Read Online Fry Me a Liver by Delia Rosen - Free Book Online

Candy had asked was abhorrent on one level, using our limited resources to propel her career. But I understood it. I looked at Benjamin who was looking at me.
    â€œYour call,” I said.
    â€œLiterally,” Candy added. “I’ll need you to send what I record down here as soon as we get out.”
    The young man nodded. He raised the cell phone as Candy made herself look as disheveled as possible. She moved toward the rubble wall with the sloping van as a backdrop. I had to give her this: the gal could think in a crisis.
    â€œReady?” she asked.
    â€œGo,” he said.
    And then, as the video rolled—and on cue—the van took his direction and fell into the basement.

Chapter 5
    I happened to be looking in that direction, not watching Candy but shielding my eyes from the direct beam of the cell phone flashlight. That was how and why I saw everything that happened.
    It was as if the van had a ghost driver. The back end, the one facing down, lurched toward us slightly as though someone had shifted gears. It hesitated a moment and then sped down backward at a forty-five degree angle. The rear tires struck the basement floor like the landing gear of a 747 touching down, then the front end of the van dropped hard. Propelled by the fall, the entire vehicle rolled toward the rubble wall. The van was trailing two heavy steel cables that ate into the ceiling above. They were tied to the front axle; it looked as if the FD had been trying to secure the van through the back door of the deli when the floor gave way just enough to drop the vehicle through. The van traversed only three or four yards, but that was just enough for it to ram the wall. The van stopped hard and the wall gave without a struggle. The rubble toppled onto A.J.
    She didn’t make a sound but Candy did. The newswoman shrieked and threw herself to the side as more debris toppled toward her. Washington reached over and pulled her toward him, across debris that had fallen earlier, to get her out of the way of the van.
    There was a long, thick moment of silence. Our eyes all drifted upward. The fall of the vehicle left an opening in the ceiling. The hole and the air around it were filled with a thick gray tester of particulate matter with dim, hazy work lights beyond.
    The ceiling seemed to have lost everything it was going to lose. It was time to take chances now if we were going to help A.J.
    â€œLuke, stay wide of the opening but yell at whoever’s up there. Tell them we have injured people.”
    He acknowledged this as I spun to where A.J. lay buried. I began throwing smaller blocks toward the hole, away from the others. Sandy—who had jumped back and missed the collapse by inches—was already pulling at the rubble with her strong butcher’s hands. Benjamin kept the cell phone on us even as the light started to wink out.
    â€œA.J., talk to me,” I said, more to myself than to her.
    â€œDo what your boss says,” Sandy added. “Say something. Anything!”
    My fingers became claws and my heart became a locomotive. They worked together, ripping at stone with a ferocity and strength I didn’t imagine I possessed. The pile on top of A.J. was nearly a foot deep. Her arms were jutting from the base, the fingers twitching. Candy crept over and pulled stones from her feet. I saw her look over at Benjamin’s phone. If the camera was still running, she was probably making sure her face was on it, playing the hero. I didn’t have time to be angry. That would come. So would beating the crap out of whoever was responsible for this. And I would find out who that was.
    By the time we had cleared the mound from A.J.’s chest and face, the only light was from the craterous hole the van had made. My poor gal’s head was turned toward the opening, her eyes shut. She was scratched with vivid red gashes but the rest of her was so pale, so cold, so lifeless—
    I heard Luke talking softly from