That’s not snow.
I scramble to my feet, desperately trying to ignore the high-pitched ringing in my ears and the fact that the ground is swaying under me. Or maybe I am swaying over it.
Leaning against a tree, the scene before me is a horror show. Half of my childhood home is gone, and the other half is on fire. And no one has eyes on my parents. Or Omar.
Oh, god.
Oh, god.
Odd and I race around to the front, but there’s no sign of them. We take off for the door and are yanked off of our feet when Thane grabs us from behind.
“Noooo!” I scream, clawing at him to let me go, punching him with everything I have, cursing at him to let me try. He only tightens his grip, continuing to drag the two of us back as the kitchen collapses in on itself.
Odd breaks free and I go limp as the cracking wood and shearing metal rip the soul from my very body. I watch, numb, as Everett tackles Odd to the ground, pinning him, my brother’s face an openmouthed mask of pain. His eyes find mine, and the shared connection we’ve always had doubles back the grief, and I can’t fucking breathe.
As I begin to black out, sliding to the ground in the worst agony I can imagine, the front door, or what’s left of it, bangs open, pouring smoke into the front porch area. I watch, dumbstruck, as Omar strides through the smoke, my father in a fireman carry over one shoulder, my mother over the other, and Samuel leaning heavily against him.
Odd and I race to them, joined by the rest of the team. We pull them off the porch into the yard as the house I grew up in slumps like a pile of library books that’s been pushed over.
I take a second to get my head straight, wiping the tears from my eyes. Omar shouts something to Ronan, who races over to the Land Rover, which seems to be on fire again. Thane shouts into his comms while Ronan opens the back and grabs my tackle box of medical supplies.
Less than a minute later, a black Suburban screeches to a halt next to the abandoned Humvee. DB and Hedy jump out, making their way over to us, DB quick despite his cane. Ronan yells orders at Odd and Thane, and they open the back of the Suburban, flattening the back seats.
We lay my parents in the back while Omar and Samuel take the middle seats. The Suburban is filled with the sound of people wheezing.
I crawl in between my mother and father, checking their vitals, choking back sobs as I watch both of their chests rise and fall in a regular rhythm. My mom has a bad burn on her arm, my dad’s pulse is way too high, and they both have telltale signs of smoke inhalation by way of the sooty marks under their noses, but they are stable.
Tears track down their dirty cheeks, and my father reaches for my mom’s hand. Odd hovers near the back, the same wrecked look on his face.
“Are they going to be all right?”
I nod, wiping my eyes. “Yeah. Um, we still need to get them to the hospital because the smoke inhalation can be dangerous, but they’re stable.”
“You know, it’s rude to talk about us as if we aren’t here,” my mom intones.
“Jeg beklager så mye,” I say, touching my hand to my heart. I sincerely apologize.
She grabs my arm and says in a smoke-roughened voice, “He saved us, Anders. Somebody got into the house, and he fought them off.”
I nod, blinking back tears. Grabbing the aluminum case, I take out the syringe, add a fresh needle, and make a few small injections around my mother’s burn. I follow that up with a small amount of the painkiller.
DB comes around to the back. “Georg and Anja, I’m sorry about your house. We’ll make it right, I promise you.” Turning to me, he asks crisply, “What’s the sitrep?”
I’m grateful for his tone because it keeps me from falling apart. “We’re gonna need to get all four of them to the hospital. They’ve all got smoke inhalation, Mama has a nasty burn on her arm, and I’d like a cardiologist to check out my father. I haven’t examined Omar or Samuel yet.”
Looking down at my parents, I ask, “Can I leave you for a second to check out the other two?”
“Oh, sure, fawn all over the hot guy and leave us to rot back here.”
Samuel giggles and elbows Omar. “Which of us is the hot guy, Anja?”
“Why you, of course—”
Samuel cuts her off. “Omar?” He shakes his arm. “Omar?”
I run over and open the door, where I find Omar slumped against the back of the driver’s seat. I run my hands over his back, where I quickly find a hole in his tactical vest. Gently, I lean him back, and his eyes are bright with pain and fear. I send up a prayer of thanks when I find the exit wound in the front.
He opens his mouth to talk, but all I hear is the high-pitched sound of a sucking chest wound.
