by Cindi Myers
He had nodded, his eyes full of real concern, but then he had left and she hadn’t seen him again, or spoken to anyone. She was the queen bee at the center of a hive of activity, but unapproachable and dangerous.
She wondered what Mark and Mandy were doing right now. Maybe they were eating a good dinner, or taking a nap. Maybe father and daughter were merely catching up on the months they had lost, relearning each other again. She was glad Mandy had warmed to him so quickly. Her aunt must have done a good job of keeping the girl’s memory of her father alive—or maybe Mark himself had been such a strong presence in her life before his disappearance that he wasn’t easily forgotten.
A siren’s blare jerked her from her reverie, the strident wail rising and falling and rising again as it drew near. She turned to watch a sheriff’s department SUV turn in at the entrance to the park, idling a moment while officers scurried to move aside barriers, then pull up next to her.
A man dressed in something resembling a space suit stepped out, a tool bag in one hand, what looked like a small black safe with a handle attached to the top in the other. He saluted his driver, then the vehicle backed out and men moved the barriers back into place. The uniformed man made his way to the open driver’s side window of the Jeep. “You must be Erin,” he said.
“Yes.”
“My name’s Chad.” He offered a hand and she shook it. “I’m here to deal with that rather unique necklace you’re wearing.” He tilted his head to study the device more closely. “What can you tell me about it?”
“Um, it’s a bomb. With a timer. It’s gold plated.” She shrugged. “I don’t know a lot.”
Chad opened the Jeep’s door. “Why don’t you step out here and we’ll get to work.”
When she was standing in front of him, he set his tool bag on the front seat of the Jeep and opened the main compartment. “How much time does it say we have left?” she asked.
“Almost ten minutes.” He placed the tip of a probe against the collar and watched the readout on a handheld monitor.
She swallowed. “Is that going to be enough?”
“I guess it had better be. Now hold still while I check this out.”
She pressed her lips together, fighting the jittery nerves that made her want to scream. How could he be so calm and methodical as the seconds ticked down?
He removed a laptop computer and opened it on the seat next to the tool bag. He connected a handheld scanner to the computer and glided it slowly over the collar, studying the monitor display as he did so.
“It’s okay to breathe,” he said after a moment. “A good idea, actually.”
She hadn’t realized she had been holding her breath, and let it out in a whoosh. “Can you tell anything about the bomb?” she asked.
“I can tell a lot.” He set aside the scanner and pulled out a bulky black helmet with a full-face visor. “You’ll need to put this on,” he said.
She gaped at him. “I don’t really see the point. If this thing goes off, it’s going to take my head clean off. I doubt a helmet will do much good.”
The face mask on his own helmet prevented her from seeing his expression, but his voice remained calm and reasonable. “Right now, the helmet is to protect your eyes,” he said. “I’m going to fire a laser at the collar. Oh, and you’ll need to hold really still. I wouldn’t want to miss the collar and hit you instead.”
Meekly, she donned the helmet. Chad removed something that looked remarkably like a laser pointer from his tool bag. “Okay, close your eyes and lean your head back.”
Before she could ask why she needed to close her eyes, he said, “You’re less likely to flinch if your eyes are closed. The light is really bright.”
She closed her eyes, leaned her head back and waited.
And waited. She could hear Chad breathing, and a bird singing somewhere behind her. The rumble of a distant truck engine. A small buzzing sound.
“Okay, lean forward a little.”
She did as he asked and he moved behind her. She felt something pulling at her throat and then a cool breeze washed over her as he removed the collar. She opened her eyes and stared at him. “You did it,” she said.
Though she couldn’t see his face, she imagined him grinning. “The laser stopped the clock mechanism,” he said. “We still have to disable the armament, but we can do that somewhere else.” He opened the small safe, dropped the bomb inside and slammed the door shut. “All right, let’s get you out of here.” He reached up to remove her helmet.
But he had scarcely laid his hands on her when the bomb exploded, shattering the world and sending them flying.
Chapter Seventeen
The explosion shook the building where Mark and Mandy were waiting, rattling the chairs and knocking a painting of a sailboat on a lake to the floor, where it rested crookedly against the baseboard.
Mandy screamed and clung to her father. “What was that noise, Daddy?”
“I don’t know,” he lied, picking her up and walking to the window. It took all his willpower to stay on his feet and not give in to the sick dread that swept over him at the idea that the explosives experts hadn’t gotten to Erin in time.
The cacophonous wail of multiple sirens filled the air, and car after car raced past the community center, headed toward the park. “Daddy, you’re squeezing me too tight,” Mandy said, pushing against his chest.
“Sorry, honey.” Mark set his daughter down and moved to the door. A man raced past and Mark grabbed his sleeve. “What happened?” he asked.
“Somebody said a bomb went off in the park.”
“Was anyone hurt?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out.” He pulled away and raced out of the building.
Mark wanted to follow him, but he couldn’t leave Mandy here and he couldn’t expose her to the carnage that might await at the park. He spotted a phone on a desk across the room and crossed to it. His fingers shook as, for the second time that day, he dialed his brother’s number.
