“It’s okay, sweetie. Everything’s going to be all right,” Grace murmured automatically to the little boy clinging to her neck and sobbing. She guessed that he was about four years old; she had seen Bryan pull him out of the left side of the car. Bryan was now fully inside the car, and she couldn’t see him for the smoke and movement surrounding them.
Everyone seemed to be talking at once around her. Snatches of their words drifted toward her.
“It’s going to blow up!”
“I called 9-1-1.”
“The SUV driver’s okay. That’s him over there. Hardly looks old enough to drive, does he?”
“Sure hope that car doesn’t go up in flames while those people are still in there.”
Grace swallowed hard and tightened her hold on the child, maybe seeking comfort as much as offering it. The boy’s face was buried in her throat; she could feel wet tears against her skin. “I want my…mama,” he whimpered.
Grace patted him again. “Hang in there a minute, kid,” she murmured, her attention still focused on that car, from which flames could now be seen quite clearly climbing up the left side from underneath.
The driver was out, being supported by one of the men who had rushed to help Bryan. The woman, whom Grace assumed to be the child’s mother, was crying and trying to get back to her burning car. The young man had his hands full restraining her. Someone stepped up to help him. Other people were yelling, some motioning for bystanders to stay back, some running around in seemingly aimless circles. In the distance, the sound of sirens could be heard growing louder as they moved closer.
Grace tried to remind herself that Bryan hadn’t been in the car very long. Scant minutes had passed since he’d disappeared inside. It only seemed much longer.
A couple of loud pops were followed by a new spurt of flames from beneath the car. A collective gasp came from the crowd around her, and Grace felt her heart stutter. What was Bryan doing? Why wasn’t he coming out?
Her vivid imagination conjured a picture of the car exploding into a fireball with Bryan trapped inside. She flinched from the awful image, telling herself fiercely that it wouldn’t happen. Couldn’t happen. Bryan wouldn’t allow it.
Her knees nearly buckled in relief when he finally emerged from the vehicle. He was immediately pulled away from the car and then surrounded by people. She’d seen that he was holding something, but the bodies between them kept her from seeing what it was. The woman who had been driving the car gave a cry and broke away from the hands that had been holding her back.
A moment later, the car was fully engulfed in flames, despite the efforts of a couple of shop owners who had appeared with fire extinguishers that they were emptying on the vehicles. Bryan would have been in that fire if he’d hesitated even a little longer, Grace realized sickly.
The frantic mother was now holding a tiny bundle in her arms. She turned, searching the crowds around her. “Cody? Cody? Has anyone seen my son?”
The child in Grace’s arms responded immediately to the call. “Mama?”
G
race hurried toward the woman. “I have your son. He’s fine.”
“Thank God.” The woman began to cry again.
Bryan put his right hand on the woman’s shoulder. “There’s a bench beside that shop door. You should sit until the ambulance arrives.”
He spoke quietly, but Grace noted that his words carried easily through the babbling of the crowd and the wails of the woman’s children. A police car came to a stop in the intersection, and a fire truck wasn’t far behind. Settling Cody more securely on her hip, Grace stayed close to his mother while Bryan escorted her and the baby to the bench. The crowd automatically made way for them, of course, after only a glance from Bryan.
What was it about him? Even in jeans and sneakers, his hair all tousled, and his face smudged, he still wore an air of competence and authority that people seemed to instinctively recognize and respond to.
“Aren’t you Bryan Falcon?” an older man who had been hovering in the background inquired.
Still focused on the family he’d assisted, Bryan nodded.
“I work at Regions Bank in Little Rock,” the man volunteered. “I see you in there sometimes.”
Bryan murmured something that was lost in the chaos. Grace heard his name repeated several times around her, and then the police and emergency workers took over. The crowd was efficiently dispersed, the fire was extinguished, and the badly shaken woman and her children were loaded into an ambulance and taken away for observation.
A reporter from the local newspaper arrived, and someone mentioned Bryan’s role in the rescue. Grace could hear details being embroidered as she stood there. She was greatly relieved when Bryan had given his statement to the police, answered a few questions from the reporter—downplaying his own part in the rescue, of course—and then turned to Grace to say, “Ready to go?”
“Yes.”
The fervency of her reply drew a wry smile from him. “Sorry. I know how you hate being the center of attention.”
Aware of all the eyes still focused on them, she cleared her throat and fell into quick step at his side. “Let’s just find your car.”