce!”
Zane continued to douse her in cold water, laughing hysterically. “There shall be no mercy!” he yelled in his most dramatic voice. “None, I say! Nor shall there be truces! Truces are for wimps and sissy girls!”
“Sissy girls! Oh, brother, are YOU asking for it!” She jumped out of the pool and began chasing him around the yard, grabbing for the hose. Jumping on his back, she finally managed to wrest it from him and sluiced him with jets of cold water.
Finally they both landed on the grass, giggling hysterically and completely soaked.
“Truce,” Zane wheezed. “Truce, I call truce. I swear to god, Gray, you ‘ve got a right hook that could rival any man I’ve ever met.”
“I thought truces were for sissy girls.”
“Sissy girls and tired EMTs.”
Zane flipped onto his back and turned his head to look at his best friend. She was lying beside him on the grass, soaking wet, grinning, her eyes closed as she took deep breaths of air and let herself relax. She was beautiful to him then, as beautiful as any woman he’d ever met, and the little stirrings of lust that he’d been trying to deny for so long started squirming in his belly.
“Gracie,” he started to say, then gave up and leaned over to kiss her.
She expected it to be just like the time they’d tried dating in high school. Any second one of them would burst out laughing and they’d joke about this for days afterward. The first time they’d tried making out in his small basement room they’d ended up giggling so hard they swore they’d never try it again. This was nothing at all like his usual friendly kisses. It was deeper, darker, and decidedly more serious.
Zane had a mouth that was soft and skilled. He tasted of cinnamon gum and smelled of water, grass, and fresh air. Grace kissed him back and found her arms wrapping around him, much of their own accord.
They rolled over the grass, all frenzied movements and hot kisses. To Grace, who had been consistently dating and sleeping with Morgan since high school, Zane’s body felt different but, somehow, not unfamiliar. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew he was the man she was dreaming of when she was lying underneath Morgan’s groping hands at night.
Zane’s body moved over hers, into hers, and she arched off the grass, moaning. With both their significant others’ at work and a wall to block prying neighborhood eyes, there was no reason to move indoors. So they tumbled on the lawn, half clothed, and wet from water and sweat. They were rough with each other, clawing and biting, both desperate to finish and yet wanting to never bring it to an end.
Zane was a skilled lover. Grace recalled the days and nights in college when he went out to taste Manhattan’s nightlife instead of studying. At the time she’d been quietly resentful of the fact that she’d have to carry him on the tests and quizzes and study guides when he’d been too busy partying to study. Now she was thankful for the practice she was sure he’d been getting as he used his hands and mouth to start a fire in her belly. She wondered briefly if she was disappointing him, having only been with one man and having grown used to his own particular wants and needs. As Zane continued to caress her and kiss her, though, she completely forgot about her own insecurities and gave herself over to it.
He brought her to a fierce climax, digging his fingers into her hips as she sank her teeth into his shoulder. He pulled out just before his own finish, coming into his hand with a groan.
“Jesus, Gray!” He flopped onto the grass at her side, face flushed, warmth radiating from him in waves. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.” Grace stared at the sky, breathing hard. She felt limp and completely sated, her body warm and relaxed. “I think I’d like to do it again, though.”
Zane looked over at her and smiled with relief. “You would? Really?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She smiled shyly at him and, though she felt like she was betraying a confidence, quietly said, “Morgan hasn’t been able to get me off like that in quite some time.”
Zane sat up, eyes gleaming with mischief. “Really?”
“You heard me,” Grace said. “I’m never repeating it again.”
“Hmmm.” Zane leaned back on his elbows, looking terribly pleased with himself. He reached down and began to stroke her hair, a tentative gesture that was oddly endearing coming from the man who’d had no compunction about ravishing her body only moments before.
“I was afraid you were going to get pissed off or something.”
“Why would I? It takes two, you know, and I had just as much to do with it as you did.” She leaned back on the grass and stretched. “You didn’t have to pull out, you know.”
“Yes, I did. No condom.”
“Morgan never uses them.”
“Birth control?”
Grace shook her head and leaned on one elbow to look at him. “I can’t get pregnant. I’m infertile.”
Zane stared at her. “Gracie! Holy cow! Why didn’t you say anything to me? When did you find this out?”
“College,” she replied. “Remember the week of class I missed around Thanksgiving our last year? I had to borrow all your notes and spent my whole vacation getting caught up.”
“Yeah, I remember. You told me you had the flu all week.”
“I lied.” Grace looked up at the sky, shading her eyes with her hand. “I’d been having these awful cramps and heavy bleeding for months and months on end. It got so bad in November that I actually passed out in the hallway in my dorm. I went to an Ob/Gyn and they ran some tests on me. Turns out I’ve got a malformation in my uterus. Even if I could get pregnant the chances of being able to carry a baby to term are slim to none.”
