Lightning Read Free Page A

LeBaron and back in close to the curb, rolling forward slowly but staying twenty feet behind Beth. He could make out the demonstrators’ signs now, mostly red-lettered anti-abortion slogans on plain white backgrounds. A few of them featured reproductions of color photos of aborted fetuses. Some of the demonstrators were carrying long, white wooden crosses, thin and light enough to march with and wave without getting tired. The red T-shirts were lettered OPERATION ALIVE across their chests.
    Carver stopped the car at the curb, turned off the engine, and continued watching Beth and the demonstrators. Several people were jabbing the air with their signs and crosses, their faces masks of rage as they screamed at Beth that babies were being killed inside the building and she shouldn’t be one of the murderers. Several of them shouted verses from scripture, and a tall man with white hair was waving a Bible frantically in his right hand and pointing to it with his left. Two large women wearing shorts and carrying aborted fetus signs screamed insults at Beth in perfect unison, as if they’d practiced in the manner of a singing duet. Unruffled, Beth removed her sunglasses, glanced over at them, and smiled.
    When she was ten feet from the building, the man and woman with pamphlets darted across the street toward her. Several other people crossed the street west of the building, staying just outside the legal limit.
    Instead of ignoring the pamphleteers or swatting their thrusting hands away, Beth clutched the man’s wrist and squeezed it hard, dragging him for a moment toward the building. He fought to pull back, dropping his pamphlets in the struggle, and she grinned and released him, then pushed inside through the glass doors. As soon as the man scooped up the dropped literature, he and his partner ran back across the street. Carver was aware of several other figures racing back across the street to the legal sanctuary of the median. At the same moment, a Del Moray police car approached from the other direction and parked about a hundred feet west of the demonstrators. Carver was relieved to see it.
    Then the blast roared through the hot air and seemed to rock the heavy Olds. Stunned, Carver saw Beth come flying back out through the shower of sun-touched glass that had been the building’s doors and land hard on the sidewalk. She stayed propped up in a sitting position for a few seconds, then fell back. Even from where he sat, he could see her head bounce off the concrete. Black smoke began to roll above the building against the backdrop of bright blue sky.
    Carver couldn’t move. Jesus! Is this real? Is this real?
    Figures casting stark shadows were running in every direction. As he recovered from his shock and climbed out of the Olds, Carver saw two Del Moray cops pile out of the cruiser and race toward the building, leaving the police car’s doors hanging wide open. Placards and glossy pamphlets littered the street and median.
    The stench of ruin was in the air. The feel of death.
    Already sirens were screaming as Carver set the tip of his cane on the baked concrete and hobbled as fast as he could toward Beth.

4
    C ARVER FOLLOWED THE AMBULANCE back into the center of Del Moray, his heart pounding as the air was split by emergency sirens and flashing red-and-blue lights that fought the sun.
    Beth had been bleeding and unconscious when they laid her on a gurney and got her into the ambulance. Carver told himself the bleeding was only from minor cuts made by flying glass, but he knew he was only hoping.
    The ambulance veered to the right lane, then turned into the circular driveway of the emergency entrance to A. A. Aal Memorial Hospital. By the time Carver found a parking slot in the adjacent lot, Beth had already been removed from the ambulance and taken inside.
    As he entered through the double-wide pneumatic doors, he found himself in an area of green walls, carpeted cubicles, and beige-curtained partitions. A medicinal