“I’m okay,” Derek wheezed out, crawling a few more steps before sprawling on the ground. The pain in his back and shoulders was uncomfortable, but not excruciating. His lungs, though, felt seared. Both men lay, watching the building burn for long minutes, Derek’s lungs finally feeling a bit of ease as he continued to breathe clean air. Eventually he could hear the sirens signaling the firefighters’ arrival.
“I hope you got something in there,” Jon told him, obviously hearing the sirens, too. “Because the only thing that destroys evidence quicker than fire—”
“Is extinguishing it,” Derek finished for him. Water, foam, the firemen themselves. All were hell on evidence.
“Yep.”
“I think I might have gotten something important.” Still lying in the mostly dead grass of a lawn that hadn’t seen proper care for decades, Derek explained about the communication device. “We need to get it back to the lab so Molly can try to recover information from it.”
Jon snickered. “Uh, o-o-okay, D-Derek.” The stuttering was completely for show.
Sitting up, Derek rolled his eyes. “Shut up, Jon. She’s not that bad.” Derek knew he shouldn’t try to defend Molly Humphries, the forensic lab director. Yeah, the pretty pathologist tended to get a little tongue-tied around Derek. But the more he tried to defend her to his colleagues when they mentioned it—which was as often as damn possible—the worse everyone teased.
Jon smiled. “Hey, you know I like sweet Molly as much as anyone. But I have to admit that watching her go from the most intelligent scientist I know to a blushing, stammering schoolgirl around you is one of my favorite pastimes.”
“Shut up, Jon,” Derek repeated. “Just focus on the case.”
Jon was wise enough not to say anything else about Molly Humphries.
Both Jon and Derek were seen by paramedics as they waited for the firefighters to finish their job. Derek was decreed as suffering from first-degree burns on his shoulders and smoke inhalation, but didn’t require further medical attention. As he and Jon watched the firefighters work diligently, neither held out much hope of finding any further evidence. They would still check.
Liam joined them once local law enforcement came to pick up the body of the guy who had shot himself. Liam had taken the dead man’s prints and his weapon, as well as a sample of the man’s DNA. The body would be delivered to the Omega morgue later. All the items Liam had collected would go straight back to the lab.
A dead suspect, a burnt building and a few broken pieces of possible evidence. All in all a pretty terrible day. Definitely not any closer to solving the terrorist attack on Chicago. And Derek knew they were going to get chewed out again for it. Govermental-type bigwigs all the way up the food chain were demanding answers for the bombing. Derek was scheduled to provide an update to a committee via teleconference in just a few hours.
Derek wasn’t looking forward to that. Especially not now, with nothing to show.
Derek’s only hope now was that Molly, with all her magic in her lab, could salvage something out of this mess. Molly had saved Derek before. He prayed she could do it again.
Molly Humphries caught a look at her shoes as she carried an armful of case files across the lab to her desk. How she hated her sensible shoes. They were flat, unimaginative and...well, just sensible. Plain and brown.
That her shoes were a symbolic reflection of her personal life was not lost on Molly.
She had no idea why the shoes were offending her so much on this particular day, when she’d been wearing them every day for over six months. They’d faithfully seen her through long weeks at the lab where she’d sometimes put in sixty or seventy hours a week. Her shoes got the job done, gave her no cause for complaints and never drew attention to themselves for the wrong reasons.
Oh man, the metaphors just kept coming, didn’t they?
She should be thankful for her shoes now, for their comfort and sensibleness, since she’d already been on her feet for ten hours, and the day wasn’t close to over. Molly loved her job as director of Omega Critical Response Division’s main forensic lab here in Colorado Springs. Her work was challenging and fulfilling. Molly excelled at it, both as one of the leading pathologists in the country and as supervisor of the dozen people who worked daily in the lab.
Molly stopped and added another case file to the pile she was carrying. Not that they couldn’t use twice as many technicians working here. That’s how much material was constantly brought in for them to process. The forensic lab handled just about everything having to do with evidence: toxicology, trace reports, forensic biology, pathology, prints, DNA and even human remains for all the Critical Response Division cases. Therefore the lab was in a constant state of backup. Hiring more technicians was on Molly’s to-do list, but the qualifications and security clearance required to work at Omega made the candidate pool slim.
So for right now Molly planned to continue working twelve-to fourteen-hour days to help keep the lab producing results at the speed they were needed. Like today. She’d arrived at seven o’clock this morning and was still here even though it was nearly eight in the evening. She definitely needed to cut her sensible shoes a break.
The other lab technicians had left a couple of hours ago, but being here by herself wasn’t unusual or even unpleasant. Molly didn’t expect her lab technicians to put in the same crazy hours she did. Often some of them were willing to stay late or come early if Molly asked, but she tried not to impose unless it was an emergency. These people had family. Molly didn’t, so it was easier for her to stay. Nobody was going to miss her at home.
Molly got along well with all the people who worked in her lab. She treated them with the respect they deserved and, in turn, they worked hard. The key was direct, clear, respectful communication. Molly prided herself that she was not only good at the science part of her job, she was good at the communication aspect with her colleagues, as well.
Derek Waterman walked through the swinging double doors of the inner lab.
Well, maybe not all her colleagues.
Molly turned away quickly and placed the files on her desk. She put them right smack in the middle so she wouldn’t accidentally knock them over. Molly had been known to do stupid things like that while in the presence of Derek.
Jon Hatton and Liam Goetz were with Derek and none of them looked too happy. Molly could smell smoke on them from across the lab, coming from them. Derek had been in a fire.
“Are you okay? Is everyone okay?” Molly rushed across the room, her long French-braided brown hair swinging over the shoulder of the white lab coat she always wore. These were three of the most intelligent and able-bodied men she’d ever known, but as active Omega agents they put their lives on the line daily.
“We’re fine, sweet Molly,” Jon said to her as she stopped a few feet away from them. “Unless you count your boy Derek here almost being trapped in a burning building as not okay.”
Molly felt the air rush out of her lungs. She looked over at Derek for just a moment, needing to take in with her own eyes that he wasn’t, indeed, seriously injured. His dark brown, almost-black hair had the tousled, disheveled look it always did, the five-o’clock shadow a permanent fixture on his chiseled face. He was leaning against one of the research tables, his long legs extended in front of him. She couldn’t see any signs of pain based on his body language or facial expressions. Just a slight stiffness in how he held his back.
Molly knew Derek well enough to know that meant he’d been hurt.
“Did you burn your sh-shoulders?” she asked him, the words barely coming out in a whisper. Molly pressed her lips together and looked down at her shoes. She heard Liam snicker quietly before Jon nudged him.
“Yes,