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There was a look in his eyes she hadn’t seen before. A. J. couldn’t figure out what it was, but it was there. She leaned a little closer, just to see if she was imagining something. “What is it?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” A shutter fell over his expression, effectively closing her out. She hated when he did that.

It was so…so Sean. He was seriously good at shutting people out.

She fought her irritation as she spread the evidence out across the table in the one conference room that had survived the bombing all those weeks ago.

She’d been one floor down in the basement that day. She’d gotten really, really lucky not to have been killed. The man who’d set the bomb had messed up—his third device hadn’t functioned properly.

The destruction had trapped her in a small pocket of space near a window.

After the entire annex had caved in at the front of the building, she’d been trapped in that pocket right where the old building had met the annex.

Detective Naylor and his partner, Detective Miller, had pulled her out of there that day. She still had scars from the broken glass.

A. J. was still leery about this part of the building. She probably always would be.

That room should have collapsed with the rest, but it hadn’t. She wasn’t superstitious by nature.

She was a woman of science, but her family had rubbed off on her.

He was still standing there, just watching her. “Are you trying to get on my last nerve?”

“Aren’t I always?”

“Fill out the form, Sean. Then get out of here. I’ll text you when I’m on your number.”

“I’ll wait. Keep an eye on you. You’re trouble, after all.”

She would have said more, but the sounds of sirens drowned out everything.

Warning sirens, not TSP.

She looked at him just as an alarm sounded in the building itself.

There hadn’t been any warnings issued for the day. She’d have known—her middle brother, Houston, worked at the news station as a meteorologist. He kept her and everyone else in the family up to date on every minute weather detail in almost real time.

As she thought it, her phone rang. Houston’s ringtone.

She grabbed the phone quickly and answered, practically yelling to be heard over the alarms.

“Take cover! It’s the big one!”

Before she could respond, she heard it . The roar everyone almost always mentioned.

The freight train.

She started toward the conference room doors. Glass exploded around her, just like it had that day the bombs had happened.

She couldn’t stop herself.

A. J. screamed.

Just as two hundred pounds of strong male dove straight at her.