06 Double Danger Read Online Free Page A

“But it’s all good. I’m healthy as a horse.” And babbling like a fucking idiot. She’d always been able to reduce him to baser levels.
    “I’m glad,” she said. “I heard you left the team.”
    “Didn’t have much of a choice.” He shrugged. “But I landed on my feet, and I’m doing okay. What about you? You a nurse now?”
    “Something like that.” She nodded. “Speaking of which, I suppose I ought to be getting back to it.”
    “Right,” he said, the silence that followed stretching awkwardly between them.
    And then, with an apologetic shrug, she turned back to her “patients,” and Simon forced himself to walk away. Hell, the past was better left buried. Hadn’t he just been having that exact thought?
    He stepped back into the corridor, and then, despite himself, turned for a last look. She was bending over a man with a rudimentary splint on his arm, her fingers gentle as she probed the imaginary wound.
    Almost involuntarily, his gaze rose to the window, his senses sending out an alert. A high-pitched whine filled the room, the glass on the windows shaking. The sky disappeared as the window turned black. For a moment, everything seemed to move in slow motion. And then, all hell broke loose as the windows shattered and something rammed through the side of the building, the walls shredding like corrugated cardboard.
    People screamed, and Simon called her name. “
J.J
.”
    One minute she was standing there, eyes wide with confusion and fear, and the next—she was gone.
    The air was acrid with the smell of smoke combined with the metallic odor of gasoline. Jillian’s eyes opened as self-preservation kicked in. Visibility was almost nonexistent, the lights either blocked or extinguished. Neither of which made sense. She tried to push to her feet, but her body refused the order, and panic laced through her as she tried to figure out what was going on.
    The last thing she remembered was Simon. Which was odd in and of itself considering how long it had been since she’d last seen him. She shook her head, trying again to move but finding her limbs still unresponsive. Despite the choking smoke, she forced herself to breathe, letting the rhythm of her rising chest soothe her into calmer thinking.
    She was in the hospital. She’d been leading an emergency preparedness drill. And Simon had walked into the room. So at least she wasn’t crazy. But then everything after that was a little more hazy. She remembered a whoosh of air followed by what had sounded like crumpling metal and shattering glass. A car accident of the nth degree.
    But there was no way there’d been a car on the fifteenth floor of the building—which left only a couple of possibilities. The least being a bomb. The worst something on the scale of 9/11. She opened her mouth to scream, but smoke filled her lungs and she coughed instead, the inside of her throat burning with the effort.
    She turned her head, trying to see. The smoke had thinned slightly, and she twisted up, stretching until her body rebelled, her muscles spasming with the effort.Drained, she dropped back to the floor, but not before she’d ascertained that she was pinned underneath something. Heavy and metal, from the looks of it, although whatever it had been, it wasn’t anymore. Again she tried to fill her lungs with air—this time breathing shallowly, mindful of the smoke.
    “Help,” she called, the word coming out somewhere between a whisper and a croak. She could hear people moving, screams filtering through the metal surrounding her. “Help,” she cried again, louder this time.
    “J.J.?” a voice broke through the barrier.
Simon
. “Is that you?”
    “Yes,” she called, her voice rising as she was filled with both hope and fear. The metal above her groaned and shifted, the pressure on her legs increasing. “I can’t move. I’m stuck.”
    “Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice nearer now.
    “I don’t know.” She shook her head, even though he