Oh god.
“You good, Tennison?” Hammond says.
I drift my focus to him, nodding. But I don’t mean it.
This is my first traffic incident that isn’t crash dummies and no stakes.
My body feels like it’s been wired into the city’s power grid. My hands start to tremble. Fire and buildings, I’m good with. Rescuing people from burning homes, I can handle.
This . . .
The doors to 53 fly open and Hammond, Davey, and Owens file out.
Go, London.
Move.
Chapter 9
MILES
The screaming hasn’t stopped since we pulled up.
Tennison and Davey are on extraction with me. The jaws of life weigh down my arms, the burn long since set in after forty minutes of hauling them up and into position.
A retirement home bus returning home from an outing versus a body truck was never going to end well.
This. This is something right out of hell that misery could never start to imagine. An elderly lady lays slumped against the glass to my left. A man sobs, clinging to the woman by his side, kissing the back of her hand over and over. All the while his own hands shake and tears course down his weathered face.
His words are muffled behind the thick glass separating the passengers on the bus and us.
Davey is assisting with the jaws. Tennison’s grinding the hinges from the folding bus doors, her face lost to concentration. The shock that registered on her face when we arrived on scene is an expression of hers I won’t forget any time soon.
Davey shifts on his feet, and it’s only now the smell of gas reaches me. The bus must be leaking. I scan the road for the dark, wet trail.
And find it.
Running past Tennison’s boots.
Sparks fly as she works the grinder lower and lower.
Fuck.
“Tennison! Stop!”
She doesn’t hear me.
I move out of position, leaving the weight of the jaws with Davey. Three steps later, I’m removing the tool from her hands, and the disk stops spinning.
“What?” she snaps, her brows knitting as confusion takes over.
“Look down.”
She snaps her gaze to her feet, and her face twists from confusion to worry. “Shit.”
“Try the crowbar. Hopefully you’ve done enough to render the hinges weak enough.”
“Okay, thanks.”
