Street signs had been ripped from the corners, making the trip even trickier. With signs down and landmarks in tatters, it was going to take luck or God’s guidance to get them where they needed to be, even though it was less than a mile from the station. He murmured a silent prayer to the saints that they would reach the devastated street before someone died in the rubble.
As if in answer to his prayer, the rain and wind began to die down. In a few hours the street flooding would begin to ease, but that was no help to them now. They crept along at a frustrating pace.
The scene that awaited them when they eventually reached the middle-class Miami neighborhood was like a war zone. Power lines were down, leaving dangerous live wires in the road. Here and there a home had miraculously escaped the worst of the hurricane’s wrath, but those were the exception. Most of the two-storey houses had been leveled by the winds or by an accompanying tornado. Those that hadn’t collapsed completely were severely damaged. Roof tiles had been stripped away, glass was shattered and doors had been ripped from their hinges. Another testament to lousy inspections and shoddy construction, Rick thought wearily as he surveyed the damage. Hadn’t the city learned anything from Hurricane Andrew?
There was no time to worry about what couldn’t be changed. With the precision of a long-established team, the firefighters assessed the situation, then split up. A call was placed to the electric company to get a crew on the scene. In the meantime, barricades were set up to prevent people from stumbling onto the area around the live wires.
A few people were walking around dazed and bloody, oblivious to the light shower that was now the only lingering evidence of Hurricane Gwen. Some of the paramedics set up a first aid station and began to treat the less severely injured, while others took their highly trained dogs and began to search for signs of life.
A woman who looked to be in her seventies, clutching a robe tightly around her, hobbled up to Ricky. She seemed to be completely unaware of the bloody gash in her forehead, though her expression was frantic.
“You have to find Allie,” she said urgently.
“Your daughter, ma’am?”
“No, no, she’s my neighbor.” She gestured toward a severely damaged house. As Ricky and Tom headed in that direction, she trailed along behind. “She’s a wonderful young woman and she’s already been through so much. This house was her pride and joy. She just bought it a few months ago, and she’s been spending every spare minute fixing it up, putting in flowers all around.”
Her eyes shone with tears. “None of that matters, of course. Houses can be rebuilt. Flowers can be replanted.”
“You say her name is Allie?” Ricky asked.
“Allison, actually. Allison Matthews.”
As Tom went to get the equipment they’d need, Ricky surveyed the collapsed structure in the early dawn light. He opened his mouth to shout, but the woman’s frail hand on his arm stopped him.
“Calling out won’t help,” she said urgently. “She won’t be able to hear you. Allie’s deaf.”
As if the situation weren’t complicated enough, he thought, then reminded himself to treat it as he might a rescue in a foreign country where he didn’t know the language. It wouldn’t matter that he couldn’t communicate with this Allie in the usual way. He just had to find her.
He circled the twisted pile of debris, looking for any sign of the woman, any hint of where rooms might have been. Would she have been in an upstairs bedroom or downstairs?
Shadow, the highly trained dog at his side, moved gingerly through the rubble, sniffing. Rick stood where he was, waiting, letting Shadow do his part. This was always the hardest part of a rescue, hanging back, leaving it to the German shepherd to pinpoint signs of life.
Finally Shadow stilled, whimpered, then barked.
“So, you found her, did you, boy? Good dog.”
Shadow yipped excitedly, but didn’t move, as if he sensed that one tiny shift could be fatal.
“Let’s get her out of there, boy,” Ricky said. He paused long enough to give a reassuring smile to the neighbor. “Looks like we’ve located your friend. We’ll have her out of there in no time.”
“Thank God,” she said. “Allie’s one of those special people put on this earth to show others the meaning of goodness. She’s an angel, sure as anything.”
Ricky didn’t know a lot of women who could live up to such high praise. He tended to gravitate toward women who could best be described as free and easy with their affections, the kind who placed no demands on him, who knew that his job came first. Definitely not the sort of women to take home to meet his mother, who bemoaned his failure to marry on an almost daily basis. The only time she let up was when he brought Tom home for a meal of her famed pork roast, black beans and rice. Then she served up marital advice along with the food. Tom enjoyed her cooking too much to complain.
Of course, right now it didn’t much matter whether Allie was a saint or a sinner. She was someone who needed his help, and that was all that mattered.
He intently studied the collapsed home again, looking for the best possible access, using Shadow’s watchful stance as a guidepost to Allie’s location.
“Shouldn’t you hurry?” the elderly neighbor asked, wringing her hands anxiously.
“Better to do it right than rush and cause more injuries than whatever she’s suffered so far.” Thinking of his grandmother and how she would feel under these circumstances, he took a moment to cup the woman’s icy hands. “It’s going to be okay.”
No sooner were the words spoken than he heard a feeble cry for help from deep within the rubble. The sound tore at his heart. Knowing that there was nothing he could say, that words of reassurance would quite literally fall on deaf ears, he settled for reassuring her friend instead.
“See, there? She’s alive. We’ll have her out of there in no time,” he said optimistically. “In the meantime, why don’t you go over to the first aid station that’s been set up and let somebody take a look at that cut on your forehead. Looks as if you might have a sprained ankle, too.”
“At my age, hobbling’s normal. As for the cut, it’s nothing,” she said, facing him stubbornly. “I want to be right here when you bring Allie out. She must be terrified. She’ll need to see a familiar face.”
Ricky recognized the determined set of her jaw and gave up arguing. Like his abuela, this woman knew her own mind.
He looked around until he caught sight of Tom, who had assembled the necessary rescue equipment and was ready to get started.
“All set?” his partner asked.
Adrenaline kicked in as it always did when the hard work was about to begin. Ricky nodded.
“Let’s do it,” he said with an eagerness that always struck him as vaguely inappropriate. Yet it was that very anticipation that had driven him to take on such highly dangerous work in the first place. True, what he did sometimes saved lives, which was incredibly rewarding, but it also tested his skill and ingenuity at outwitting the forces of nature and near-certain death in the aftermath. A part of him craved that element of risk.
Often he was halfway across the world. Today, however, he was in his own backyard, so to speak. Somehow that raised the stakes.
He thought of the elderly woman’s assessment of Allie and grinned. He had to admit that his anticipation was heightened ever so slightly by the promise than when this particular rescue was over, for the first time he might be face-to-face with an angel.
Chapter Two
Allie fell in and out of consciousness. Or maybe she only slept. She just knew that every once in