The next sound that came from behind the door wasn’t so much a sound as a shocking Fourth of July boom so low and deep that it pushed his eardrums in. Mike supposed he must have heard it—how could anything so huge and disruptive not make a sound? But the only auditory aspect he was aware of was the great gulf of silence that was left in its wake.

Oz looked up, his voice cracking in fright and bewilderment. “What the fuck was that?” Under other circumstances it might have been funny, such a tiny voice coming out of such a big man, but not now.

The door banged open, smoke flooding out, so thick and black that Mike didn’t see Calhoun until Calhoun came spilling out at him with enough force to knock both of them backward in a tangle of limbs. In the instant he had to process everything, Mike saw that the man’s face had blood on it, making his eyes even more wild and white. Calhoun looked like he wanted to scream but couldn’t find the presence of mind to draw enough breath.

“Steve—”

Smoke was gushing out of the room now in great palpable billows, like squid ink. Mike’s eyes and throat felt as if someone had rubbed hot lemons into them. Dropping to his knees, smearing away tears with the backs of his hands, he could just make out the legs of the cops as they forced their way into the room. He heard shouting and sooty coughing, and there was another scream that ended with terrible abruptness.

“Don’t go in there!” Calhoun was now shrieking, somewhere off to Mike’s right. He’d disappeared in the smoke, his voice growing smaller by the moment. “Don’t go in!”

Whether they heard him, or simply couldn’t go any farther, Mike saw the cops were now backing out as quickly as they’d gone in. One of them was vomiting down the front of his uniform; another stepped crushingly on Mike’s hand as he went sprinting back down the hall.

You have to get out of here. Right now.

“Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Good idea.”

Wrenching his head away from the doorway, he looked down the far end of the hall where they’d come from. It seemed very far away. He sucked in a deep breath, rose to his feet, and then he, too, began to run.

13.

Sarah was carrying Eli down the hall, her purse swinging on her elbow, banging into her hip, when she saw McPhee in the doorway up ahead. He looked at her in genuine surprise.

“Now what?”

“My keys,” she said, not breaking stride. They were already far enough from the entrance and the emergency room that Jolie wouldn’t see them unless she came looking in this direction. Sarah definitely didn’t want to be around when the other woman came back. “I left them down in MRI.”

He looked at her purse. “You sure about that?”

“Trust me, I—”

Something exploded, a tinkling thunderclap from above that shook the ceiling and stopped Sarah in her tracks. Her mouth said “What was that?” but she couldn’t hear her own voice for a moment afterward, her ears ringing with whatever it was.