by Cindi Myers
“It’s not real,” Mark said. “It’s a fake I made. But it’s not armed.”
“You made a terrorist a bomb?” The muscles of Luke’s jaw tightened and Erin feared he might punch his brother.
“Braeswood killed Christy. He threatened to kill Mandy. I had to at least pretend to cooperate with him. I stalled as long as I could, then, when he upped the pressure, I made a decoy bomb.”
“So he thinks it’s a real bomb,” Luke said.
“He knows it’s not real,” Mark said. “But he’s arrogant enough to believe you won’t call his bluff.”
“Maybe he found someone to turn your decoy into a real weapon,” Luke said.
“There’s no way he could have gotten the material to arm it,” Mark said.
“Are you sure of that?” Luke’s expression was grim.
“I’d bet my life on it.”
“What about the lives of innocent people?”
“If you find the bomb you can prove to yourself that it’s harmless,” Erin said.
Luke shifted his gaze to Erin, then walked over to her, Mark and Mandy trailing after him. “Ms. Daniels?” Luke asked.
She released her grip on the steering wheel of the Jeep and rested her hands in her lap. “It’s nice to meet you, Agent Renfro,” she said. She managed a smile, but his attention was already focused on the collar around her neck. “Is that the bomb?” he asked. “On the phone, Mark said something about you being wired with a bomb.”
“Yes.” She wet her lips. “At least, according to my stepfather it is.”
Luke’s eyes met hers again. “Do you know where Duane has hidden this nuclear weapon he’s threatening to detonate?”
She shook her head. “No, but it’s probably somewhere in Colorado. I don’t think he’s had time to move it anywhere else.”
“We can’t be sure of that,” Mark said. “It’s possible he shipped it to one of his followers in New York or DC or another major city. One thing in our favor, though. I don’t know what he told you, but it’s not a suitcase nuke. The decoy I built is in a big metal trunk. It’s big enough people would notice it, and it’s really heavy. It takes two strong men to move it.”
Luke nodded and took out his phone. “I’ll spread the word.” He shifted his gaze to Mark. “Then we’ll see about getting you to the hospital to have a look at that shoulder. Don’t think I haven’t noticed you favoring it.”
“I can wait a little longer,” Mark said. In the excitement of the last hour, he had almost forgotten the pain of the gunshot wound.
“Why are the numbers flashing on your necklace?” Mandy asked.
“Are they flashing?” Erin lowered the visor and craned her neck to see in the mirror. The display on the collar had changed from green to red and the numbers flashed with each changing second, a horrible pulse counting down her doom.
But it wasn’t the flashing red numbers that shocked her as much as the time displayed. “This says...I’ve got less than an hour.” She stared at Mark in horror.
“That’s because no matter what you do to me, I’m still in charge!” Duane, held between two agents in black flak jackets and fatigues, screamed the words like curses. “You think you can stop me, but you never can.”
The agents dragged him away to one of the SUVs, shoved him in the backseat and drove away. A second set of agents hauled away the van’s driver.
“Where is your explosives expert?” Mark asked.
“He’s on his way.” Luke’s voice was more clipped than ever, his expression strained.
“Where is he coming from?” Erin asked.
“From Denver.” Luke refused to meet her gaze. Instead, he turned to his brother. “You told me we had more time.”
“We did. Braeswood must have reset the timing mechanism.”
Luke pulled a set of keys from his pocket and handed them to Mark. “You take Mandy and get out of here,” he said. “There’s a medical clinic a couple of streets over where you can get that arm checked out. I’ll stay with Ms. Daniels.”
“I’ll stay with her,” Mark said, and his words made Erin weak with relief.
“Your place is with your daughter,” Luke said.
He bowed his head. Erin felt his struggle, but she knew Luke was right. “Go with Mandy,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do to help me anyway.” It was her turn to look away, before he could see her sadness and longing for what might have been.
She listened to his footsteps walking away, then the sounds of the car door slamming and the engine starting. She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from crying out as he drove off. Even if she survived this ordeal, she doubted she would see him again. Oh, they might run into each other during a court trial, if it came to that, but he needed time to reconnect with his daughter and the rest of his family. She didn’t fit into his plans.
“Sir, you’ll have to leave now, too.”
Erin realized Luke was speaking to Gaither, who had stood nearby and silently watched the whole drama unfold. She would have to be sure Luke knew the part the older man had played in saving them. Maybe he’d get a medal.
“What’s going to happen to her?” Gaither asked.
“Someone will be here soon to remove the collar and deal with it,” Luke said. “For now, we need to clear the area.”
An agent took Gaither’s arm to escort him away. “Good luck, Erin,” the older man called.
She swallowed. “Thank you.” But she couldn’t help thinking she had used up her share of luck a long time ago.
After Gaither left the silence closed in around her. Luke walked some distance away to make a phone call. She closed her eyes and tried to pray, but her mind was a blank. All she could think of was Mark, of the joy on his face when he had been reunited with his daughter, of his bravery in fighting off Duane, of how tenderly he had touched Erin when they had made love.
