Oh my God.His truck is parked near the Dumpsters, but there’s no sign of him, or of Boone’s car.
“No!” I scream, my voice shaking as I jerk my wheel to the side. My tire collides with the curb, but I don’t care as I slam it into park.
I jump out of the car and run toward the inferno, heat already warming my face.
“Stop! Don’t!”
A man reaches out and grabs me around the waist, dragging me back when my heels connect with the pavement to keep moving forward.
“No!” My voice doesn’t sound like me. It’s ragged. Desperate. Terrified.
“Get back. Everyone, get back! The gas tanks are gonna blow!” the man yells as he pulls me around the side of the post office. “Take cover!”
I don’t know who he’s yelling at, but all I want is to free myself from his iron grip.
“Let me go! I have to get to him! Logan’s in there.” I whip my head around to fight against the man, but he’s too strong.
“You wanna get killed? We gotta get back.” He stops once we’re safe behind the post office, and the percussion of another explosion rocks the ground.
“Get down!” He pushes me to my knees and covers me with his body.
Screams split the air, and sirens wail in the distance.
It’s chaos. Complete and utter chaos. And only one thought is running through my head on repeat:I have to get to Logan.
I crawl out from under the man to stand, but freeze when I see the blaze reaching higher into the sky. My eyes burn, and tears stream down my face.
A door slams beside me, startling me and dragging me out of my disjointed thoughts.
“Oh my fucking God! What the hell just happened?” Julianne’s voice cuts through the static in my head as she shuts the back door of Cut a Bitch. “I was in the basement. My front window is blown out. Logan’s shop is ... rubble.” She whispers the last word as I run toward her.
“Where is he?” I demand. “Did you see him?”
I run to the corner of the building with Julianne on my heels. The fire is so intense, it heats my face as soon as I step beyond the protection of the concrete walls.
“I ... I just talked to him about twenty minutes ago. He was waiting for you in the garage.” Her voice trembles as if she wishes she was saying anything but the words coming out of her mouth.
“No!”
Sheer agony rips through me. I slap a hand over my chest, trying to stop the pain, and wonder why there isn’t a gaping hole in my chest where my heart was ripped out.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispers.
“He couldn’t have been—” I choke on the words and start again. “He wasn’t—”
“I’m so sorry,” Julianne repeats, shaking her head. “I’m so sorry.”
Wailing sirens come closer and pierce the buzzing in my ears.
“Oh my God. I’m going to be sick.” I jerk away from Julianne, pressing a hand to the wall of the building as I empty my stomach on the pitted asphalt before falling backward onto my ass.
Julianne joins me on the ground and wraps her arms around me, and together we rock back and forth. I don’t know how long we stay like that before someone comes around the building and starts barking out orders.
“You need to get back. We need everyone at least two hundred feet away. This isn’t safe.”
“Jesus, Cody,” Julianne says. “What the fuck just happened?”
Through the tears blurring my eyes, I see the man issuing orders. The cop. He knows Logan.