The Evasion (11 page)

Sixty minutes? The timer just went to fifty-eight. “When did they leave?”

“Maybe ten minutes ago. He was the one in the truck. The one that almost hit me.”

They’re watching
. Or at least one of them was because they knew when he’d returned to the hotel and triggered the timer, probably using a cell phone. “I just saw the truck downstairs. They waited for me to get back and started the clock.”

A remote controlled
and
trip-wired bomb. Terrific. He ran a hand over his face.
Think.

“I’m gonna call 9-1-1.”
And pray the energy from the phone won’t trigger this fucking bomb.
“But I think it’ll take longer than sixty minutes for the bomb squad to get organized and get here.”

“Oh, God.” She dropped her chin to her chest.

“Jo, don’t move. Please. Once I deal with this trip wire, you can move. And believe me I’ll deal with this trip wire.”

How the hell he’d do that, he didn’t know, but part of his ESU experience meant dealing with any scenario.

He dialed 9-1-1 on his cell.

“I love you,” she said.

“Which makes me the luckiest guy alive. But we’re not gonna talk about that now. We’re gonna talk about getting you out of this chair.”

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?”

Lady, you’ll love this.
It took four precious minutes for the operator to figure out it would require a small miracle—or Santa—to get the regional bomb squad on scene in an hour. Gabe hung up and tried the sheriff again. No go. He left a voicemail letting him know they had a problem. An enormous one that might blow apart the man’s town.

“What now?” Jo asked.

“Now I call Tom.”

“What can he do?”

He scrolled to Tom’s number. “He can get me someone from our bomb unit to walk me through disabling this trip wire.”

“
You’re
going to do it?”

He didn’t believe it either, but, hey, plenty of shit happened—barricaded maniacs, wacked-out crackheads, subway jumpers—in his line of work that he didn’t believe. Why should today be any different? “You got a better idea?”

“Yes. Leave me here.”

Speaking of crackheads, when had Jo become one? That’d be the only explanation for her believing he’d walk out. “Yeah. I’ll get right on that.”

“I’m serious. Please. Don’t do this. It’s too dangerous.”

His boss’s line rang for the third time.
Please, no friggin’ voicemail.
The ringing stopped and—
oh, yay, Skippy
—voicemail.

“Tom? It’s Gabe. We’re in a shitstorm. Call me. Pronto.” Next up, Tom’s secretary. She always knew where to find him. Gail answered, heard the word bomb, put Gabe on hold and within three minutes tackled their boss.

Love that woman.

Gabe gave Tom the shortened version of how Jo ended up with a bomb strapped to her leg. Of course, there’d be a fair amount of yelling and threats to be dealt with later, but Gabe was connected to Reese Claymore, a bomb tech who’d been in his academy class. These days, they ran into each other at various crime scenes, but Gabe wouldn’t call him a friend. Right now, they were two guys who had forty-eight minutes to separate Jo from that bomb holding her beautiful body hostage.

“Whatcha got?” Reese said.

The cell phone Martinson had left chirped.
Goddammit.
He needed to get this bomb dealt with.

“That’s him,” Jo said.

“Reese, sit tight. This is our guy on the other line.”

Gabe grabbed the phone before the ringing stopped. All the fucking electronics in this room and the bomb hadn’t gone off. Thank God for the advancement of technology. He hit the speaker button on Martinson’s phone and held it in front of him while eyeing Jo. “Gabe Townsend.”

“Sergeant Townsend, this is Donald Martinson. Get my cargo released. A truck will pull up to the Port Authority. If my cargo is ready for me, I’ll tell you how to deactivate the bomb. If the cargo is not ready, Ms. Pomeroy is dead. If anyone follows my truck, Ms. Pomeroy is dead.”

Click.
Gabe spun to Jo, took in the spooked look in her eyes and went to work. He and Jo, they needed constant action. Sitting in that chair must have been destroying her. If he had his way, he’d fix it quick. “Where’s your phone and the card from our Port Authority guy?”

“Outside pocket of my briefcase.”