“I’ve been talking to headquarters about your situation.” Luke Renfro was beside the Jeep again. Being with him was a little disconcerting, he looked so much like Mark—though a Mark from a different world than the one they had shared. “We discussed getting a welder or someone like that up here to cut the collar off, but our explosives experts believe it’s possible the device is set up to trigger with any kind of tampering,” he said.
“Yes, Duane told us it was.”
“We’re still trying to find an explosives team that’s closer,” he said. “We aren’t giving up yet.”
She nodded. “I appreciate that.”
“For now, we have to wait. And I’m going to have to leave you alone for a bit.” He looked rueful. “I have orders to stay back at least eighteen hundred feet.”
“I understand.”
He took a step back, but she couldn’t help calling out to him. “Agent Renfro? Luke?”
“Yes?”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Duane Braeswood’s awful plans,” she said. “He was my stepfather, but I never saw him as anything but a madman and a criminal. Maybe I was wrong not to go to the authorities with what little I knew about him and his organization, but I was trying to protect my mother. And myself, too.”
“You never gave us reason to believe you were guilty of any wrongdoing.” He put his hand over hers on the door frame and squeezed it. “We’re going to do everything we can to save you,” he said. “I’ll have my brother to answer to if I don’t.”
He walked away, leaving her to wonder what he had meant by that last statement.
Chapter Sixteen
The FBI had commandeered a local community center two miles from the park as their temporary headquarters. Mark had elected to go there with Mandy, instead of the emergency clinic, wanting to stay close to the action in case Erin needed him. Not that there was anything he could do, but he didn’t want to be traveling
in an ambulance somewhere, or knocked out on an operating table, if Erin asked for him.
One of the agents showed father and daughter to a room furnished with two folding chairs and a cot. Mark sat on the cot with his daughter, marveling at the feel of her in his arms. “You’ve gotten so big,” he said.
“You’re growing a beard.” She rubbed her hand across the whiskers on his cheek.
“I haven’t had time to shave lately,” he said.
“I kind of like it.” She snuggled against him. “Do you think Erin will be all right?”
His stomach tightened. “I hope so.”
“She’s very pretty.” Mandy looked up at him from beneath her lashes. “Do you like her?”
“Yes, I like her.”
“Are you in love with her?”
How was he supposed to answer that question? If he said yes, would Mandy think he was betraying her mother? Or worse, that he was turning his back on her? “Would you be upset if I said yes?” he asked.
“I think it would probably be okay. As long as I get to come live with you.”
“Of course you’ll live with me. You’re my daughter and I love you very much.” He kissed the top of her head. “So much.”
“I love you, too, Daddy.” She pressed her head against his chest. “Aunt Claire told me you might be dead, but I never believed her. I wouldn’t let myself.”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did,” he said. “You had to wait a long time.”
“It doesn’t matter now that you’re here.”
They didn’t say anything for a long while, and her breathing slowed and deepened. She had fallen asleep. Poor thing was probably exhausted. Later, he’d ask her what had happened with Duane and his men, though he wasn’t sure he was ready to hear those details yet. Maybe he would find a counselor to help her deal with all the trauma of the past months. For that matter, maybe he would find someone to talk to himself. No telling what demons the events of the past months would leave him fighting.
He eased Mandy off his lap and laid her out on the cot. He was just standing when the door to their room opened and Luke stepped in.
“Why aren’t you with Erin?” Mark demanded. Pain squeezed his chest. “Has something happened? Is she all right?”
“Nothing has changed.” Luke set a brown paper bag on one of the folding chairs. “Did you go to the clinic about your arm?”
“I’ll go later. Another hour or two isn’t going to make any difference.”
“I figured you’d say that, so I brought you some food. I thought you might be hungry.”
Mark turned away. “I can’t eat. Not until I know she’s safe.”
“We found an explosives guy who works for La Plata County,” Luke said. “He’s on his way.”
“So you just left her alone?” Anger tightened his chest.
“There are two officers keeping an eye on her.”
“But they’re not with her. They don’t know her. She’s having to deal with this by herself.”
“Mark, you know we can’t risk any more lives.”
His head told him Luke was right, but his heart screamed that the only life that really mattered was Erin’s. “What does Braeswood say about the bomb?” he asked.
“Which one?” Luke opened one of the bags and began to set out burgers and fries. “He’s already shut up and lawyered up. When he’s not ranting about all the followers who will carry on his work even while he’s in custody, he’s reminding everyone that he is a frail old man who has suffered greatly and he’s threatening to sue us.”
“What about those followers?” Mark asked. “Did you arrest any of them?”
“Half a dozen or so. It was easy enough for our team to pick them out of the crowd. We’ve had some of them on our radar for months. But so far they’re not talking, either. We’re looking for more.” He slid a cardboard tray of chicken nuggets toward Mandy, who had awakened and now perched on the edge of the cot. “Here you go, honey,” he said. “Why don’t you take these over by the window and eat while I talk to your dad.”
Mark waited until Mandy had carried her lunch across the room before he spoke again, keeping his voice low. “Do you think Duane’s right?” he asked. “When he says others will carry on his work?”
