Generation 18 (Spook Squad 2)

“Officer Ryan! Get up! Help me! Please!”

The desperation in his voice bit through the fog enveloping her mind. She groaned and rolled onto her hands and knees. Her stomach heaved, jumping into her throat, and sweat beaded her forehead. Heat flashed across her skin, followed quickly by an icy chill.

Swallowing heavily, she inched forward. The flames raced up Max’s trousers. Too fast, some dim part of her mind protested. Max wore only natural fibers—wool usually. Only some form of accelerant would make his clothes burn so quickly. She sniffed the air and caught a trace of gas.

She swore and reached the wall, inching herself upward. It was like moving through glue, as if her mind and her limbs were on separate planes. Snagging the fire extinguisher from the wall, she pulled out the safety catch, then pressed the lever and turned. Foam gushed from the nozzle—a blue-white cloud that arced across the room like cannon-blasted snow.

Max screamed when it hit him—or maybe he’d always been screaming and it just hadn’t registered until now. The flames hissed as they died, and the smoke in the room became thicker. She coughed, her vision blurring with the tears streaming down her face. When she could no longer see the flames eating Max, she turned the extinguisher on the rest of the fire.

The door behind her flew open. Men dressed in black and gold ran in, hauling silver snakes that reared up and spewed water at the flames. Her vision wavered. She dropped the extinguisher and reached out for the wall. It danced away, laughing.

Then the floor rushed up to greet her.

—

Outside the darkened ambulance in which Sam sat, someone slammed a car door. The noise vibrated right through her, then reached into her brain and squeezed tight. She groaned and held her head in her hands. Any minute now, it was going to explode. A head could take only so much pain, and hers had surely reached saturation point.

She wouldn’t mind so much if it were only her head, but her whole damn body ached just as fiercely, and her stomach felt about as steady as an umbrella in a windstorm. If she moved, she’d puke—no doubt about it.

Footsteps approached the ambulance. They rebounded through her brain like a freight train. Then the rear door opened and light flooded in.

She hissed and squeezed her eyes shut. “Shut the door, damn you.”

The door closed softly. She took a deep breath, waiting for the pain behind her eyes to subside a little. The ambulance creaked as someone sat on the seat opposite. The earthy scent of exotic spices, mixed with the warm freshness of the sun and the wind, washed over her. Gabriel, she thought, and bit back another groan. That was all she needed right now. Her damn partner, here to witness the mess she’d made of a simple questioning.

She leaned back against the ambulance’s cool metal wall, not opening her eyes, not wanting to see the anger in his.

“You okay?” His voice was little more than a whisper, devoid of emotion.

“No,” she muttered. “I feel like shit.”

He was silent for a second, but she could feel his gaze on her. Assessing. Watchful.

“The doctor said he wants you in the hospital.”

“The doctor can go to hell.” And she’d told him as much, several times already. She needed rest, not endless pokes and prods from curious medical staff.

“He says you’re lucky to be alive.”

She didn’t feel lucky. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and opened her eyes. He was leaning forward, chin resting on his interlocked fingers, regarding her with an odd expression in his warm hazel eyes. Had it been anyone else, she might have thought it was concern.

“I asked them not to call the SIU.”

One dark eyebrow arched upward. “They didn’t.”

Then why was he here? Checking up on her? She regarded him for a moment, then closed her eyes again. The rolling in her stomach was getting worse. The last thing she felt like right now was any sort of confrontation with her so-called partner. She just wanted to go home, to hide in the darkness. To forget the image of the blackened mess that Max’s legs had become. “Any word from the hospital about Max?”

She could almost feel Gabriel’s frown. “If Max is the proprietor of this dump, then yes. Third-degree burns, but nothing unsalvageable.”

“Is he conscious?”

“No.”

Damn. She needed to talk to him, needed to know why his girlfriend had tried to kill them both.

“Do you remember what happened?” he said.

She snorted. As if she could forget. “Yeah, I was attacked by an angry budgie.”