“The police are coming,” Theodosia called out over the screams, trying to sound braver than she actually felt. “There will be ambulances, EMTs to help all of you. Just stay where you are and try not to move.” She figured the EMTs were the pros; they’d know how to triage the wounded. As far as everything else—the stolen jewels—that would just have to wait. The injured guests took precedence now.
“Kaitlin?” Brooke called out. She was hunting frantically for her niece. “Honey, where are you?”
“She’s over here,” a man cried out. “I think she’s hurt pretty bad.”
Brooke staggered her way across the front of the store, glass crunching underfoot as she tried not to step on the injured guests or fall headlong into the jagged, empty cases.
“Kaitlin?” Brooke called again as she finally reached her niece, who was lying prone on the floor. She bent down over Kaitlin’s body. “Honey, I’m here.” Her voice was ragged and tight with fear. Her hand reached out and gently touched Kaitlin’s face. Then her voice rose in a strangled gargle. “Kaitlin?”
Theodosia, sensing disaster, began to pick her way toward Brooke and Kaitlin.
“Don’t touch her,” Theodosia warned. “The ambulances are here.” Red and blue lights strobed out in the street. “Let them . . .”
Brooke was bent over Kaitlin now, clutching her and sobbing uncontrollably.
“Brooke.” Theodosia’s voice was a sharp bark, trying to get through to her friend. “Don’t move her. Let the EMTs take care of her.”
But Brooke would have none of it. Lifting Kaitlin’s head, she gently pushed back her hair to reveal a daggerlike hunk of glass embedded in the girl’s throat. Kaitlin’s eyes had rolled back until only the whites were visible. She was no longer breathing. The poor girl was gone.
Brooke’s scream rose in a pitch-perfect high C that melded with the blaring sirens of the police cruisers and ambulances that had finally arrived on the scene.
2
It was a catastrophe of epic proportions. Kaitlin dead, countless people injured, all the jewelry stolen, and Brooke’s shop left in ruins.
How could this happen? Theodosia wondered as she watched a half-dozen EMTs and a dozen uniformed officers pour into the shop. One minute they’d all been sipping tea and gazing serenely at priceless jewels and gems, and now . . . everything lay in ruin.
“What are we going to do?” Haley asked, clutching at Theodosia’s hand. She was trembling like a leaf. “People are bleeding . . . a lot of them are hurt really bad. And Kaitlin . . .”
They both turned to watch as an EMT knelt down over Kaitlin’s body and did a quick life check. Despite Brooke’s tears and loud protests, the EMT was shaking his head. No, Kaitlin was gone for sure. There was nothing that could be done.
“This is awful!” Haley cried. “What are we . . . ?”
Theodosia spun to face Haley and gripped her shoulders tightly. “Haley, we’re going to pull it together, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to take a deep breath and help wherever we can. We’ll hold hands with the injured, carry stretchers if we have to, run and grab first aid supplies, and do whatever else the first responders might need. Okay?”
Haley wobbled her head. “I guess.”
“Pull it together, Haley.”
“Okay.”
For the next five minutes they worked in what could only be classified as a disaster zone. That time stretched into another fifteen minutes of critical care. They comforted the wounded, helped some of them limp out to waiting ambulances and squad cars, and pretty much did whatever the uniformed officers and EMTs directed. It was hard work and the awful part was that Kaitlin’s body remained in place, exactly where she’d fallen, with just black-and-yellow crime scene tape strung around it.
Finally, as the mess slowly began to get sorted out, the big guns arrived to investigate.
“Tidwell,” Theodosia muttered when she saw the burly detective arrive on the scene. Burt Tidwell headed the Robbery-Homicide Division of the Charleston Police Department and he was a force to be reckoned with. Tight-lipped, tenacious, and pugnacious, Tidwell was a dogged investigator who drove his men with unbridled zeal. His detectives and officers feared him, trusted him, and depended heavily upon him. If push came to shove, they would probably walk across hot coals in their bare feet for him.
Tonight Tidwell wore a rumpled sport coat that barely stretched across his ever-expanding frame. His slightly bulging eyes never stopped moving as he took in the injured guests, the first responders still toiling away, and the smashed jewelry cases, where the only telltale signs of missing jewelry were faint impressions left on velvet.
Theodosia knew that Tidwell had noticed her, but he hadn’t bothered to acknowledge her even though he was a frequent gobbler of scones and guzzler of tea at her shop. Instead, he stomped around the premises, taking everything in, seemingly unaware of glass shards crunching loudly beneath his heavy cop shoes.
“I . . . I think my hand got cut,” a woman said in a small voice.