Josh was on it.
He ran backstage to do his hero thing. Kat, meanwhile, grabbed Berto and hurried to help shoo the crowd away from danger, which wasn't her first choice, but minus her N-Tek spy stuff and plus a bunch of TV cameras, she was just a plain vanilla bystander. And plain vanilla bystanders did not, usually, run toward the giant collapsing object.
Which was what Josh was doing – except of course he was Max by the time he popped into view again.
Kat and Berto waded into the crowd and found spots where the park security guys weren't working. She shouted and pushed and shoved people towards safety – tougher than it sounded on paper, because people were stupid when they were in panicked crowds fleeing certain disaster.
Berto took a panicked fleeing elbow to the face and Kat moved to better protect him from the idiots. If that meant occasionally busting a few overly-maddened people in the ribs or skull, well, everyone made mistakes.
She was also keeping an eye on the collapsing crane. It was collapsing, for one thing, and her partner was on its Ground Zero, for another.
Max scaled it, did some awesome maneuver to hook the cable to a permanent, uncollapsing structure, then held the whole jerry-rigged deathtrap steady while the last of the crowd (including Kat and Berto) clawed its way out of the amphitheater.
Berto's hand was pressed to the bleeding cut on his cheek, but he called, "It's all clear!" with an unfazed tone that made Kat proud. Their little techie had come a long way.
Max must've heard; the crane abruptly crashed down onto the concrete amphitheater floor with a soul-jarring BOOM and a lot of squealing metal.
Kat coughed and futilely waved the dust away from her face. Then she turned to Berto. "Okay, let's see it," she said, gesturing at the cut.
He winced and reluctantly pulled his hand away. "It's not so bad."
Kat disagreed. The cut angled across his cheekbone, running below the lower rim of his glasses. It was bleeding like there was no tomorrow – face lacerations always did – and it looked nastily deep on one end.
"Stitches," she prescribed.
Berto went abruptly green. "Uh, I don't think –"
"You guys all right?" Josh said, jogging up to them. He looked out of breath, then alarmed when he saw the blood. "Whoa, what happened?"
"Elbow," Kat said. She dug around in her pockets and came up with a Kleenex that wasn't too shredded. Handed it to Berto, who made a face but put it up to his cut.
Josh made an ahh noise of instant comprehension and nodded. "I hate to say it, but that's gonna need stitches, bro."
Berto gave them both a disgruntled look. "When did either of you qualify as medics?"
"Never," Kat said, at the same time that Josh said, "Hey, you wipe out enough, you learn."
Sirens and flashing lights appeared on the scene, signaling the too-late-but-always-appreciated arrival of the police and ambulances.
Berto sighed. "All right, I'll let the EMTs look at it. You okay, hermano?"
Josh flashed a weary smile and briefly held up the arm with his biolink. "Could use a gallon or two of freshly squeezed t-juice. Other than that… I'm good. Do we know what caused the explosion?"
Kat shook her head and jerked a thumb in the direction of the police cars – and Richard Shine, who was angrily confronting the officers. "But I know how we can find out."
Josh grinned.
Kat was pretty pleased, too, until she realized that she was back on vanilla duty again – taking Berto to the nearest ambulance – while Josh got to eavesdrop with his nano-enhanced hearing.
She leaned against the side of the ambulance and scowled at her other teammate, who was loitering a reasonable distance from Shine, and pretending to be dazed, confused and vanilla himself. "Showoff," she muttered.
"You're going to need stitches," the EMT announced to Berto.
"What about one of those butterfly bandages?" Berto asked, hopeful. "Can we try that instead?"
"Nope. Gotta be stitches." The EMT started rummaging around in the ambulance, whistling. "Here we go – numb that up a bit first, all right?"
Kat gave up trying to melt Josh via death glare, or, alternatively, read Richard Shine's lips. Instead she turned her attention to Berto and gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder. "Hang tough, Martinez. It only hurts for a few hours."
"Muy bien," he said, with no enthusiasm.
"Sí, está muy bien – esta es sólo una pequeña laceración," the EMT said fluently, surprising everyone. But it wasn't really that surprising, given that they could probably spit on Cuba from where they were standing.
"Y'all were up on the stage, weren't you?" the man went on, motioning at Kat and Berto with a hypodermic syringe. "You're lucky to get away with just a few scrapes. Some bad injuries here today."
Kat looked around and properly took in the scene for the first time. There were a lot of injured people lying around, being tended to by EMTs and fire-rescue guys and the park's own emergency squads. Ninety percent of it was due to panicked-crowd stupidity. But there were some more seriously wounded people being removed from the stage area on stretchers.
She felt bad. Then she saw that one of the injured was the perky PR guy, strapped to a backboard and being downright unperky as he yelled at the rescue personnel, and that cheered her up.
Berto, meanwhile, suffered through the stitches with impressive stoicism. The EMT taped a square of gauze over the cut and rattled off a list of things he needed to do to avoid complications. Berto suffered through that, too, and had just promised to go see a real doctor at a real hospital when Josh returned.
Kat pulled him off to the side and demanded, "Well?" in a low voice.
"Shine's been getting threats from eco-terrorists," Josh said, also in an undertone. "The last one came yesterday, warning that if he opened the park he'd regret it. The cops are trying to backtrack the threats, but they haven't had any luck. Shine is furious."
"Eco-terrorists," she repeated.
"Yup."
And here they were, former professional counterterrorist intelligence operatives. She grinned. "Oh, we can so do that."
Josh grinned back and stuck out his fist. She bumped it with hers, and they broke up the mini-conference to go drag Berto away from the EMT.
Kat was looking forward to some quiet time in the van, preferably with her headphones plugged into her guitar so the only thing she had to hear was her own rockin' self and not Josh and Berto asking her to be their maid. As if.
But they hadn't gone more than a few yards when they were intercepted.
"There you are!" Richard Shine exclaimed, coming up to them with arms extended. "Thank goodness you're alright."
"Actually, some of us got a little dinged," Kat said, nodding at Berto.
Shine glanced at the injury, registered it, and moved on in the space of a reptilian eyeblink. "I am absolutely mortified that this – obscenity happened to you, my special guests."
Kat caught Josh's eye. Mortified?
He mouthed, Special guests?
"I cannot begin to make this up to you," Shine continued, oblivious, "but please, let me try. One of my properties is the Vizcaynos Hotel in South Beach – five stars, of course. The Presidential Suite is yours for the rest of your visit."
He held out a keycard – to her, Kat realized belatedly. She took it, trying not to touch his hand. Had his entire spiel been directed at her, too?
"Wow," she said, sticking the card in the back pocket of her jeans. "Gee, uh, thanks, Mr. Shine."
He flashed his expensive smile, perfectly white, and nowhere near meeting his eyes. "Please, call me Richard. And it's the least I can do."
"Okay," Kat said. "Great. Uh, thanks again."
"Don't worry about your safety tomorrow, at the prelims," Shine added. "I'm hiring additional security. The very finest for world-class athletes like you."
He gave everyone another lizard smile and left, and Kat looked at her teammates.
"That was… weird," Josh said, making a face. "But nice. I guess."
Kat pulled the keycard out of her pocket and wagged it in front of Josh and Berto. "So what's the verdict? Do we ditch the van and crash in the Presidential Suite?"
Josh shrugged. "It's fine with me. Bro?"
Berto had a contemplative look on his face. "I wonder if room service is comped."