Zane stared at her, caught between relief that there would be no ill-timed pregnancy as a result of their tryst and hurt that Grace had never shared this with him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, Zane, come on. A woman’s got to have some mystery,” Grace teased.
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Okay. It hurt too much then to share. It still hurts too much, in some ways. I’ve never told Chase. Never told my mother or my aunts. I’d just rather not talk about it.”
“But I’m your best friend.”
“I know.” Grace gave him a quick, sad smile. “But some things are just too much to share, even with you.”
=======
An elephant was sitting on her chest- at least that’s what it felt like when Grace became aware of her body again. Her chest was as tight as if she’d been laced into a too small corset. Her lungs felt as if they’d been scalded in boiling water. Her vision swam and blurred. Something was in her eyes- blood? Tears? She opened her mouth and gulped for air that wasn’t there.
The clear plastic tent of an oxygen mask lowered over her nose and mouth and a pair of hands pushed her into a sitting position. There was a soothing rush of cool air. Grace gulped it in, then gagged and coughed when her chest spasmed. She clawed at the mask, wanting no part of it. It hurt to draw air into her lungs, hurt intolerably. She tried to tear the mask off again but a hand held it firmly over her mouth. She struggled against whoever was holding her down, a scream that she couldn’t voice welling in her scorched throat.
Then Bailey was kneeling next to her, his strong hands pressing on her shoulders to hold her in place. His voice filled the space around the pain. He was repeating two insistent words- “Breathe, Gracie”- in a voice that brooked no disobedience. His eyes staring into hers gave her the strength to take one breath, then another. He nodded encouragingly and she felt his grip on her shoulders loosening, his hands dropping down to rub her back as she gasped fitfully into the oxygen mask. There were other hands on her now, other faces hovering, paramedics.
A moment later she felt herself being lifted and her world exploded in violent streaks of red and black. The pain was intense. Her vision was blurring, Bailey’s face and those of the paramedics swimming in front of her eyes. Her vision tunneled, and for the second time that day, Grace slipped into unconsciousness.
========
Zane was there, just as she knew he would be. He had his own resting place behind her eyes and a way of appearing when something cataclysmic happened in her life. The last time she’d seen him was nearly a year ago, on the night her youngest son was born when she’d almost bled to death in labor.
He reached a hand out to her, his fingers long, tanned. The gold class ring from Columbia was on his right hand. He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, the outfit she most loved to see him in. His eyes were shining, his hair stylishly tousled. He looked just the way she remembered him.
It was wrenching to see him, devastating to feel the bruises bloom on her heart all over again. She had never properly recovered from Zane’s death, perhaps because she could never tell Morgan or Chase that he had been more to her than her best friend. She had no one to share the memories of their secret stolen time with, no one who could re-create for her the cadence of his voice, the puff of breath when he leaned over to whisper in her ear, the taut strength in his arms when they held each other on the roof of the firehouse, staring out at the ocean. For that reason alone, it hurt to see him. She was always reminded of what she had lost.
Grace wasn’t sure whether this Zane was one of her own making, cobbled together out of dream and memory and pasted together with a slippery film of desire, friendship, grief, and guilt; or if he was a manifestation of something outside herself. She was raised Catholic but her belief in science was stronger than her belief in dogma. She didn’t logically believe that the dead could manifest themselves to the living. But how, then, did it explain why Zane waited for her when she was at her most injured or vulnerable, why he chose moments of great strife to project himself on the inside of her eyelids?
Zane reached out for her and she ran toward him, her own arms outstretched. Inches away, their fingers brushed, her hand grasped for his, clutching, but finding only air where there should have been Zane’s warm skin. She fell into blackness, falling until her back hit the grass on their lawn in Miami and she was under Zane, her body arching up to make a conjoined sculpture with his. As they moved together, she felt drips of sweat falling from his forehead onto hers. But when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t sweat falling to cover her skin but wax and blood, covering her in a sticky film that hardened as Zane melted into her. Then he was gone and she was alone, stuck in place by wax, blood, sweat and tears, as the sky went black and the stars wheeled overhead, then fell.
==========
The stars that had fallen were burning into her in a thousand different places. Grace tried to beat at them with her hands, only to find that made the burns worse. She groaned, tried to roll onto her side, hoping that in rolling she might blot the burns out. She felt a pair of hands on her instead and they kept her from moving.
“Gracie.”
Zane. It had to be. He was the only person who called her Gracie.
“Grace, don’t move.”
“The stars burned me,” she mumbled. “It hurts.”
“I know it hurts. But it’s going to hurt more if you put pressure on your side.”