“I don’t know. The world is full of crazies. We just try to stay one step ahead of them. We checked out the house you told us about, but it was clean. We figure he wasn’t there but a couple of hours. Any other ideas where we might look for this alleged nuclear bomb?”
“There’s a cabin in the mountains where he kept me and Erin prisoner. I think I could find it again, but he’s probably cleaned it out by now. The last time I saw the trunk with the decoy in it, two of Duane’s thugs were loading it into the back of a Hummer.”
“When was this?” Luke asked.
“Two days ago.”
“He could have driven or flown the trunk anywhere in the world by now.”
“I’m telling you, it’s not armed. It’s all a bluff.”
“You can’t know that.” Luke held up a hand to forestall any further argument from Mark. “Even if the thing isn’t a nuclear device, you can fit a pretty powerful explosive charge into a trunk like the one you described. So we don’t have any choice but to take his threat seriously.”
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t take him seriously,” Mark said. “Just that the man is a liar.”
“Which we already knew.” Luke slid a burger and fries toward Mark. “Eat this. You must be starving.”
His stomach heaved at the thought of eating anything. “I can’t eat. I can’t stop thinking about Erin. I’d be dead now if it wasn’t for her.”
“You said she helped you escape. How?”
It wasn’t so much what Erin had done, but what she had motivated him to do. “She created a distraction and I threw acid on one of the guards. Then we ran.”
“When was this?” Luke asked.
“Two days ago. We got away while two of the guards were preoccupied with loading the trunk.”
“You’ve spent two days wandering around out there?” Luke glanced out the window.
“We spent two days running from Duane’s men.” He glanced toward Mandy, who was sitting in the other chair, lining up her chicken nuggets in neat rows on the cardboard tray. “I killed three of them,” he said softly. “And wounded another—not counting the man with the acid.”
“We’ll want a statement from you later.” He handed Mark a cup of coffee. “I ought to warn you there are some people who want to make it hard for you because you cooperated with Braeswood and made the bomb he’s threatening everyone with.”
“I didn’t cooperate with him!”
Mandy stared at him, her eyes wide. Mark forced himself to lower his voice and stay calm. “I didn’t have any choice,” he said. “And I didn’t make a bomb. I made a fake to try to placate him.”
Luke put a reassuring hand on Mark’s shoulder—the uninjured one. “I’m pushing hard against any attempt to prosecute you,” he said. “I’ve pointed out to anyone who will listen that you and Erin have cooperated fully. And you’re the man who finally stopped Duane Braeswood. That’s going to weigh heavily in your favor.”
Mark stared into his coffee cup. “You caught the man, but you haven’t really stopped anything. He’s still threatening to put a big hole in the world with his supposed nuclear device. He’s still trying to kill Erin.” He squeezed the cup the way he wished he had squeezed Duane Braeswood’s neck, not caring that hot coffee sloshed onto his hand and splashed on the floor.
Luke studied him for a long moment. “How long have you been in love with her?” he asked.
Mark set the crushed cup aside and raked a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. Maybe about five minutes after I met her.” Anguish tor
e at him. “I never told her, though.”
“You’ll get a chance to tell her,” Luke said.
Mark glanced toward Mandy, who was singing softly to herself as she dipped the chicken nuggets in ranch dressing and popped them into her mouth. “This is a lousy time to start a relationship,” he said. “I don’t want to upset Mandy.”
“Mandy’s a resilient little girl. And that’s what counselors are for—to help with transitions like that. If you love Erin, you should try to make it work with her. Don’t pass up a chance for happiness.”
“What would you know about it?”
“You might be surprised.” He sipped his coffee. “I’m engaged. To a journalist I met in Denver when we first came to Colorado on this case.”
“Really? Congratulations.” Mark began to pace. Hard to imagine Luke—the brother who had always been the sworn bachelor—finally settling down. Mark looked forward to the day when his own life was settled once more. He would never take the ordinary pleasure of living for granted again. But mundane routines seemed very far away right now. “When is this bomb guy supposed to get here?” he asked.
Luke’s phone chirped. “That may be him now.” He turned to leave the room, but Mark followed him out into the hall. “Go back to Mandy,” Luke said.
“I’m coming with you,” Mark said.
“And what happens when Mandy realizes you’re not with her? Your daughter needs you, Mark. Let me take care of Erin.”
Mark fisted his hands. How many times had he heard of someone being torn over some decision? Now he knew what that really felt like—a physical pain as if he was being ripped in two. He dragged in a ragged breath. “All right. But you’ll bring her to me when this is over?”
“I will.” They didn’t say “if it works out all right” or “if she’s still alive.” But the words hung in the air between them, as real and horrifying as if they had been spoken.
* * *
ERIN FOCUSED ON a fly crawling across the dashboard, trying to shut out the sights and sounds outside the Jeep—the bright yellow police tape encircling the park with its ominous warning, Danger, Do Not Cross. Law enforcement officers from several agencies had closed off the streets leading to the park and shouted through bullhorns for people to clear the area. Luke had stopped by again a while ago to ask if she wanted anything to eat or drink, but she had refused. “I don’t think I could swallow,” she said.
