Universal Resources

Marin County, California

February 22

Jack floated, cradled in the blackness. It was as if someone had slipped his body inside a comfy old shoe. Harsh noises called to him. He tried to ignore them, to stay in the darkness. But the thick scents of smoke and ozone made it hard to breathe. Coughing, he opened his eyes.

Emergency lighting bathed the War Room in crimson. Everything made of glass had either blown up or out: computer desks, office walls, and even the company's glass coffee cups judging by the debris inches from his face. Slings of burning wire hung from the rafters. Sections of broken ceiling tile littered the floor. Jack pushed up on his knees, ran the back of his hand across his mouth, and tasted blood.

"Ah—"

The groan was guttural, filled with pain, and coming from nearby. Jack dove through the chunks of ceiling tiles and metal supports he found the source of the sound: Evans, trapped under a twisted ceiling strut.

The man's face was a jigsaw of cuts, his eyes wide with confusion and fear. A bloody froth wetted the corners of his mouth. Jack gently pressed down on his abdomen and found it distended and rigid: internal injuries, filling him with fluids.

"Easy." Jack slipped a hand under the man's head, his balding fringe sticky with blood. "Help's coming."

Evans studied Jack's face, a sad, sudden acceptance in his eyes. Then he was looking at Jack no more.

Pushing his fingers through the flesh on the man's neck, Jack searched for the pulse he knew he wouldn't find. Furious, he closed Evans' eyes and gently lowered his head to the floor.

All these years later, and death still insulted him. When he'd left his surgical practice, he thought he'd left death behind. But here it was again, taunting him in the form of a little bookie growing cold on the War Room floor.

He raised a hand to his forehead and felt something wet. Staring down at his fingers, he saw blood. His blood.

"Jack!"

Quinn's petite form appeared out of nowhere through a dust of smoke and lunged for him, nearly knocking him over. "Jack," she sobbed into his shoulder, her arms locked around his neck. "Oh, thank God! Thank God you're alive!"

Pushing her back, he saw a mix of electrical soot and tears running down her face, the front of her nightshirt smeared with blood. "Where?" he demanded, grabbing at her shirt. "Quinn, where are you hurt?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "It's not me. Not me. It's Harry."

Harry.