It wasn’t Zane. That wasn’t his voice. She battled to open her eyes and when she did she was rewarded with white walls so bright that it hurt to look at them. She squeezed her eyes shut again.
“Grace, open your eyes. Come on.”
When she opened her eyes this time, it was darker. George’s familiar face slid into her field of vision and blotted out some of the walls. As her eyes adjusted she could see there was a smudge of soot on his cheekbone and his hair was powdered with ash. Someone had given him a clean white t-shirt and an EMT’s jacket. There was a long scratch on his cheek, another just under his left eye, surface wounds from falling rock. He was holding her arms immobile at her sides.
“Grace? Are you with me again?”
Grace opened her mouth to speak and could only squeak out the tiniest rasp of a breath. She put a hand to her throat and managed to whisper, “Why are you holding me down?”
“Oh.” He let up the pressure on her arms and blushed. “Sorry. You were trying to roll onto your right side. Not a great idea considering that about half your ribs on that side are cracked and bruised.”
Which explained the burning throb. That solved the question as to whether any of it had been real.
“You’ve got ash on your cheek,” she said, staring at his face and blinking hard to clear her eyes.
“If you think that’s bad I don’t think you’ll want to see your face.” He stepped back and sat down in the chair next to her bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a building almost fell on me.” She blinked and the room finally swam into clear, if dark, focus. “Is everyone else okay?” She felt as though she had the worst case of strep throat known to man.
George fussed with the blankets on her bed. His hands, she noticed, were covered in scrapes and cuts, some of which were bandaged with steri-strips to hold them closed. A bruise was blooming on his forearm.
“Bailey’s down the hall with DPD and a guy from ATF, checking on a few of the bombing victims. John and Rachel are in the ER.” At Grace’s look of concern he quickly amended, “She’s having her wrist x-rayed. She broke it falling over some debris on the way out of the building. John wanted to go with her so she wouldn’t be alone.”
Grace nodded and was silent for a few moments, trying to become aware enough of herself to mentally assess her condition. There were bandages wrapped around her rib cage. From the spasms of pain when she breathed she could tell that, yes, her ribs were definitely cracked, if not completely broken. She put a hand to her forehead and felt steri-strips, blood, and frayed skin. Her fingers came away tipped in soot.
“I bet I look like hell. I feel like hell”
George raised an eyebrow. “Like I said, I wouldn’t look in the mirror just now." He crossed to the sink in the corner of the room and ran water over a washcloth, which he handed to her. “Here. If you want to get cleaned up.”
Grace began sponging off her face, watching as ash, make-up and blood congealed on the washcloth. “Disgusting.” She wiped at her forehead and winced when her fingers skipped over a bump the size of a small egg. “Ouch!”
“Here, let me,” George said, and took the cloth from her fingers. He began methodically cleaning the blood and soot from her face, his fingers gentle. “I know it sounds crazy to tell a woman with cracked ribs and a nasty bump on her head that she’s lucky but you really are. Bailey ran inside for you before the building came down.” He raised her face just enough so that she could meet his worried eyes. “Grace. I am really glad to see you.”
“Likewise,” she managed to croak out, before a fit of coughing shook her.
“I’ll get some water.” He stopped his trip toward the door when he felt her hand on his arm.
“Tell me how many.”
“The count is one hundred forty-five. It’s going to go higher.”
Grace remembered the man she was carrying when she’d fallen just in front of the doors. “What about the man I was trying to drag out? Lucas Fontaine from the forensic conference?”
“We got him out with you. He’s in ICU.”
“And the woman? The first one I pulled out?”
“DOA. Head injury.”
Grace turned her eyes out the window. Clouds of smoke and dust were billowing up from the bomb site. It looked like the whole city was shrouded in fog.
“Let me go get you that water,” George said, and headed for the door. He met Bailey on the way out and ushered him inside.
Bailey looked like a ragged scarecrow. He’d lost his suit jacket somewhere in the chaos and was wearing only his trousers and his blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The ash powdering his hair made him look older, more careworn.
“How are you feeling, Grace?”
She was up for the joke that he would be expecting from her now. “Like I was beaten by the entire Redwings line-up and left for dead in the street.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Hey, I’m the one who’s still standing,” Grace replied flippantly. She pressed a hand to her ribs and winced. “The building isn’t.”
She could never explain why she felt compelled to make light of her condition when it came to Bailey. Their interactions were usually serious when it came to work, but he also expected jokes from her, easy banter. She always tried to oblige by giving them to him, even when the circumstances called for anything but a joke.
He was serious now as he looked her up and down with a stare that made her wish she wasn’t wearing a flimsy hospital gown. “You gave us a helluva scare,” Bailey said. “Thank God one of the firemen spotted you before the lobby caved in.”
