Page 4 of Fury In Death

“With Luke the cheesy fries, and way too much salt.”

“Musta worked, ’cause that boy’s a pistol. Enjoy your ice cream.”

“We will. Thanks.”

He smiled as he left. He liked going into a local store, being known, having the clerk say his boy was a pistol. He liked knowing when he got home with the ice cream, he and Ari would sit in bed, spooning it up, probably talk about baby names again.

But he was set on Chloe now, so he’d steer Ari toward a middle name to go with it.

They’d talk about the house, setting up Luke’s big boy room, the baby’s nursery.

And when they settled to sleep, she’d take his hand, lay it on the baby with hers over it.

And somehow, with that unity, with Luke sleeping nearby, he’d know the good in the world—even with all he’d learned—he’d know the good far outweighed the bad.

He quickened his steps, reached into his pocket for his key.

The explosion shot him off his feet. Airborne, his body slammed into a parked car, then bounced forward and down on the sidewalk.

He heard screaming, but it sounded like screams wrapped in thick fog. Screaming, shouting, people running. A second explosion that washed a wave of impossible heat over him.

Confused, as yet numb to the pain, he staggered to his feet.

Fire roared out of broken windows; black smoke belched. Broken, charred bricks scattered like dominoes. For a moment, he simply didn’t comprehend, couldn’t comprehend.

There’s a fire, he thought, and the thought came dully, detached. That building’s on fire. Instinct had him reaching in his pocket for his phone to call nine-one-one.

Then the fog cleared enough for him to realize.

“Ari!” He screamed it, started to run toward the flames. “Ari! Luke!”

Someone grabbed him, and he fought, but then there were two holding him back, back from the flames, the furnace of heat, the choking smoke.

“You can’t go in there, man. Fire department’s coming. You can hear the sirens. They’re coming.”

“My wife, my son. My wife, my son.”

They pulled him back, dragged him back from what the fire greedily consumed.

As he fell to his knees, his world shattered; his mind broke.

And Fury was born.

Chapter One

September 2061

Eve Dallas looked at death. As the lieutenant of the Homicide Division, she lived with death, worked with it. She knew death intimately.

The body lay at the base of a set of stairs.

But the story didn’t begin there.

She thought it began with the overturned stepladder, the shattered lightbulb, the considerable blood on the kitchen island, the floor. The story followed the staggered trail of it leading to the open stairway.

Slipped on the ladder, she thought, head trauma when he hit the counter, stumbled around, dazed, dizzy, then fell down the stairs.

“What are the odds?” she muttered.