The briefcase sat on the floor beside the desk and Gabe rifled through the outer pocket.
Got it.
Keeping Reese on hold, he used Jo’s phone to call Chuck Davis. Voicemail. Nothing but voicemail today. If Gabe wasn’t careful, all the blood rushing into his head might cause an explosion of another kind.

“Chuck, Gabe Townsend here. Call me ASAP.”

He clicked off and tossed the phone on the bed.
Screw this
. He went back to Reese. “I need the Port Authority to release a shipment and I can’t reach our contact there. Can you get someone to help on that? Call Tom. He’ll know what to do.”

“I’m on it. Tell me what you’ve got there first.”

Right. Bomb. “It’s a pipe. Roughly six inches long and one inch in diameter. Timer and a trip wire. And it’s wrapped around a woman’s leg.”

Reese let out a low whistle. “Six inches. That’ll have a kick. Trip wire spring loaded?”

Gabe put the call on speaker, got down on his belly again and followed the wire to where it was secured to Jo’s leg. “No idea. It leads inside the pipe.”

“How much time you got on the timer?”

He checked it. “Forty-two minutes, thirty seconds.”

“I’d like to get eyes on this thing. Can you send me video?”

“My laptop,” Jo suggested. “We can video conference.”

“That’d work,” Reese said. “Let me get into the briefing room for the big screen. I’ll call Tom on the way. Meantime, you got your wire cutters in your go-bag?”

Wire cutters.
Hell no he didn’t have wire cutters. Dumbass that he was, he’d forgotten to restock his go-bag after his rookie scrounged through it and took his because
he
didn’t have wire cutters.

Being met with silence was all Reese needed. “Seriously? You don’t have them?”

What a completely stupid mistake. How many times had he berated his team for not being adequately prepared? Sure, people forgot things—gas masks, vests, a weapon—but for Gabe to do it? Unacceptable. Particularly now.

“On our last hit, my rookie didn’t have his so I gave him mine. Then I jumped on a plane here and didn’t have time.”
Bullshit
. “I’ll check with the owner.”

Jo in an attempt to keep her body still, bugged out her eyes. “You can’t. Martinson might be down there. You said he had to be close. They did something to Mrs. Jenkins or they wouldn’t have her key.”

Slowly, using controlled movements that wouldn’t bump the chair, Gabe rose from the floor. “I’ll be fine. They probably tied her up and one of them is somewhere close. Someone definitely saw me enter the hotel. The timer told us that much.” He headed toward the door. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move. Not an inch.”

“I’m trying, Gabe, but my legs are asleep.”

He turned back, fought the urge to waste precious seconds by going back to her and…and…what? Offer comfort? The woman had a fucking bomb strapped to her leg. Comfort from him meant getting her free of said bomb. “I’ll have you out of there soon. Do
not
move.”

“Be careful. We don’t know…”

Gabe didn’t wait for her to finish. Time was literally ticking. He tore down the steps, .45 aimed and at the ready. At the bottom, he cleared the parlor, sticking close to the far wall as he made his way to Mrs. Jenkins’s office at the end of the hallway. Closed door. He halted, listened. From behind the door came a muffled cry.
Alive
.

He shoved the door open. When a hail of bullets didn’t fly at him, he peeked in and spotted Mrs. Jenkins gagged and tied to her desk chair. Surveying the room, he swept left to right. Nothing.
Go.
Gun raised he checked behind the door. Clear. Under the desk.
Go
. No Martinson. He re-holstered his weapon, went to work on Mrs. Jenkins’s gag and the half-hitch knot keeping the woman hostage. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Good. They’re gone. Do you have wire cutters?”

Mrs. Jenkins rolled her shoulders, rotated her hands to loosen the tight muscles. “I don’t know. The tool box is in the shed out back.”

Gabe worked the remaining ropes loose. “Show me. Fast. Jo has a bomb strapped to her.”

“What?”

He grabbed the woman’s elbow and helped her out of the chair. “No time to explain. Let’s roll.”