“George said you came in after me.”
“Well, I sure wasn’t going to leave you in there.” He turned his face from her, trying to hide the emotion that was playing too openly across his features. Though Bailey tried as hard as he could to play himself off as the ice man, he was really quite tender-hearted when it came to his colleagues. He’d lost comrades before, Grace recalled, and knew how hard he took it when colleagues fell on what he perceived to be his watch.
“Thank you.” When he wouldn’t look at her, Grace touched his wrist. “I mean it, Bailey. Thank you. Truly.”
He looked at her then. There was a mixture of concern, relief, and something else, something harder to define, on his face. He touched her hand, his fingers closing around hers in a quick, firm, handclasp.
“Is this where Victims Anonymous is meeting?”
John stood in the doorway, an arm firmly around Rachel, who wore the dazed expression of someone fighting the effects of prescription painkillers. Her hand and wrist were encased in bright white plaster. Unlike the others, her face had been wiped clean of dirt and soot but her clothes and hair told the tale of a day spent digging in dirt and dust to rescue the wounded and dying. Grace was unaccustomed to seeing the tough-as-nails profiler looking so completely run-down.
John helped Rachel into the chair that Bailey vacated, then leaned down to give Grace a gentle hug, mindful of her injuries.
“Glad you’re okay,” he whispered in her ear. “My life wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if I didn’t have you around to jab at me.”
Night was falling on the city, attempting to hide the open wounds of a day turned bloody and raw. George stepped back into the room and poured cups of water for everyone. They drank silently, cooling throats that were raspy and hoarse from smoke, chemicals, and particulate matter.
Finally John broke the silence. “DPD is already talking about memorial services. Are we going to stay?”
“I don’t know,” Bailey replied. “They haven’t requested our help on the case yet. We’re just here in a triage capacity for the moment.” He coughed and leaned back in his chair. His eyes were bloodshot from smoke and fatigue.
“Anyone claim responsibility?” George asked, his eyes still fixed on the window. He drained the last bit of water from his cup and threw it in the trash can without looking.
“Not yet. Rescue workers are still working. Investigators won’t move in till later.”
Bailey glanced at Rachel, whose eyes were starting to slip closed. “You need to be in bed.”
“I’m fine,” Rachel muttered, forcing her eyes open. She made a valiant effort to stand up but couldn’t quite manage it. “We need to go back to the bomb site. There’s still people that need rescuing.”
“You’ve done your share,” Bailey told her. “What you need is sleep.” Resuming his role as caretaker for the group, he pulled Rachel to her feet and started to steer her towards the door. “I’m taking Rachel back to the hotel. The doctors said you can go home later tonight, Gracie. I’ll be back for you later.”
John pulled the car keys from his jacket pocket. “I’ll drive.” He put an arm around Rachel’s waist. “Come on, Red, don’t make me carry you.”
“Carry me and I’ll kick your ass,” Rachel threatened blearily. “I’m fine. I could drive if I wanted to.” She made a half-hearted grab for the car keys.
“I don’t think so,” John said, holding them out of her reach. “Codeine and car engines don’t mix.”
Their voices blended into the hubbub of the trauma ward and then the door closed on the noise of crash carts and nurse’s voices, leaving the room blessedly quiet. Grace closed her eyes, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t find Zane waiting for her there.
End part 2:
Read on for the final chapter ...
Author: kosmickway
Rated: R for language and sexuality
Summary: Grace's backstory continues as we learn about Zane, the man before Morgan, and Grace's first major case.
======
Grace and Zane had just come back into the house after a killer 11 to 7. Miami’s version of Mardi Gras had started the previous night and the calls had been copious. The most unusual call of the night was from a member of a sorority house who thought that someone has spiked their Mardi Gras punch with acid- whole rooms of party-goers were tripping in the Alpha Zeta Psi house.
“What a nightmare!” Grace groaned, sinking down on the sofa. “120 acid-tripping frat students constitutes a descent into hell.”
“Never, ever, again.” Zane pulled off his sweaty t-shirt and tossed it into a corner. “When the hell are we going to get the A.C. fixed? It feels like a fucking greenhouse in here!” He grabbed a cold beer from the fridge and downed it.
“Zane, drinking beer at 7:45 am clearly constitutes alcoholism.”
“Fuck off, Doctor Alvarez. Beer is my very best friend right now ... even more so than you.”
“Toss me a water. I’m too tired to get up.”
Zane obliged and Grace laid the cool bottle against her forehead. “Next paycheck,” she said, in response to his query. “Next paycheck we’re springing to get the AC fixed even if we have to live on spaghetti for the next month to do it. Comprende?”
