Rachel — Cambridge, MA
It was Rachel who smelled the smoke first, in the middle of hastily preparing to leave for a safe house. She yelled at Darrin, who had just arrived home from a job interview, to call 911. Then she ran upstairs to get her daughter and mother who were reading in the belfry library. “The house is on fire,” Rachel shouted running up the spiral staircase.
Her mother and little Mary met her at the top of the stairs with looks of astonishment on their faces. “What’s happening?” her mother gasped.
“The house is on fire. We’ve got to get out,” Rachel blurted before coughing uncontrollably. The three of them descended one after another down the spiral staircase into the hallway, toward the main staircase now filled with smoke.
Darrin came running from the kitchen, scooped his daughter into his arms, and grabbed Rachel’s hand. Rachel’s other hand held onto her mother’s. As the four of them ran together down the wide hallway toward the front door, there was an explosion in the east parlor. Flames shot across their exit path, engulfing the front door in fire and smoke. They quickly turned around and ran for the French doors at the back of the house, but before they could reach them, there was another explosion. All four of them were thrown to the ground by the blast.
Disoriented and coughing as she lay on the floor, Rachel could barely discern the sirens and breaking glass before she lost consciousness. When she regained awareness, she had a plastic oxygen mask over her nose and mouth and was being wheeled into the back of an ambulance. She raised herself up from the gurney to see where her family was, but all she could see was Darrin wrestling with one of the paramedics.
“What’s wrong?” she screamed, managing to remove the plastic mask from her face.
The paramedic attending her replaced the mask and pushed her back down onto the gurney, telling her that her mother and daughter were fine. Then she heard gunshots and immediately raised herself up again, just in time to see her husband fall to the ground. She ripped the mask from her face and tried to get up, but the paramedic shoved her back down and stuck a gun in her face.
Rachel screamed as she rolled off the gurney onto the floor of the ambulance. There were more gunshots with blood splattering everywhere inside the ambulance. The bodies of two paramedics dropped beside her, one of them pinning her arm to the floor.
Gunfire continued outside the ambulance for several more seconds. When it stopped, Rachel drew her arm out from under the lifeless body and scrambled out of the ambulance to find her husband who was lying unconscious on the ground. He’d been shot in the shoulder and was being lifted onto a gurney by one of Hap Greene’s men and another man she’d never seen before.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” said the man she’d never seen before. He motioned to another ambulance that was coming up the driveway. “Your husband’s got a minor shoulder wound and a nasty bump on his head, but he should be fine. Your mother and daughter are already on their way to the hospital. They’re fine. Just suffering from a little smoke inhalation and a few bruises like you.”
“Who are you and what happened?” Rachel said as she walked beside her husband’s gurney, clinching his hand.
“Sorry, ma’am. Special Agent Frandsen, FBI,” he said. “I think you know Johnson here.”
Rachel nodded as she acknowledged Hap Greene’s man who was keeping pressure on Darrin’s shoulder to reduce the bleeding.
“The crew of paramedics that arrived after the fire broke out weren’t real paramedics. They tried to kidnap your mother when Hap Greene and your husband intervened.”
She felt dizzy, almost losing her balance as they loaded her husband into the ambulance.
“Get this woman a gurney,” Special Agent Frandsen shouted as he grabbed Rachel around the waist to keep her from falling.
Rachel began losing consciousness as scenes of an apocalypse ran through her mind. How had things gone so terribly wrong? Where’s my daughter? Mother?
As the paramedics loaded her into the ambulance, Rachel began coughing uncontrollably, throwing her body into convulsions.
“Will we ever be safe again?”