The downpour battering our van became a barrage.

It took me a second. Then I realized.

It wasn't a downpour anymore. It was a side-pour. A rear- pour. And it was no longer water. It was steel. Bullets.

We hadn't been quick enough.

No, no, dammit! We had been. But the damn torrential rain had washed down our smoke bombs, cleared our enemies' path.

Those who'd survived.

Made me regret we hadn't made sure no one had.

Okay, Calista St. James. Reality check here. There'd been too many of them. Dozens. And only three of us. As odds went, I should be grateful there still were three, and that we'd gotten out two of the six people we'd smashed into that mini war zone to save.

Grateful was something I rarely was. Never much to be grateful about when we were on one of our regular and too- frequent against-all-odds rescues from grisly situations. This time we were caught in the middle of a white-slavery auction turned gang turf war.

We'd lost more than we'd saved. There'd just been far more gang members than our worst projections. All we'd known, barging in to answer Juan's distress call, had been his choppy and aborted report.

And we hadn't actually saved anyone yet. We'd just reached our van, hadn't even fully secured our two casualties.

Had to change that. Like in the next twenty seconds. Who knew just how armored our van was. Sure sounded like it was getting the ultimate endurance test.

Only bright spot was, the gang filth out there were frothing mad, spewing typical and so-far ineffectual violence, shooting at our bulletproof body rather than going for the sure, fatal shot, our tires.

Couldn't count on their idiocy much longer.

Muffled curses kept tempo with my movements as they sped up, blurred. Every muscle burned, mainly with the effort of blocking out the pain signals. Those were shooting from too many sources and had congealed into a jumbled distress transmission. My lungs sheared against my ribs with exertion, almost a distraction from the rod of agony that ran the length of my vertebral column, pooling in my lumbar area. Almost.

Was it any wonder, after nearly half a mile of forging through solid sheets of pounding water and wading in calf- deep slime and garbage with a comatose woman bleeding all over my back?

I snapped the last harness buckle and glanced at my comrade-in-arms, Lucia. She'd secured the injured Juan. I opened my mouth to yell for her to grab hold before telling Matt to floor it.

I didn't have time to do either. Matt did floor it. And us. Brutal acceleration interrupted my frantic grab for an anchor, hurled me into Lucia. Her chin and my cheekbone made violent acquaintance. Bright pain burst along with the usual ludicrously inappropriate internal commentary, There we go — a matching set of black eyes. Make that two sets.

I twisted in mid-pitch, avoided landing on our female casualty for the price of another bruise on my left hip bone before I took Lucia's taller, heavier body on top and we both crashed to the floor. My lungs deflated. Her weight on me kept them that way. Already taxed, my lungs burned with oxygen deprivation. I still clamped my legs around her body, kept her from falling off me. Moving while Matt was executing that manic getaway-car routine would only buy us more bruises.

Next second the van launched over a huge bump and sailed in the air for what felt like a whole minute. Then it crash-landed, spooling Lucia off me, and we did plenty of the tossing about I'd tried to avoid as the van exploded out of the derelict area, engine howling like a banshee, wheels churning slimy mud.

The gunfire storm had abated, but Matt poured on the speed. A yell gurgled out of my pinned-by-G-force body. "Matt!You'll get us killed. Or give us new casualties. Or both!"

I guess he didn't hear my news flash. He yanked the metal behemoth into a hairpin turn, sending Lucia, who still hadn't managed to grab on to something, catapulting over me and into the secondary stretcher's steel support. She cried out. Blood spattered, a hot, sickening fizz on my frozen cheek. Damn!

Her hand lashed out to her head in protective exploration. "Scalp wound..." She gasped her diagnosis, her hand lurching away to grab an anchor. Blood-slick, it slipped.

Damn. Dammit. The stretchers and equipment were welded to the floor or harnessed, diminishing chances of further injury to our strapped-down casualties, but all bets were off for our own free-floating bodies.