Four minutes were lost searching for the wire cutters, but they found them buried at the bottom of a rusty toolbox in the even rustier shed. In Gabe’s estimation, that shed should have been condemned. And if he didn’t get his ass moving, it might get blown to bits. “Stay out front. As far away from the building as you can get. If the sheriff or the bomb squad arrives, send them up. Everyone else stays out.”

He hauled ass back upstairs, found Jo sitting, staring at him with wild eyes that screamed of fear and panic. Like him, Jo always, without fail, wanted to do something, anything, to move an operation forward. Being bound was slowly destroying her.

“I’m back,” Gabe said to Reese, who was hopefully still on speakerphone.

“Okay. Jo gave me her email address. I’m dialing you up for video conference now.”

Jo’s laptop sat on the desk and Gabe stood in front of it, waiting for the call to connect. “How do I work this thing?”

“The little phone icon will pop up, just click it.”

Yep. Phone icon. He clicked it and Reese’s red hair and freckled face appeared onscreen. Gabe squatted so he’d be at eye level with the computer. “Can you see me?”

“Yeah. Show me what you’ve got.”

We’re on
. Moving fast, Gabe unplugged the laptop and dropped to the floor again.

“Hang on.” Reese said. “Right there…Okay…move it to your left and up. I gotta see where the wires lead. Don’t bump anything.”

That’s all he’d need and—
boom!
—they’d both get blown away.

“Who put this thing together?” Reese asked. “Amateur?”

“Not sure. We’re chasing this Martinson guy. He’s into trafficking counterfeit goods. Bombs are new. Why?”

“Because if he’s an amateur, chances are the trip wire isn’t spring-loaded. Amateurs don’t know what the hell they’re doing and won’t mess with unintentionally releasing the spring-loaded pin. They’re afraid they’ll blow themselves to shit. Problem is, he could have concealed the spring inside the pipe.”

Gabe didn’t dare look at Jo. Not a chance. He lay on the floor, the muscles in his shoulders and neck coiling as that damned timer ticked down. Every muscle, every instinct honed from years of tactical maneuvers begged for action.

“Tick, tock, Reese.”

“With this setup, I don’t think it’s spring-loaded. That’s a guess though, bud.”

Gabe wrapped his fingers around his forehead and squeezed, let the pressure build for a second while considering his options. “If it’s not spring-loaded, all I need to do is cut the trip wire, right? That’ll at least let me get her out of the chair.”

“Yeah, but if there’s a pin against the cap and it’s spring-loaded, the pin will release and...”

“Ka-pow,” Jo said.

The room went quiet and Gabe gave Jo his best hard stare. Commentary he didn’t need. “Really?” he said to her.

“Pretty much,” Reese said.

Before he lost his shit on both of them, Gabe checked the timer. Thirty-three minutes.
Crap
.

Not willing to waste any more time, he sat on the bed far enough from Jo that he wouldn’t accidentally bump her. She liked her bad news like a good shot of whiskey. Fast and furious.

“Talk to me,” she said.

He held his hand out, wanting that hand on her, massaging every inch, but he wouldn’t risk it. Not now. If they reached critical mass, and he couldn’t get her out of that chair, he’d do it, but they weren’t there yet. “You know where we’re at on this. If we get the cargo released, Martinson tells me how to deactivate this thing. If we don’t release the cargo…”

“Do it,” Jo said.

“What?”

“Cut the wire. It’s not spring-loaded. Call it intuition, but I can feel it.”

Gabe shook his head. “It’s not just us. This whole building could go and it might take the buildings on either side. Who knows?”

Jo closed her eyes and sat for a few seconds. When she opened them, tears bullied their way free. Crying wasn’t part of her repertoire and he could count on a couple of fingers how many times he’d seen her well up. Tough stock, his girl.

He ran his thumb under her eyes, wiped them dry for her. If this wasn’t some kind of bullshit situation, he didn’t know what was. At thirty-three years old, he finally finds a woman he wants to put in front of his folks to say, “Yes, she’s the one we’ve been waiting for,” and now they might both get blown away. Screw that. Neither one of them would die in this Podunk town. “I’ll get you out of here.”

“I want you to cut the wire. Just do it. We’re wasting time.”