The dark wood had a gloss so beautiful Andrea immediately knew her mom must have come over to clean. No one else could make the finish shine like that. The mirrored wall behind the buffet gleamed just as brightly. Glancing beyond the furniture to the wall of taped boxes beside the windows, Andrea read some of their haphazard labels. Kit. Bed stuff. Toys. If Vicki had unpacked anything last night, it wasn’t in this part of the house. Andrea called out her sister’s name again but no one answered.
When she entered the living room a second later, Andrea knew why. She gasped, her words half-curse, half-prayer. “Oh my God…”
Like a dinosaur that couldn’t get up, her grandmother’s huge mahogany armoire had fallen over. Its doors hung open uselessly, like broken limbs, their beveled inserts shattered, bits and pieces of molding and hardware strewn about the room as well as shards of broken glass.
All at once, a bit of white caught her eye. Underneath one of the cracked planks, something glowed, something with a small red bulb embedded in the center. When she realized what she was looking at, Andrea felt her knees wobble.
It was a shoe, a kid’s tennis shoe, the kind with a little light on the heel that flashed when the child moved.
Only this light wasn’t flashing.
Crying their names, she dropped to her knees to peer under the armoire. “Kevin? Vicki? Oh, God! Are you guys under there?”
She caught her breath as she heard a moan.
“Vicki?” she said, her voice high and frightened. “Is that you? Are you beneath the cabinet? Answer me!”
Her command was frantic but it elicited only silence. She tried again and got the same answer.
Rocking back on her heels, her gaze taking in more details, Andrea told herself to be calm. There had to be a way to get beneath the mess. She needed to do that first. After a second’s study, she knew what to do. The chest was so big, it’d actually wedged itself against the opposite wall, about three feet up. If she was careful, she could climb over the top and worm her way underneath.
Her mouth dry, her pulse racing, she started forward, pieces of wood and broken glass crunching as she went. One careless move and she could create an even bigger disaster…but she had to get in there and get to Vicki and Kevin. She’d talked to her sister at nine last night. If this had happened right after they’d spoken, they could have been trapped for more than twelve hours!
Andrea inched her way to the place where the cabinet was propped against the stucco. She paused for a second and gathered her composure, then gingerly began to lower herself into the niche between the wall and the cabinet’s side.
She tried not to breathe for fear of dislodging anything. As she slipped down, though, her belt hit the edge of the chest and for one heart-stopping second, everything seemed to groan.
After the debris settled, she tried again, making herself as skinny as possible and easing down—slowly—her back scraping against the rough plaster. If she’d been another inch wider, she wouldn’t have fit.
Once inside the tiny crevice, she tucked herself into a tight ball and balanced on her haunches, leaning to her right to stare past her knees. A single ray of light had managed to pierce the darkness. Her eyes focused and she almost wished they hadn’t.
The first thing she saw was her nephew. He lay motionless on his stomach three feet away, one leg trapped by a shelf, the other caught under one of the doors. Andrea whispered his name and his eyes fluttered open.
She swallowed and said, “Kevin, it’s Aunt Andrea. I’m going to help you, okay? Before we get started, though, I need to know something.” She took a deep breath. “Where’s Mommy, Kevin? Is she behind you? Is she under there with you?”
He didn’t speak. He simply raised one finger and pointed behind him.
Andrea leaned forward and craned her neck. The gloom was thicker where the case rested against the floor and she could see even less than she had before. Squinting hard, she edged another few inches closer and suddenly her sister’s shadowy face emerged.
Andrea called her name. “Vic? Can you hear me? It’s Andrea. Vic?”
Vicki stared back but she didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
She was dead.
CHAPTER TWO
DISBELIEF SLICED through Andrea. As an EMS tech, she’d delivered bad news to a lot of folks and their ability to protest reality had always baffled her. Now she understood their reaction because it was her own. She didn’t want to acknowledge what she saw—she wanted to close her eyes and pretend her sister was alive.
But she couldn’t. She saw far too many dead people in her job for any kind of denial to work.
Her gaze left Vicki’s blank one and returned to the rubble. Shutting out everything else, she evaluated the scene like the professional she was.
From the placement of her sister and Kevin, it appeared as if the case had begun to fall and they’d been in front of it. Vicki had probably tried to warn Kevin because he was slightly turned, but he hadn’t been able to get away. She’d caught the brunt of the weight and it’d taken her down.
A knot formed in Andrea’s throat. Her sister had insisted on hauling the top heavy monstrosity from one place to another every time she’d moved. She’d even paid a fortune to have it fitted with special mounting strips to protect it in case of an earthquake. That was probably what she’d been doing—installing the strip to the studs—when the damn thing had gone over. It didn’t make sense that something that large could tip over, but clearly it had.
Andrea looked at her nephew. His eyes were closed and in the somber light, he seemed dead, too. Except for the smudges on his face, his skin had no color and he hadn’t moved since pointing to his mother. Turning her attention to his trapped legs Andrea tried to gauge the extent of his injuries. Her stomach clenched as she realized the cabinet’s edge had missed him by an inch, an inch that had meant his life.
She stretched her fingers as far as she could, but she couldn’t touch him. “Kevin? You need to wake up now, okay? You have to talk to me and tell me what hurts.”
Vicki’s explanation of his silences rang in Andrea’s mind, but she had to think something this traumatic would jar him to speak.
“Kevin?” She raised her voice. “Kevin, can you hear me?”
His eyelids quivered for a bit, then he opened them and looked at her.
“Talk to me, sweetie,” she pleaded. “Tell me where it hurts. Besides your legs, does it hurt anywhere else?”
He stared at her with a strange kind of intensity and she felt as if he were trying to decide if she was one of the good guys or not. With the distance that had grown between her and Vicki, Andrea hadn’t seen the little boy in more than a year, she realized with a catch. He was only six. Did he even remember her?
“I’m Aunt Andrea…your mommy’s sister. Remember last Christmas? I’m the one who gave you the teddy bear. The little brown one with the black eyes.”
His gaze flickered but he didn’t speak.
“Talk to me,” she whispered. “Please, Kevin…you have to talk to me.”
He stared at her for another long second, then he turned away.
Her frustration swelling, Andrea considered the possibility of moving him on her own, but she dismissed the idea quickly. It was too risky. The piece was too unstable and she didn’t have the right equipment.
She had to have help.
Twisting