You have reached the voice mailbox of Special Agent Luke Renfro. Please leave a message at the tone.
Mark slammed down the phone and moved to the door, which the other man had left open in his haste to leave. An ambulance raced past, siren screaming. “No,” Mark muttered. Then louder, “No!” He hadn’t found love again only to have it torn from him.
A black SUV turned into the parking lot and parked in front of the door. Luke slid from the driver’s seat, his expression grim. A dark streak that might have been blood painted the side of his face, and one sleeve of his coat was torn.
Mark gripped the door frame and watched his brother approach. Luke didn’t say anything at first, merely pressed something into his hand.
Mark looked down at the cell phone. “What’s this for?”
“So you can call me when you get to the emergency clinic.”
Mark tried to hand back the phone. “I told you, I’m not going to the clinic. My injury can wait. What about Erin?”
Luke shoved the phone and a set of keys into Mark’s hand again. “You’re going to the clinic to see Erin. Go. The address is already programmed into the GPS. If you leave now, you’ll get there just after the ambulance.”
“Are you telling me Erin is alive?”
“Yes. And the bomb tech, too. He had already removed the necklace and placed it in a containment device when it blew. They were knocked off their feet, but they were both wearing helmets and he had on a bomb suit. He managed to shield her from most of the debris. The ambulance is taking them to the hospital as a precaution. The doctors will probably release them in an hour or two.”
“How did you get this?” Mark touched the streak of blood on Luke’s face.
Luke touched the spot and examined his fingers. “A sign fell on one of the sheriff’s cars and trapped an o
fficer inside. I helped pull it off and I guess I cut myself. Now go. I’ll look after Mandy.”
Mark clapped his brother on the back, then sprinted for the car.
* * *
“I’M FINE, REALLY. Most of these bruises are from before the explosion.” Erin tried to fend off the probing hands of the emergency room physician and see past him to the next cubicle. “Is Chad okay?”
“I’m fine!” called a familiar voice. “Aren’t you glad I made you wear that helmet?”
“Yes, thank you. And thank you for getting that necklace off me before it blew.”
“My timing could have been a little better,” he said. “I’m still trying to figure out what I did wrong.”
“As far as I’m concerned, you did everything right. Ouch!” She flinched as a nurse sank a needle into her arm.
“Just a tetanus shot,” the woman said. “Then you’ll be free to go.” She pressed a bandage over the injection site.
“No, I am not a relative. Not yet anyway.”
Erin’s heart leaped at the sound of the familiar voice. She stood and was moving toward the door when it burst open and Mark stepped inside. Their eyes locked and she hesitated, not sure how to read the expression there. “What are you doing here?” she asked. “Why aren’t you with Mandy?”
“Luke is with Mandy.” He moved toward her, but made no move to touch her. “I had to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine.” She smoothed her hands down the front of her shirt. “Hungry and dirty and a little banged up, but I’ll be fine. How are you?”
“Same as you.”
“How’s Mandy?”
“She’s good. Amazing.”
“She is amazing. You’re a very lucky man.”
“Yeah. If you had said that a couple of weeks ago, I would have laughed in your face, but now I know I am lucky. I have a lot to be thankful for.” He took her hand, and she sensed he was about to say something important—something she was afraid would hurt too much to hear.
“Luke, I...” she began.
“Mark Renfro?”
The man who joined them in the middle of the emergency room had taken the cliché of the black-suited FBI agent and given it a twist—from his gelled, close-cropped black hair to the skinny trousers and slim-lapelled jacket of his black suit and his hipster skinny tie. “I’ll need you to come with me, sir.”
Mark frowned at the man. “You’re interrupting a personal conversation.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but your brother, Special Agent Renfro, sent me here to fetch you.” He held up a badge and nodded to Erin. “You, too, miss.”
Mark pulled Erin closer to his side and faced the interloper. “Who are you?”
“Special Agent Cameron Hsung.” He moved the badge closer so that they could clearly see the official photo and credentials. “We need to go now. We don’t have much time.”
“Time for what?” Erin asked.
“I’ll explain in the car.”
“No.” Mark turned away. “Tell Luke if he wants me he can come get me himself. I have more important things to do right now.”
“Sir, if you won’t come with me willingly, I have orders to bring you by force,” Agent Hsung said. “This is a matter of life and death. Literally.”
Erin slid her hand from Mark’s. “What’s going on?” she asked.
The agent glanced around the crowded emergency room. Every eye was focused on the trio in the center of the room. “Come outside,” he said.
Mark and Erin followed him outside. He waited until the three of them were in his car before he said, “Duane Braeswood is threatening to set off his bomb in ten minutes if the president doesn’t announce his resignation on national television. He says he can detonate it remotely, the same way he set off the bomb necklace in the park.”
“How can he do that if he’s in custody?” Erin asked.