“No argument here.” Zane cracked open another beer. “What do you think about a cold shower?”
“I think you’re insane. I’m not moving from this couch.” Grace pulled off her own t-shirt to reveal a tank top underneath. She mopped her forehead with her t-shirt and pulled her hair into a ponytail using the elastic band around her wrist. “Can you believe it actually snows in some parts of the country in February?”
“You’d never know it living here.” Zane flopped down on the sofa next to her. “Want me to carry you out back and spray you with the hose?”
“If you’re carrying me anywhere it’s to bed. I’m exhausted.”
“Shower first, Gray. Rules of hygiene and all that.” He leaned close to her and smiled winningly. “Come on, make my day. Let me turn the hose on you.”
“As long as I don’t have to walk to get there, fine,” Grace answered, not moving.
True to his word, Zane lifted her up and carried her out the sliding glass door into the back yard. There was a small pool that they filled up on particularly hot nights. It was big enough for the four of them to sit in and relax with a cold beer each.
Zane set her down inside the pool and grabbed the nearby hose. Grinning, he turned the water on high and proceeded to pelt Grace with blast after blast of cold water.
“Ack!” Grace shrieked and laughed helplessly. “Okay! I’m awake! Mercy! Truce!”
Zane continued to douse her in cold water, laughing hysterically. “There shall be no mercy!” he yelled in his most dramatic voice. “None, I say! Nor shall there be truces! Truces are for wimps and sissy girls!”
“Sissy girls! Oh, brother, are YOU asking for it!” She jumped out of the pool and began chasing him around the yard, grabbing for the hose. Jumping on his back, she finally managed to wrest it from him and sluiced him with jets of cold water.
Finally they both landed on the grass, giggling hysterically and completely soaked.
“Truce,” Zane wheezed. “Truce, I call truce. I swear to god, Gray, you ‘ve got a right hook that could rival any man I’ve ever met.”
“I thought truces were for sissy girls.”
“Sissy girls and tired EMTs.”
Zane flipped onto his back and turned his head to look at his best friend. She was lying beside him on the grass, soaking wet, grinning, her eyes closed as she took deep breaths of air and let herself relax. She was beautiful to him then, as beautiful as any woman he’d ever met, and the little stirrings of lust that he’d been trying to deny for so long started squirming in his belly.
“Gracie,” he started to say, then gave up and leaned over to kiss her.
She expected it to be just like the time they’d tried dating in high school. Any second one of them would burst out laughing and they’d joke about this for days afterward. The first time they’d tried making out in his small basement room they’d ended up giggling so hard they swore they’d never try it again. This was nothing at all like his usual friendly kisses. It was deeper, darker, and decidedly more serious.
Zane had a mouth that was soft and skilled. He tasted of cinnamon gum and smelled of water, grass, and fresh air. Grace kissed him back and found her arms wrapping around him, much of their own accord.
They rolled over the grass, all frenzied movements and hot kisses. To Grace, who had been consistently dating and sleeping with Morgan since high school, Zane’s body felt different but, somehow, not unfamiliar. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew he was the man she was dreaming of when she was lying underneath Morgan’s groping hands at night.
Zane’s body moved over hers, into hers, and she arched off the grass, moaning. With both their significant others’ at work and a wall to block prying neighborhood eyes, there was no reason to move indoors. So they tumbled on the lawn, half clothed, and wet from water and sweat. They were rough with each other, clawing and biting, both desperate to finish and yet wanting to never bring it to an end.
Zane was a skilled lover. Grace recalled the days and nights in college when he went out to taste Manhattan’s nightlife instead of studying. At the time she’d been quietly resentful of the fact that she’d have to carry him on the tests and quizzes and study guides when he’d been too busy partying to study. Now she was thankful for the practice she was sure he’d been getting as he used his hands and mouth to start a fire in her belly. She wondered briefly if she was disappointing him, having only been with one man and having grown used to his own particular wants and needs. As Zane continued to caress her and kiss her, though, she completely forgot about her own insecurities and gave herself over to it.
He brought her to a fierce climax, digging his fingers into her hips as she sank her teeth into his shoulder. He pulled out just before his own finish, coming into his hand with a groan.
“Jesus, Gray!” He flopped onto the grass at her side, face flushed, warmth radiating from him in waves. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.” Grace stared at the sky, breathing hard. She felt limp and completely sated, her body warm and relaxed. “I think I’d like to do it again, though.”
Zane looked over at her and smiled with relief. “You would? Really?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” She smiled shyly at him and, though she felt like she was betraying a confidence, quietly said, “Morgan hasn’t been able to get me off like that in quite some time.”
Zane sat up, eyes gleaming with mischief. “Really?”
