Survived

Carol Manning sat with the unnecessary blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She had told the police officer with the unamused face that she was quite fine and didn't need one, but he'd been adamant.
Sat in the interview room she watched the door with interest. It had been fifteen minutes since they had sat her down at the table and told her someone would be in shortly. Why she was here and not at the hospital with Jake, she couldn't imagine.
Not that Jake needed her any more. The raging fireball that had melted the skin right off of his face has seen to that. His scream would haunt her for a long time, she knew that. A gurgling screech of pain and as his eyes turned to her they begged for relief. But she'd been strapped in the passenger seat and could do nothing to help him.
They day had been going so well. A ride in his new Skyline, just delivered from Japan. He'd never been happier, except for when she did that special something he liked so much.
Now he was dead, along with at least sixty others they told her.
She knew they were puzzled, quite frankly, so was she. How come she didn't have a mark or scratch on her? With the car upside down, how had a fireball melted her boyfriends face like ice cream yet left her untouched?
She didn't know and was sure that was an answer the officers asking the questions weren't going to like.

It took another ten minutes before two men entered. Wearing suits and not uniforms, she knew they had to be detectives. If cop shows on TV had taught her anything, it was that.
"Now, Miss. We want you to tell us what happened."
Carol shrugged and told them. How Jake had taken her for a spin, then suddenly cars were swerving all over the road and something had flipped them onto the roof. They had skidded for a distance and then there had been the explosion and the fireball.
"Did you see what caused it?"
"No."
"And you say it came through your boyfriends car, but didn't touch you, not even a minor burn. Can you explain that?"
Sighing, Carol told them she could not. Nor could she say why there wasn't a single scratch on her and why she was the only survivor from that area of the pile up.
With a slight nod the detectives stopped the recorder and left Carol to her thoughts again.

They let her go two hours later. She'd done nothing as far as they could tell, beyond have a miraculous escape.
Taking their card, she left the station on foot. Home was ten miles away and she didn't want to get in another vehicle just now.

The young officer who saw her to the door watched her back get smaller as she walked away. He never saw the lithe figure dressed all in black slip past him into the station. Nor did he feel it three hours later when the bomb exploded, killing everyone inside and leaving a crater the size of a football pitch in the centre of town.