I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

The young woman glanced in my eyes, trying to read my face as I brought her into the room. Her eyes were a light amber, I noticed, almost gold, an eye color I’d never seen before. Her flawless skin glowed like fresh cream and even in flats, she was at eye level with my six-two. Definitely an exotic piece of arm candy.

She bristled when we stepped into the exam room and Detective Martinez turned around. Hughie stood up from the stool on the other side of the table, dangling a set of handcuffs on his finger.

“Yes, Virginia,” Hughie said with a smile. “There is a Santa Claus after all.”

She did something weird next. The lovely brunette’s gold eyes swiveled to Hughie and then back to Detective Martinez then back to Hughie again and then she burst out laughing.

She must have really thought something was funny because after a moment, she was shaking and cackling, wiping tears of hilarity out of her eyes.

Hughie and I shook our heads at her fevered, high-pitched gigglefest. Was she nuts? I thought. High on her boyfriend’s drugs?

Still laughing, she broke my grip on her elbow. She actually doubled over as she leaned against the right-hand wall. That’s when I noticed, through her lustrous dark hair, that she had something in her ear. A curious piece of flesh-colored plastic.

A piece that looked just like my tactical microphone.

A stark and paralyzing horror gripped hold of me right then as the woman’s laughter cut off in midcackle.

Two things happened next, almost simultaneously.

“Get out!” the doubled-over woman screamed into her purse.

Then her purse exploded.

CHAPTER 12

IT WAS A flashbang grenade, I learned later.

When it went off in the woman’s purse a foot away from my face, I didn’t know what had happened. Or where I was or even who I was for a few seconds. I didn’t know anything except the burning smell of cordite in my nose, the blinding, vibrating stars of light in my eyes, and an excruciatingly painful ringing in my ears.

As I struggled to keep my balance, I heard a rhythmic, low-pitched thudding through the ringing sound. At first I thought it might have been some construction outside. Then I saw bright licks of light blossoming in my shaky vision and Detective Martinez, her face spurting blood, sliding off the exam table and falling with a crash at my feet.

Still struggling with what I was seeing, I looked up to find the dark young woman holding a gun, a little black polymer machine pistol with a ribbon of smoke curling from its suppressor. As she swung the gun at me from the other side of the table, I yelled incoherently as I tried to draw my own gun. Time seemed to slow, the air itself to change, as if I were suddenly swimming in Jell-O. My eyes focused on one thing as my palm finally grazed the checkered grip of my holstered service weapon—the black bore of the woman’s gun as it stopped dead level with my face.

The next thing I knew, I felt a weight slam into me. I thought it was a bullet, but I was wrong. It was Hughie tackling me, taking me down like a linebacker sacking a quarterback. He knocked out my breath as he hit me up top, pushing me sideways, away from the front of the gun.

Gasping for breath, I looked up from the floor to see Hughie rising and turning. He sent the exam-table mat flying as he launched himself upward, reaching out empty-handed for the gun and the girl.

“Ten thirteen! Ten thirteen! Ten thirteen!” I started yelling. Or thought I was yelling, because I still couldn’t hear anything, not even myself. Then the violent thudding ripped the air again, and Hughie stopped in his tracks. There was a nauseating, wet, splattering sound as his head snapped back, as if he’d been punched.

I’d finally cleared my gun and was getting to my feet when Hughie’s lifeless body toppled back on top of me. As we went down in a heap again, I felt the slugs hit the back of Hughie’s vest. I also felt Hughie’s blood, warm and gushing, on the back of my neck and down the back of my shirt. I finally stuck out the Glock from underneath Hughie’s arm and pulled the trigger—and pulled the trigger and pulled the trigger.

When the slide slapped all the way back after the last round, I poked my head up and saw that the woman was, amazingly, gone. Had she run back out? I thought as I quickly reloaded my Glock.

In the hallway, I could see one of the female detectives screaming into her radio as the gold-eyed woman leaped up from the other side of the exam table, where she’d been crouching.

But before I could move, before I could even breathe, she was past me.

She took three running step

s, dove out the medical office’s window headfirst, and was gone.

CHAPTER 13

I ROLLED OUT from underneath Hughie. Through the stench of blood and gun smoke, I knelt over my friend on the floor. I reached a hand out above his blood-soaked hair as if to somehow mend the gaping red-black holes there. But I couldn’t because he was dead. Detective Martinez was dead. Everyone was dead.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was one of the DEA SWAT guys, mouthing something into his crackling radio. Without thinking about it, I holstered my Glock and found myself ripping away the M4 assault rifle he held in his hand. Then I went to the open window and threw myself out of it.

The hard plastic butt of the gun almost knocked me out as I went ass over teakettle and landed hard on my back on the asphalt. As I got up, I saw a woman’s shoe in front of me. Then I looked up and saw the tall pale woman it belonged to running hard in her bare feet fifty feet north of me, down the alley outside the medical office window.