“You heard me,” Grace said. “I’m never repeating it again.”
“Hmmm.” Zane leaned back on his elbows, looking terribly pleased with himself. He reached down and began to stroke her hair, a tentative gesture that was oddly endearing coming from the man who’d had no compunction about ravishing her body only moments before.
“I was afraid you were going to get pissed off or something.”
“Why would I? It takes two, you know, and I had just as much to do with it as you did.” She leaned back on the grass and stretched. “You didn’t have to pull out, you know.”
“Yes, I did. No condom.”
“Morgan never uses them.”
“Birth control?”
Grace shook her head and leaned on one elbow to look at him. “I can’t get pregnant. I’m infertile.”
Zane stared at her. “Gracie! Holy cow! Why didn’t you say anything to me? When did you find this out?”
“College,” she replied. “Remember the week of class I missed around Thanksgiving our last year? I had to borrow all your notes and spent my whole vacation getting caught up.”
“Yeah, I remember. You told me you had the flu all week.”
“I lied.” Grace looked up at the sky, shading her eyes with her hand. “I’d been having these awful cramps and heavy bleeding for months and months on end. It got so bad in November that I actually passed out in the hallway in my dorm. I went to an Ob/Gyn and they ran some tests on me. Turns out I’ve got a malformation in my uterus. Even if I could get pregnant the chances of being able to carry a baby to term are slim to none.”
Zane stared at her, caught between relief that there would be no ill-timed pregnancy as a result of their tryst and hurt that Grace had never shared this with him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, Zane, come on. A woman’s got to have some mystery,” Grace teased.
“Seriously.”
“Seriously? Okay. It hurt too much then to share. It still hurts too much, in some ways. I’ve never told Chase. Never told my mother or my aunts. I’d just rather not talk about it.”
“But I’m your best friend.”
“I know.” Grace gave him a quick, sad smile. “But some things are just too much to share, even with you.”
=======
An elephant was sitting on her chest- at least that’s what it felt like when Grace became aware of her body again. Her chest was as tight as if she’d been laced into a too small corset. Her lungs felt as if they’d been scalded in boiling water. Her vision swam and blurred. Something was in her eyes- blood? Tears? She opened her mouth and gulped for air that wasn’t there.
The clear plastic tent of an oxygen mask lowered over her nose and mouth and a pair of hands pushed her into a sitting position. There was a soothing rush of cool air. Grace gulped it in, then gagged and coughed when her chest spasmed. She clawed at the mask, wanting no part of it. It hurt to draw air into her lungs, hurt intolerably. She tried to tear the mask off again but a hand held it firmly over her mouth. She struggled against whoever was holding her down, a scream that she couldn’t voice welling in her scorched throat.
Then Bailey was kneeling next to her, his strong hands pressing on her shoulders to hold her in place. His voice filled the space around the pain. He was repeating two insistent words- “Breathe, Gracie”- in a voice that brooked no disobedience. His eyes staring into hers gave her the strength to take one breath, then another. He nodded encouragingly and she felt his grip on her shoulders loosening, his hands dropping down to rub her back as she gasped fitfully into the oxygen mask. There were other hands on her now, other faces hovering, paramedics.
A moment later she felt herself being lifted and her world exploded in violent streaks of red and black. The pain was intense. Her vision was blurring, Bailey’s face and those of the paramedics swimming in front of her eyes. Her vision tunneled, and for the second time that day, Grace slipped into unconsciousness.
========
Zane was there, just as she knew he would be. He had his own resting place behind her eyes and a way of appearing when something cataclysmic happened in her life. The last time she’d seen him was nearly a year ago, on the night her youngest son was born when she’d almost bled to death in labor.
He reached a hand out to her, his fingers long, tanned. The gold class ring from Columbia was on his right hand. He was wearing jeans and a black t-shirt, the outfit she most loved to see him in. His eyes were shining, his hair stylishly tousled. He looked just the way she remembered him.
It was wrenching to see him, devastating to feel the bruises bloom on her heart all over again. She had never properly recovered from Zane’s death, perhaps because she could never tell Morgan or Chase that he had been more to her than her best friend. She had no one to share the memories of their secret stolen time with, no one who could re-create for her the cadence of his voice, the puff of breath when he leaned over to whisper in her ear, the taut strength in his arms when they held each other on the roof of the firehouse, staring out at the ocean. For that reason alone, it hurt to see him. She was always reminded of what she had lost.
Grace wasn’t sure whether this Zane was one of her own making, cobbled together out of dream and memory and pasted together with a slippery film of desire, friendship, grief, and guilt; or if he was a manifestation of something outside herself. She was raised Catholic but her belief in science was stronger than her belief in dogma. She didn’t logically believe that the dead could manifest themselves to the living. But how, then, did it explain why Zane waited for her when she was at her most injured or vulnerable, why he chose moments of great strife to project himself on the inside of her eyelids?