“It’s another bluff,” Mark said. “The necklace probably had a secondary timer or other device that triggered if it was removed from your neck. There wasn’t anything like that on the dummy bomb I built. And it’s a dummy. It can’t blow up.” But he heard the doubt in his voice—doubt planted by Luke, who had pointed out that the bomb didn’t have to be a nuclear device to maim and kill. And the exploding necklace Duane had fastened to Erin’s neck proved the terrorist leader had at least one more explosives expert at his beck and call.
“You’re among the few people who have ever seen this dummy bomb,” Agent Hsung said. “We need you to help us figure out where the bomb might be, and positively identify it once it’s located.”
“And we need to do this in the next ten minutes,” Erin said.
The agent glanced at his phone. “Eight minutes and fifty-four seconds now.” He leaned forward and punched on the car radio.
“As law enforcement officials search frantically for a nuclear bomb that suspected terrorist Duane Braeswood claims will detonate in a matter of minutes, the president is preparing to meet with reporters in a live press conference. Previously, the president has stated he will not comply with Braeswood’s call for his resignation and the resignations of his entire cabinet. Braeswood, leader of an extremist fringe group calling themselves the Patriots, is in FBI custody at this time, but has refused to reveal the whereabouts of the alleged nuclear device.”
Mark’s eyes met Erin’s. “Where would Duane stash the bomb?” he asked.
She put a hand to her head, which ached from the aftermath of the explosion and from racking her brain, trying to figure out what Duane was up to. “He would want it nearby, I think,” she said. “He couldn’t have put it wherever it is by himself—he had to have people move it for him. At least two people.”
“We’re doing a house-to-house search in Doloroso right now,” Hsung said. “But we’re running out of time.”
“Did you check the white panel van he was in?” Mark asked.
“The bomb’s not there,” Hsung said. “Though some evidence suggests it was at one time.”
“And it’s not at the house where he was staying?” Erin asked.
“We took the place apart. It’s not there.”
Mark pinched the bridge of his nose. “So he probably had the bomb in the van with him when he came to Dolorosa,” he said. “He hid it somewhere after he got here.”
Hsung turned to Erin. “You grew up in his house. You probably know him better than any of us. What would be his idea of a good place to plant a bomb? We’ve already ruled out the school and the county offices. We’re running out of time.”
“You’re not running out of time,” Mark said. “The bomb isn’t real and Duane Braeswood knows it.”
“That’s right,” Erin said. “He doesn’t have to worry about putting the bomb where it will do the most damage. He could put it anywhere. It doesn’t even matter if someone finds it after he gets what he wants from the government.”
“No offense, but the rest of us aren’t convinced the bomb is as dead as you say it is,” Hsung said.
Erin felt a charge of inspiration. “That’s it,” she said. “It’s a dead bomb.” Her eyes met Mark’s.
“The cemetery,” they said in unison.
“Go to the Pioneer Cemetery,” Erin told Hsung.
Hsung put the car in gear with one hand and hit a button on his phone with the other. “Get a team over to the cemetery,” he said. “Erin thinks Braeswood might have put the bomb there.”
The Pioneer Cemetery covered five acres at the south end of Doloroso, the site marked by an elaborate wrought iron archway, and towering lilac bushes poking their snow-covered bulk above a dry stack rock wall encircling the burial ground.
Hsung, Erin and Mark piled out of the agent’s car as two armored vehicles pulled in behind them. “Where’s the bomb?” the first man out of the first veh
icle demanded.
“We don’t know,” Erin said. “We have to look.” She studied the scattered monuments and markers studding the snow-speckled grass, from the moss-covered weeping angels marking the graves of infants to a black marble obelisk in honor of some long-ago dignitary. But no shining metal trunk stood out among the plastic flowers and gravestones.
She started down the broad graveled path that led into the interior of the cemetery, Mark at her side, while the officers scattered through the rest of the grounds. “If we weren’t on such an urgent mission, this would almost be pleasant,” she said as they passed under the arching branches of a cottonwood, the bark silvery against the winter-blue sky.
“If there are any Braeswoods buried here, Duane might think it a good joke to deposit the bomb there,” Mark said.
“He wouldn’t know about that ahead of time,” she said. “Wherever he put the bomb, it would have to be someplace he could get to easily, but away from the front gate, where anyone passing could spot it. I’m thinking back here.” She gestured toward a rear section of the grounds. “The markers over there look older. Maybe the graves are less visited.” She studied the rows of weathered wooden crosses and leaning granite stones. Then her gaze rested on a plump Cupid, the quiver of arrows on his back worn blunt from years of wind and weather. “There!” She pointed toward the Cupid. “Let’s try there.”
They spotted the trunk when they were approximately twenty yards from the marker, sun dappling its shiny metal surface where it sat in the middle of the sunken mound of the old grave. Mark hurried toward it, one hand outstretched. He had almost reached it when a voice behind him shouted, “Stop!”
Erin turned to see Agent Hsung striding across the ground between the gravestones. “Get back,” he said. “Let the explosives techs take care of that.”