I snapped open one of the cabinets lining the van's wall, snatched a sterile pressure pad out, tossed it to Lucia. She missed it. Blood was seeping into her eye, and both went into instinctive spasm. I lunged before the pad fell into our muddy tracks, caught it, pressed it into her hand. I helped her into the para-medic seat, then staggered to the driver's compartment.

At the threshold, the part of my mind that was on perpetual macabre and out-of-place-humor duty went, oh-oh.

Matt had his huge body hunched over the steering wheel like an overeager kid at the controls of a gory video game. The weeping night outside was filled with fuzzy beacons — on a collision course with us.

He was going against the stream. On the highway.

I stared, lost in that surreal realm of momentary disbelief. Then horror hit, head-on.

Incoming blares yawned to deafening crescendos, dwindled abruptly as headlights veered away in last-microsecond desperation, like moths scared at the advance of a berserk swatter. I screamed that he should get us on the right side of the road. He heard me this time.

Next second made me wish he had ignored me. It'd never been a problem for him to do so and come up with a usually better way of handling matters. I'd said get us on the right side of the road and he just — did. And how. My mouth opened again to shout, but it was too late as he launched over the dividing island, slamming my teeth down on my tongue. Electric blue pain forked straight to my brain.

Couldn't squander any focus on the pain. All my reserves poured into a total-body clamp on the passenger seat, into riding the momentum of the huge arc of screeching cars he passed before he joined the stream. But he wasn't finished spreading mayhem. He accelerated through the cars ahead, his intention seeming to be to ram them if they didn't swerve out of his way fast enough.

I screamed again, "Matt!"

His only answer was a rumbled "They're on our tail."

I lurched, peered into the side mirror. So they were.

Then he literally got them there. He slammed his foot down full force on the brakes.

Everything compressed in my heart's next beat. The van skidding in imploding deceleration. Burning-rubber stench polluting my lungs. Screeching brakes slitting my eardrums. Every cell in my body fast-forwarding to the moment of collision, panic flooding in from all sides...

Then the impact. A brutal jolt from behind, enough to dislodge my very life force one cell at a time. A-hundred- miles-per-hour worth of crashing mass and unspent momentum almost too forceful to feel, too thunderous to hear. It mushroomed through me in a chain reaction. I held on, held together, somehow. The impact went to my only unrestrained part — my brain, floating in its fluids. It didn't stop with the rest of me, tried to ram an exit through my skull.

Existence blinked on and off on the pros and cons of a hard head. On how much the abused organ could stand before it vegetated. And how my last act as a being with any volition had to be filleting Matt alive!

To snatch people in critical condition out of a gang war zone only to kill them in a car crash? Can we say stupidity punishable by death by spitting squad? He was giving reckless driving a suicidal redefinition. Even among stunt drivers. Hell, even among drunk ones. We might as well have stayed and seen the war through. At least we would have died doing something worthwhile.

Darkness receded, crimson fury flooding in its wake. "What's gotten into you, you lunatic?" I snarled.

Matt just put the car in shrieking gear and blasted forward again. My stomach remained half a mile behind. He wiped a soggy dark blond lock from his rugged forehead, shot me a blank glance.

"I got rid of our tail, didn't I?"

He sure had. I doubted anyone would walk out alive from the receding wreck I now barely saw in the side mirror. I could only hope other cars weren't piled up behind them.

"And look who's talking," he added.

Oh, no. He wasn't bringing up my leap-first-and-don't- bother-looking-later affliction. It was he who was jeopardizing everyone now. "If you don't like being called a lunatic, stop earning the name," I snapped. "So you got rid of our tail — and the van's. Yay for you. Now stop trying to get rid of everyone on the road — and your passengers — if you haven't already. That crash could've finished our casualties for all I know."

His bodybuilder's shoulders rose in a distracted gesture and he pressed his foot harder on the gas pedal. I hit him on said dismissive shoulder. "Hey!"

"What?" he grumbled. "I'm under the speed limit!"

"Yeah, for escape velocity! Take the next exit and pull over before Highway Patrol forces us to. I'm driving."

"You mean I'll handle our patients instead?"