Zane reached out for her and she ran toward him, her own arms outstretched. Inches away, their fingers brushed, her hand grasped for his, clutching, but finding only air where there should have been Zane’s warm skin. She fell into blackness, falling until her back hit the grass on their lawn in Miami and she was under Zane, her body arching up to make a conjoined sculpture with his. As they moved together, she felt drips of sweat falling from his forehead onto hers. But when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t sweat falling to cover her skin but wax and blood, covering her in a sticky film that hardened as Zane melted into her. Then he was gone and she was alone, stuck in place by wax, blood, sweat and tears, as the sky went black and the stars wheeled overhead, then fell.
==========
The stars that had fallen were burning into her in a thousand different places. Grace tried to beat at them with her hands, only to find that made the burns worse. She groaned, tried to roll onto her side, hoping that in rolling she might blot the burns out. She felt a pair of hands on her instead and they kept her from moving.
“Gracie.”
Zane. It had to be. He was the only person who called her Gracie.
“Grace, don’t move.”
“The stars burned me,” she mumbled. “It hurts.”
“I know it hurts. But it’s going to hurt more if you put pressure on your side.”
It wasn’t Zane. That wasn’t his voice. She battled to open her eyes and when she did she was rewarded with white walls so bright that it hurt to look at them. She squeezed her eyes shut again.
“Grace, open your eyes. Come on.”
When she opened her eyes this time, it was darker. George’s familiar face slid into her field of vision and blotted out some of the walls. As her eyes adjusted she could see there was a smudge of soot on his cheekbone and his hair was powdered with ash. Someone had given him a clean white t-shirt and an EMT’s jacket. There was a long scratch on his cheek, another just under his left eye, surface wounds from falling rock. He was holding her arms immobile at her sides.
“Grace? Are you with me again?”
Grace opened her mouth to speak and could only squeak out the tiniest rasp of a breath. She put a hand to her throat and managed to whisper, “Why are you holding me down?”
“Oh.” He let up the pressure on her arms and blushed. “Sorry. You were trying to roll onto your right side. Not a great idea considering that about half your ribs on that side are cracked and bruised.”
Which explained the burning throb. That solved the question as to whether any of it had been real.
“You’ve got ash on your cheek,” she said, staring at his face and blinking hard to clear her eyes.
“If you think that’s bad I don’t think you’ll want to see your face.” He stepped back and sat down in the chair next to her bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like a building almost fell on me.” She blinked and the room finally swam into clear, if dark, focus. “Is everyone else okay?” She felt as though she had the worst case of strep throat known to man.
George fussed with the blankets on her bed. His hands, she noticed, were covered in scrapes and cuts, some of which were bandaged with steri-strips to hold them closed. A bruise was blooming on his forearm.
“Bailey’s down the hall with DPD and a guy from ATF, checking on a few of the bombing victims. John and Rachel are in the ER.” At Grace’s look of concern he quickly amended, “She’s having her wrist x-rayed. She broke it falling over some debris on the way out of the building. John wanted to go with her so she wouldn’t be alone.”
Grace nodded and was silent for a few moments, trying to become aware enough of herself to mentally assess her condition. There were bandages wrapped around her rib cage. From the spasms of pain when she breathed she could tell that, yes, her ribs were definitely cracked, if not completely broken. She put a hand to her forehead and felt steri-strips, blood, and frayed skin. Her fingers came away tipped in soot.
“I bet I look like hell. I feel like hell”
George raised an eyebrow. “Like I said, I wouldn’t look in the mirror just now." He crossed to the sink in the corner of the room and ran water over a washcloth, which he handed to her. “Here. If you want to get cleaned up.”
Grace began sponging off her face, watching as ash, make-up and blood congealed on the washcloth. “Disgusting.” She wiped at her forehead and winced when her fingers skipped over a bump the size of a small egg. “Ouch!”
“Here, let me,” George said, and took the cloth from her fingers. He began methodically cleaning the blood and soot from her face, his fingers gentle. “I know it sounds crazy to tell a woman with cracked ribs and a nasty bump on her head that she’s lucky but you really are. Bailey ran inside for you before the building came down.” He raised her face just enough so that she could meet his worried eyes. “Grace. I am really glad to see you.”
“Likewise,” she managed to croak out, before a fit of coughing shook her.
“I’ll get some water.” He stopped his trip toward the door when he felt her hand on his arm.
“Tell me how many.”
“The count is one hundred forty-five. It’s going to go higher.”
