Red Alert Read Free Page A

hit, the impact drove the breath from her lungs. Her landing pad was cold and wet. Too heavy to be water, too gritty to be mud.
    She’d fallen into the cement form.
    And she was sinking.
    Over the growing hubbub of screams and shouts from above, she heard a man’s voice shout, “Meg!”
    She looked up and saw Erik leaning over the lip of the cement form. He stretched his arm down and sunlight glinted off his cane. “Grab on!”
    Gasping and choking as the wet, heavy weight pressed on every fiber of her being, she reached up. She could just touch the cane with the edge of her fingertips. She stretched farther and heard a rushing roar, and a man’s shout.
    Above her, the cement truck sluiceway opened up and dumped heavy, clinging cement on top of her.
    “Help me!” she screamed. The cascade of wet cement filled the space quickly, covering her shoulders in seconds, then working its way up her neck.
    Why hadn’t they turned off the sluice? Couldn’t the cement truck operator tell there was a problem?
    Even as the thought formed in Meg’s brain, it was too late. The liquefied silt poured down around her, covering her neck and ears. She screamed, though she knew it would do no good.
    She was being buried alive.
    Safety was no more than ten feet away. Rescue had to be on its way. But it would be too late.
    She screamed again and arched her back against the sluggish give of the setting cement. She looked up to the edge of the cement form, toward the sidewalk, where the protective railing hung askew. Though she could hear nothing over the splatter of cement that continued to fall from above and her eyes were blurred with clinging clumps of grit, she saw the silhouette of a broad-shouldered man in an expensive suit.
    The image of blue eyes stayed with her when she sucked in her last breath.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    “Get that crane down here! And kill the flow, now! ” Erik’s ears rang from the equipment noise and the force of his own shouts. “What is wrong with you people? There’s a woman in there! ”
    He gripped the edge of the cement form so hard his fingers ached. He cursed the construction crew for being incompetent, and cursed himself for being worse than useless. Eight years ago, he could have jumped in and saved her.
    If he jumped in now, there would be two of them stuck, drowning.
    The flowing cement cut out with a rattle. The last few blobs plopped into the foundation form and were immediately absorbed by the smooth gray surface.
    There was no sign of Meg Corning. No sign of movement.
    Panic spiked through Erik. “Damn it! Where’s that crane?”
    “Here!” a man’s voice shouted, and a weightedball with a large, dangling hook swung down into the foundation pit.
    Erik was aware of the shouting, gesturing pedestrians cramming close to the disaster site, aware of the rising throb of sirens in the near distance. The local cops would be here any moment, but the trapped woman couldn’t wait that long.
    The thought brought an image of her, a flash of red-gold curls and intelligent hazel eyes, a stacked body hidden beneath a starched white lab coat.
    He’d gone to the meeting in person because he’d needed to put a face to the reams of reports he’d amassed on Meg Corning. He’d told himself it was groundwork, but it had been more than that.
    It had been a compulsion. He’d needed to see her.
    Now he might be the last person to ever see her.
    The crane operator finally swung the line toward Erik, who caught the cable. Cursing, he pulled himself onto the swinging weight, braced his good foot on the hook and let the other leg dangle free. Damn thing wasn’t good for much else.
    “Lower me into the pit,” he shouted, waving at the crane operator. “Stop when I give the signal!”
    He hung on tight as the crane operator swung him out over the slick gray surface and lowered him toward the cement. Please let it still be liquid, he thought. Please let her be holding her breath.
    But that seemed a thin