42. Hailey

FORTY-TWO

I led Starlight to her stall, smiling the whole way, my lips tingling from the meaning I'd felt behind Cody's kiss.

I opened the gate and removed her bridle, whispered my love to her, before I started back out.

A scream tore out of me when I was suddenly rocked by a thunder so intense that the ground shook violently beneath my feet.

A sonic boom that echoed through the air, rattling the metal of the stalls and tossing the entire world into disorder.

My hands shot out to steady myself against the gate.

My knees weak and my heart hammering as bolts of confusion and anxiety shot through me as the ground tremored and rolled.

An earthquake.

A volcano.

A rendering of peace.

I gasped and tried to orient myself, to process what I'd heard.

To make sense of what still trembled through the atmosphere.

Shouts rose up from all around, in the distance and some coming from a couple ranch hands who ran past me down the aisle where they tossed the door open at the end in search of what had happened.

My head spun, and I swallowed around the tumult that had me in shock.

Gathering myself enough to focus, I tuned my ear to the shouts and voices that were coming from outside.

Not an earthquake.

An explosion.

Oh God.

It was an explosion.

Panic erupted in my senses, and I slammed the stall gate closed, latched it, and went running in the same direction as the other hands had gone, flying out through the door to the disorder happening on the other side.

Shouts.

Mayhem.

Chaos.

Voices penetrated from all around, rising through the smoke that clouded the air.

"Someone call an ambulance."

"Stay back!"

"We need an extinguisher."

I faltered for only a beat, my heart in my throat as my gaze raced to where the commotion was coming from.

To the lot near the maintenance facility.

Then I was running.

Sprinting.

Hemorrhaging.

My heart bleeding out when through the haze of smoke and dust I saw Cody's truck.

Consumed in flames.

"Cody, oh my God, no, Cody."

I ran as hard as my feet would take me, my boots pounding the ground, the world falling away around me.

People were gathered around, though a few were holding them back, keeping them away from the heat that I could already feel blasting my face.

"Cody!" I shouted it through the terror that ravaged, and I barreled through the wall of bodies. "Cody!"

Arms curled around me from behind. "Stay right here, Ms. Wagner. It's not safe."

I flailed and tore at Tyrek's hold, my chest bowing as I warred to break free. Screams ripped out of my lungs. "Cody! Where is he? Let me go! Please, let go."

Two men were on the opposite side of the truck, about eight feet out, kneeling around something I couldn't see.

But my soul knew.

"Cody." I whimpered it that time.

A siren bleeped from the fire station that was only a mile down the road, and the whirring sound of it curled through the heavens as it started our direction.

"Cody."

It was mayhem then.

The fire trucks and ambulance that pulled up, firefighters and paramedics descending on the scene, pushing everyone back while employees scrambled and swarmed to see what the clamor was about.

While I felt my heart shatter out in front of me.