Page 410 of Seasons of Love
He hadn’t stopped playing with his wedding ring. There were times when he suddenly stopped talking, and I knew he was thinking about Griff, but then he’d come back to us with yet another piece of information Trey needed.
As the helicopter lifted off, I held Mal’s hand in mine and squeezed. I’d ended up sitting between Mal and Trey, so I knew no one could see us.
Mal looked at me, his gaze so full of vulnerability that I wanted to put my arms around him and just hold him.
I knew he couldn’t hear me over the noise of the helicopter, so I just mouthed, “He’s okay.”
He mouthed back, “Thank you,” and then squeezed my hand back but didn’t let go.
As soon as the island was in sight, I looked out of the window. The closer we got, the clearer it was that the earthquake hadn’t destroyed any buildings, but I noticed a couple of beaches had been lost to landslides and rockfalls.
I just hoped that the timing of the earthquake meant there had been no rock climbers in the area.
The chief of the fire department met us as soon as we landed. We followed him from the roof and into the building.
“Morning, folks. Can I get you a coffee? I understand you’ve been up all night waiting to get here.”
“We’re good, Chief,” Mal said. “Can you give us an update?”
He nodded, taking us into a small kitchen and going straight to the coffee machine.
“The good news is that there are no casualties, and I haven’t yet heard of any damage to buildings. The LA Fire Department is kindly lending us the chopper you’ve just flown in for the day, and the guys are now getting ready to do a flyover of the island to check on the remote areas.”
“Is there any bad news, Chief?” Mal asked.
The chief took a sip of his coffee before answering.
“Our hospital is already quite small, so whenever something like this happens, we tend to run out of beds pretty quickly. People are still coming in with small injuries, so we set up a triage room at the resort. My guys have done a check of the resort, and everything’s fine. Hailey and Pete have been there all night, and they have a couple of my guys helping and taking anyone that needs medical attention to the hospital.”
“How about power?” I asked.
“We never lost it, which is good, but cell signal is still down, which is making it tricky to get ahold of people to check that they’re okay.”
The way the chief said it and then looked at Mal made me feel like I was going to be sick.
“Do you boys want to head toward the resort? I just need to have a quick word with Mal.”
No, I didn’t want to walk away and leave Mal on his own to hear whatever news the chief had for him, but I couldn’t exactly justify my request to stay either, so I walked out of the station with Trey following me.
“I’m very impressed,” Trey said. “Shocked, actually. If this was back home, I’d have the chief of police and the fire chief fighting over who was in charge.
“This is a small island. The chief of police is the fire chief’s son-in-law. They know to play along, or they’ll both be in trouble with the mayor. And that’s one woman you don’t want to cross.”
Trey laughed.
“Hey, do you mind if we wait out here for Mal? He’s been worried about Griff, and I don’t want him to come out on his own if he’s getting bad news,” I said.
“Sure, I was thinking the same. So why’s the Mayor so scary?”
“Would you ever cross your wife or your mother-in-law?”
“Hell no,” Trey said with a mock shiver.
St. Harbor was the largest of the two main populated areas on the island. But even then, we could walk the length of the town in thirty minutes.
The fire department was at one end of town and a short walk to the gated driveway leading to the resort.
As soon as I saw Mal leave the station, I knew something bad had happened. I walked over to him, but he stopped me before I could ask questions.
