Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(3)
“Well, I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’m meeting Rosa at the coffee shop around the corner.” Motioning with her chin to the batch of papers now sandwiched between two textbooks, she continued. “She’s going to help me with enrollment for next spring. Tell me which courses to take, which professors to avoid, yada, yada. I need to pick her brain now, before you two begin your next round of clinical rotations and I don’t see you for weeks on end. And speaking of rotations, Rosa said she’s looking forward to spending some time in pediatrics. Are you still leaning toward general surgery?”
“Sí.” He nodded. “It’s the most fun.”
“Fun?”
“Sure.” He nodded again.
She sighed. Sometimes getting the man to expound on a subject was like pulling teeth. “Fun it what way?” she prodded.
“Fun in that I like the challenge of never knowing what’s coming through the doors of the emergency room or what operation I’ll be required to perform next. Every day is an adventure in GS.”
“Ah.” She nodded. “I guess that makes sense. You know, given that you’re you.”
He turned to look at her, one dark brow quirked. “Now what is that supposed to mean?”
“Just that between you and Rosa, you’re definitely the thrill-seeker and she’s definitely the staid, responsible one.”
And if he handled a scalpel the way he handled that motorcycle he roared around campus on—with deft precision and quick, confident assurance—it was a safe bet he’d quickly make a name for himself as one of the country’s most sought-after surgeons. “I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment,” he said. “And speaking of my staid and responsible twin sister, I wonder why she didn’t tell me she was meeting you?” Another young woman came toward them then. But unlike the previous girl, this one made no bones about the fact that she was extremely interested in fixing herself a big, heaping helping of Puerto Rican man-meat. The only way the blue-eyed tart could have been more obvious was if she unbuttoned her blouse and flashed Carlos her tatas. And when the big idiot had the audacity to hit the woman with the full force of his dimple, resulting in said tart sending him a saucy wink as she brushed by them, Abby decided this was what it was like to want to murder someone.
But the question was, did she want to execute Carlos or Miss Obvious?
“I suspect she didn’t tell you because you’re not her keeper,” she informed him haughtily while shuffling her books to one arm so she could wave her hand in front of her face. She coughed dramatically.
“What’s that? What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s hard to breathe, what with all the hussy and nitwit floating around in the air.”
He jerked his chin from side to side, cracking the vertebrae in his neck while his black eyes glittered with amused affront. “And I’m assuming I’m the nitwit here?”
“It’s dealer’s choice,” she told him as they rounded the corner and the neon sign hanging above the coffee shop came into view.
“For such a little thing, you sure know how to bust a guy’s b—”
BOOOMMM!
The whole world exploded…
Or at least that’s what it felt like, the thundering roar so immense that total global destruction seemed the only natural result. But it was obvious the planet remained intact when Abby found herself kissing concrete. She’d gone from standing on the sidewalk to pancaked flat on the ground with her books smashed beneath her arms in a nanosecond.
“Wha—?” she managed, her ears ringing. The frightened screams and blaring car alarms all around her seemed muffled and distant by comparison.
She turned her head to lay her cheek against the rough coolness of the walkway, trying to determine if anything was broken. Fortunately, nothing hurt save for a small sting on the inside of her bottom lip where she’d apparently taken a chunk out of the thing on her way to the ground. But she’d just go ahead and file that under The Least of My Worries, because in the next instant, she saw Agent Mitchell barreling toward her, yelling something into the tiny radio transmitter he kept attached to his cuff. And the stark terror on his face said it all…
Whatever had happened, it was bad. Really bad. Her heart took off like it was running a race and someone fired the starting pistol. Her lungs expelled the last bit of air inside them until she was woozy from lack of oxygen.
“Stay down! Stay down!” Agent Mitchell commanded as he knelt beside her head. His voice came to her as if from a great distance. “Don’t move, Soto. Stay right where you are,” he continued as the black sneakers of the remaining two agents came into view, their voices weirdly echoey as they barked orders to the other people on the sidewalk.
Stay where? Where are you, Carlos? And then she answered her own question. He was sprawled atop her, covering her body with his own. Later she would think about how quickly he had reacted—how selflessly—because right now she needed to find out what was going on.
“What’s happening?” she demanded, not surprised when her voice came out raspy and thin, barely above a whisper. No one heard her above the racket of a world in chaos. The blare of sirens screamed from up the street. The pounding of running feet was a stampede. And the fearful cries of a dozen people reverberated through the air, each one an acoustic assault. She swallowed, the metallic taste of blood slipping from her bitten lip down her throat, and tried again. “Somebody tell me what’s happening!”