Grace remembered the man she was carrying when she’d fallen just in front of the doors. “What about the man I was trying to drag out? Lucas Fontaine from the forensic conference?”
“We got him out with you. He’s in ICU.”
“And the woman? The first one I pulled out?”
“DOA. Head injury.”
Grace turned her eyes out the window. Clouds of smoke and dust were billowing up from the bomb site. It looked like the whole city was shrouded in fog.
“Let me go get you that water,” George said, and headed for the door. He met Bailey on the way out and ushered him inside.
Bailey looked like a ragged scarecrow. He’d lost his suit jacket somewhere in the chaos and was wearing only his trousers and his blue dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The ash powdering his hair made him look older, more careworn.
“How are you feeling, Grace?”
She was up for the joke that he would be expecting from her now. “Like I was beaten by the entire Redwings line-up and left for dead in the street.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Hey, I’m the one who’s still standing,” Grace replied flippantly. She pressed a hand to her ribs and winced. “The building isn’t.”
She could never explain why she felt compelled to make light of her condition when it came to Bailey. Their interactions were usually serious when it came to work, but he also expected jokes from her, easy banter. She always tried to oblige by giving them to him, even when the circumstances called for anything but a joke.
He was serious now as he looked her up and down with a stare that made her wish she wasn’t wearing a flimsy hospital gown. “You gave us a helluva scare,” Bailey said. “Thank God one of the firemen spotted you before the lobby caved in.”
“George said you came in after me.”
“Well, I sure wasn’t going to leave you in there.” He turned his face from her, trying to hide the emotion that was playing too openly across his features. Though Bailey tried as hard as he could to play himself off as the ice man, he was really quite tender-hearted when it came to his colleagues. He’d lost comrades before, Grace recalled, and knew how hard he took it when colleagues fell on what he perceived to be his watch.
“Thank you.” When he wouldn’t look at her, Grace touched his wrist. “I mean it, Bailey. Thank you. Truly.”
He looked at her then. There was a mixture of concern, relief, and something else, something harder to define, on his face. He touched her hand, his fingers closing around hers in a quick, firm, handclasp.
“Is this where Victims Anonymous is meeting?”
John stood in the doorway, an arm firmly around Rachel, who wore the dazed expression of someone fighting the effects of prescription painkillers. Her hand and wrist were encased in bright white plaster. Unlike the others, her face had been wiped clean of dirt and soot but her clothes and hair told the tale of a day spent digging in dirt and dust to rescue the wounded and dying. Grace was unaccustomed to seeing the tough-as-nails profiler looking so completely run-down.
John helped Rachel into the chair that Bailey vacated, then leaned down to give Grace a gentle hug, mindful of her injuries.
“Glad you’re okay,” he whispered in her ear. “My life wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if I didn’t have you around to jab at me.”
Night was falling on the city, attempting to hide the open wounds of a day turned bloody and raw. George stepped back into the room and poured cups of water for everyone. They drank silently, cooling throats that were raspy and hoarse from smoke, chemicals, and particulate matter.
Finally John broke the silence. “DPD is already talking about memorial services. Are we going to stay?”
“I don’t know,” Bailey replied. “They haven’t requested our help on the case yet. We’re just here in a triage capacity for the moment.” He coughed and leaned back in his chair. His eyes were bloodshot from smoke and fatigue.
“Anyone claim responsibility?” George asked, his eyes still fixed on the window. He drained the last bit of water from his cup and threw it in the trash can without looking.
“Not yet. Rescue workers are still working. Investigators won’t move in till later.”
Bailey glanced at Rachel, whose eyes were starting to slip closed. “You need to be in bed.”
“I’m fine,” Rachel muttered, forcing her eyes open. She made a valiant effort to stand up but couldn’t quite manage it. “We need to go back to the bomb site. There’s still people that need rescuing.”
“You’ve done your share,” Bailey told her. “What you need is sleep.” Resuming his role as caretaker for the group, he pulled Rachel to her feet and started to steer her towards the door. “I’m taking Rachel back to the hotel. The doctors said you can go home later tonight, Gracie. I’ll be back for you later.”
John pulled the car keys from his jacket pocket. “I’ll drive.” He put an arm around Rachel’s waist. “Come on, Red, don’t make me carry you.”
“Carry me and I’ll kick your ass,” Rachel threatened blearily. “I’m fine. I could drive if I wanted to.” She made a half-hearted grab for the car keys.
“I don’t think so,” John said, holding them out of her reach. “Codeine and car engines don’t mix.”
Their voices blended into the hubbub of the trauma ward and then the door closed on the noise of crash carts and nurse’s voices, leaving the room blessedly quiet. Grace closed her eyes, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t find Zane waiting for her there.
End part 2:
Read on for the final chapter ...