Put that way — no. Didn't matter that he was the better trauma surgeon and emergency doctor. He'd just finished letting loose on his biggest ever rampage. The setting, the thugs — this had been too reminiscent of how he'd lost his wife. Best scenario here was he was finding it hard to come down. Worst one was his resident rage was eating through him, a damage potential comparable to a high explosive's. If I had a hard time trusting him with the wheel in his volatile state, I didn't want him anywhere near our casualties. Without immediate intervention, they wouldn't last the hour back. And though his driving didn't stand out so much in the collective lunacy on the highway, we had to get off the busy road, get home through back alleys. A safer but far longer route.

What I had was a load of shitty choices. As usual.

Enough, St. James. Call it.

A breath scraped my spastic bronchi. "Keep driving, Matt. And get us off the highway."

No response. It was only when I poked him that he seemed to register what I'd said. Then he mumbled, "It's the quickest way."

Frustration, hot and stinging, surged, augmenting my whole- body distress. "Yeah, to get arrested. You did notice we're riding a bullet-riddled, smashed-up van fleeing the scene of a massive accident and chock-full of unlicensed medical personnel and critically injured people, didn't you? Get us arrested now and you'll bring our whole operation down."

"Yeah, and I really needed that lecture," he growled, screeched into the next exit. "I got us away, we're in one piece. I'm keeping it that way."

I waited for my stomach to fit back roughly in the space it usually occupied, hissed when I was no longer gagging on it. "No bets on the latter part of your statement. Take it easier, okay?"

I was talking to his absent profile. What was this?

This, whatever it was, didn't matter now. Snap to it, St. James!

I gave the cars scattering out of the van's path, and my friend — precariously designated so at the moment — one last exasperated glance and let go of my anchor.

"Matt's done trying to kill us?" Lucia burst out the moment I staggered into the back compartment.

"Yeah — I guess. Let's move it."

She snapped off her seat belt, exploded to her feet. We snatched open cabinets, hauled out equipment. I hooked up the suctioning device as she dragged out syringes, saline bags, giving sets and gloves. I caught the pair she tossed me, snapped them on, turned to our patients.

"Clear airways." I made way for her to suction their throats, swooped for the drugs needed for intubation. It wouldn't do for them to regain consciousness or gag while I was doing it.

I kept my eyes off our casualties' faces. Off Juan's. Yeah, I knew him. Well. At least I knew the gregarious, fizzing-with-vitality Juan, not this pulpy, motionless mess.

Stop it. Couldn't afford to let blind emotion into the mix now.

Neither I nor Lucia. She wouldn't allow it. She was a pro. She'd handle it. She had to.

I loaded two syringes, snatched up Juan's arm, struggled for balance and to hit a collapsed vein. I missed three times, heard growls. Mine. Vocal, murderous frustration.

Once I connected, I dumped the load in one pump. With a head injury, IV lidocaine served a dual purpose — anesthesia, and minimizing a rise in intracranial pressure. For the girl, with her gunshot chest injury, an anesthetic wasn't on. Succinylcholine for her, a muscle relaxant instead. At least I could administer that intramuscularly.

"What was that about?" Lucia's wobbly voice filtered through the gargling of heavy secretions shooting up the suctioning tubes.

"Matt's high on an adrenaline overdose. He's over it —" I pumped the SC just as the van launched and crash-landed again. Damn. The needle could have broken in her flesh. "I guess."

Lucia finished suctioning and turned to recording pulse and pressure. "Sure is a sound decision letting our resident berserker drive!" Her voice was fractured with tension and anxiety.

I laid out the intubation gear, assembled the laryngoscope, took my place at the girl's head. "Would you rather have him back here, Lucci?"

Her startled glare said it all. No, she wouldn't. And Matt's berserkerdom wasn't why. She had an overblown view of my skills. To her I was the best.

Living up to her expectations was a pain. I didn't fancy being anyone's role model — or idol. In fact, I hated it. Couldn't figure out how I'd ended up being hers. Foolish girl. A little crazy even. She'd joined my team, hadn't she?