The Deputy's Witness

And waited.

No explosion rocked the ground, filled the air or even disrupted the birds chirping in the distance. Caleb chanced a look over to Charlie, who gave him nothing less than a similar expression of confusion.

“When I slid the plate in, a counter slid out for ten seconds,” he defended. “It started to count down instantly. It should have gone off by now.”

Cautiously both men stood, Caleb scooping Alyssa back up and putting her firmly against his chest. “I’m getting her out of here.”

Charlie didn’t stop him and ordered one of the bomb squad with the bomb blankets to follow until they made it past the barricade.

“Thanks, man,” Caleb made sure to say. The man nodded.

“No problem,” he answered. “It’s my job.”

The simple statement was all it took to remind Caleb of his own job. If he still had one. As if he’d been summoned, Captain Jones was at their side.

“I told the EMTs to stay farther back, just in case,” he hurried, pointing out the ambulance on the other side of the street. There was a news van a few yards from it, despite the blocks that had been put between them. A cameraman and a woman wielding a microphone were standing tall and ready. “Let me take care of them. You follow—”

Both men paused as a foreign sound filled the air.

“Is that—” the captain started, turning around to look in the direction of Alyssa’s car. Caleb did the same. “—music?” he finished.

The world quieted around them. Bystanders, deputies and bomb squad alike became silent and listened. There was no mistaking it. Coming from the abandoned Honda wasn’t fire and smoke but music.

A piano solo.

What was going on?

Alyssa stirred in Caleb’s arms. It brought him out of his moment of wonder. “Time to get you out of here.”

* * *

ALYSSA WISHED SHE’D worn a nicer bra. The one she had on now was off-beige, comfortable, did its job and was not supposed to be seen by anyone other than herself. Her panties—black, not beige, also comfortable and just as capable of doing their job—were on the same list of Things That Were Very Private. And yet, looking down at herself, there they were. Open to the hospital room around her just as they had been open to the EMTs who had deemed it necessary to strip her down in the ambulance.

Sure, they were trying to bring her core temperature down as quickly as possible to save her brain cells from dying off and, well, her dying off too. Yet there she was, all brain cells intact, remembering that it hadn’t just been her and the EMTs in the ambulance.

Deputy Caleb Foster had been there too.

Fresh heat crawled up Alyssa’s neck and into her cheeks. No one would count it as embarrassment, seeing as how she’d spent the last half hour being treated for heat stroke. Still, when someone knocked on the door, she tried to mentally restrain the blush.

“Hello?” a woman called. “My name is Cassie Gates. I’m from the sheriff’s department. May I come in?”

The name was familiar to Alyssa, but she couldn’t quite place how.

“You may,” she responded, grabbing the thin sheet and holding it loosely over her body. Part of her treatment had allowed her to stay in her own undergarments but nothing else, minus several ice packs strategically placed against her skin. Which was a big reason Deputy Foster had excused himself. Though, she realized later, that was only after the doctor had said they believed she’d be fine.