Almost immediately, he was yanked backward. The car sped away, and the rope that was tethered to Merkley had pulled him out the open door. Enzo had known Merkley would be heavy, but he still lost his footing. Merkley’s weight dragged Enzo across the building toward the edge. Yep. Trying to save his partner had been a stupid plan. This wasn’t going to work. Still, he didn’t let go of the rope.
Enzo slid across the roof until he hit a lip on the side of the building. The thing stood only a foot high, but fortunately, it was enough. He wedged his feet against the lip and refused to budge.
He stayed there, clutching the rope and breathing hard, for several moments.
If he got up and walked backward to haul his partner up, would the friction from the edge of the building cut through the rope? Maybe. To fit inside a gun, the rope had to be thin.
He ought to call headquarters and ask for help, but with both hands busy keeping Merkley from plunging to his death, he couldn’t reach his phone. Enzo spotted a hole in the edge’s lip, the kind for water runoff. He pulled the rope up, his muscles burning, until there was enough slack to wind the rope through the hole and secure it.
He looked over the roof’s edge to check on Merkley. He dangled, limp and unconscious, twenty feet down.
That’s when the explosion happened.
A flash of light and heat. A boom so loud it pained his ears. The percussion wave knocked him onto his back.
Seriously? The tank couldn’t have waited one more minute to fire on the squad car? If the telekinetic hadn’t been hightailing it away from the area, Enzo would’ve taken some dangerous shrapnel. As it was, only small pieces hit him, pinging against the top of his helmet and biting into the exposed skin on his hands and neck.
He propped himself up to check on Merkley. It would be just his luck if, after all Enzo had done, shrapnel had severed the rope.
Nope. His partner swayed around, either still unconscious or still dead.
Enzo pulled out his phone to call headquarters. He’d make sure this time they sent actual help, not an armored tank to kill him.
5
Enzo adjusted his tie and strode into the Center for Defense building. He hated wearing suits, and really, since his job generally involved breaking into places or chasing criminals through garbage-ridden backstreets, it seemed ridiculous to make police officers dress up to talk to their superiors. But when headquarters summoned you, you wore what they wore.
He didn’t know why they’d called him in. Hopefully, this was just an overly formal way of assigning him a new partner, and he wasn’t being hauled here so more people could yell at him for the hijacked flying squad car fiasco.
He’d been in Merkley’s hospital room when Lt. Johansen, chief of elite ops, came to take their statements. Not their boss, their boss’s boss. That’s how badly the mission had gone. Perhaps if Merkley had been sufficiently conscious before the man descended on them, they could’ve come up with a convincing lie to cover their mistakes, but Merkley was on pain meds and not completely coherent. Nothing Enzo said to him stuck.
LT Johansen was in his sixties, balding and wrinkled, and yet still looked like he could bench press a couch. He stood in the room, oozing disapproval, and demanded to know how they’d lost control of the telekinetic.
Merkley spilled the whole story in what sounded like broken English but was still surprisingly detailed for a man whose brain had been shaken around like a snow globe.
“Let me get this straight,” Johansen said when he finished. “You knew the criminal had control of the car, and you willingly unbelted yourself and climbed in the cage with him? What did you think would happen?”
Merkley blinked, not quite understanding. “I thought I would punch him. A lot.”
Johansen turned to Enzo. “Has your partner always been an idiot?”
Sometimes. “No, sir.” Enzo tucked his arms behind his back. “That’s the concussion talking.”
Johansen’s gaze traveled over Enzo, taking in his bruises and bandages. “And what about you? Are you going to blame your idiocy on head trauma?”
Well, that depended on what idiocy Johansen was referring to.
Johansen didn’t give him time to ask. “Why didn’t you stop Merkley from unbelting? You could’ve prevented his injuries.”
Enzo had asked himself that question a dozen times. Granted, junior officers weren’t supposed to challenge their senior partner’s decisions, but that had never stopped Enzo before. The truth wouldn’t make him look good, though.
He swallowed hard. “We were trying to come up with solutions to a dangerous situation we hadn’t anticipated. We weren’t thinking clearly.”
Johansen’s mouth thinned. “We pay you to handle dangerous situations. You’ve been trained to deal with the Empowereds, have you not?”
“Yes.” Enzo didn’t say anything else. There wasn’t a point. Everything Johansen said was true. Enzo had let his partner make a near-deadly mistake.
Johansen tucked his hands behind his back and paced across the room, his eyes never leaving Enzo. “Spectators recorded you leaping onto the roof of a building and pulling your unconscious partner with you. They’re calling it a daring escape, and now reporters want to talk to you. Unfortunately, I can’t let them speak to you because I can’t admit to the public that you needed to be rescued due to your own incompetence.”