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ChapterSix
Reese
Now
The stench of burning flesh hits me first.
Smoke billows in thick, roiling coils from the steep gully beside the road. White-hot flames leap from the overturned SUV, burning so intensely they’ve ignited the trees in a ten-foot circle around the crash. The tires have burst, and bits of smoldering rubber lie in a scattered trail from the blacktop down the embankment. That IED defensive plate is acting like a lid, keeping the fire contained within the passenger carriage. Concentrating the inferno.
Flames painted the night sky copper and brass and carmine as Sheridan and I raced across DC, lights, sirens, and horns going full blast. The blaze magnified through the windshield the closer we came, until the conflagration was all we could see.
Sheridan was the only agent who matched me step for step when I tore out of the command center. He leapt behind the wheel of my SUV and drove like the devil himself, jumping curbs and screaming through intersections without even tapping his brakes. We lost the rest of my agents at Black Lives Matter Plaza and made it to Rock Creek Park in six minutes flat.
I’m out of the front seat before he hits the brakes, throwing myself toward the hellscape of the crash. Heat sears my face like I’ve walked into the afterburner of a jet engine. Any hotter, and my hair would ignite, my clothes would melt.
But before I can get too close, I’m tackled. Arms wrap around my waist from behind and lock, dragging me back to the heat-shimmering road. “You can’t go down there!”
I strain against Sheridan’s hold until he roars and lifts me off my feet, then hurls us both around the passenger side of the SUV. We’re about the same weight, but he’s taller than I am by a few inches. We’ve spent enough time sparring that I know we’re equals when it comes to a brawl. He’s slender, where I’m lean, corded muscle built up from a childhood in the swamps. You can go from zero to animal in three seconds, Henry told me once. My money is always on you.
Jesus, Henry.
Sheridan and I struggle, me kicking, me trying to throw off his arm lock, me trying to peel his fingers from where they’re white-knuckling against my suit. I slam myself backward against the SUV. His breath leaves him in a grunt. My elbow digs into his diaphragm. “The president—”
He squeezes tighter, pulling me to his chest as he wraps a leg around my thigh in a move that threatens to throw me to the ground. “Don’t,” he begs. “You’ll die if you go down there.”
I have to. I have to drag Brennan out, and I’ll do it with my bare hands—
A crack splits the night as a fire-ravaged branch splits from a scorched tree trunk and slams into the blast-reinforced undercarriage of Henry and Brennan’s overturned SUV. Flames bloom like a mushroom cloud, and firefighters scatter as debris flares out in every direction.
Superheated steel pops and screams. One of the reinforced struts gives way. The SUV makes a sound like the devil is groaning, and then caves in on itself, smashing the roof flat.
Sheridan’s hold slackens.
Parts and pieces of myself are unfastening, sliding sideways, shattering. The fire robs me of the oxygen in my lungs, turns my muscles to leather, my bones to dust. It sears every tear from my eyes.
There’s nothing left to contain the scream that I’ve become. One raw, ravaging roar as flames lick around the shape of a body hanging suspended in a seat belt within Brennan’s SUV.
Sheridan jerks me away. My balance is off, and I fall against the hood, palms flat and spread, my face inches above the black plating. Metal sizzles under my hands, too hot to touch, but I don’t pull away.
Sweat beads on my forehead. A drop falls, lands on the hood like a broken star, and then boils off.
Sheridan has his hands on his head beside me, looking absolutely destroyed.
I did this. Merde, I caused this. Brennan—
“Hey! Who are you? What the hell are you doing here?” a voice rises over the cacophony of approaching sirens.
I’ll be shocked if the White House has any Secret Service agents left on the grounds. It seems like every last one is arriving, an army of black SUVs filling the park with red and blue lights. This mission may have been command-team-only an hour ago, but now, with our friends and the president in danger—or worse—everybody on duty knows.
“Special Agent in Charge Reese Theriot, Secret Service.” I straight-arm my badge into the face of the pudgy DC Metropolitan cop crowding me.
The cop looks from my badge to my face and pales. His eyes are wild, and they widen further as he takes in the flotilla of approaching Secret Service vehicles. “This got something to do with you?”
I nod.
It will be over the airwaves in moments: the Secret Service roaring out of the White House to the scene of a DC crash, the grounds emptying like the dugout during an infield brawl.
A spotlight from the CNN chopper that broke the news slices through the trees. “Get that fucking bird out of here!” I bark.
