Chapter 2
2
The prickle was gone. Now fire ants had decided to build a colony on Mateo’s neck. After all the barking and lunging, Lucy was dead still in front of a three-foot-high cinder block enclosure close to the pool. Mateo ignored the rain and the roar of thunder as he stepped over the wall and found that it housed the pool pump and heating unit.
He looked over at Lucy. He’d gotten the same look before from dogs in the field. It was the “hurry up, dumbfuck, we don’t have all day” look.
“I’m hurrying, I’m hurrying,” he assured the big dog.
Lucy growled.
Great. Now he had ants on the back of his neck and low-pitched grumbles in his ear. He shut his eyes, wiped the rain away, and took a moment to block out everything. Then he opened them to concentrate on the machinery in front of him.
It had to be a bomb.
He eyed what he figured was the pump and looked all around it, then carefully ran his fingers around the bottom.
Nothing.
He did the same with the heater.
Nothing.
Now for the electrical panel. There was a simple latch on it and he hesitated before opening it. Trying to think like whatever asshole might have planted a bomb.
Would he or she have set a trap for it to go off when the panel was opened?
He wouldn’t have.
This whole thing felt like it was planned to cause casualties, otherwise it would have gone off as soon as the perps had left the house.
Nope. This was a remote signal or a timer. A remote meant they had a chance to catch the asshole. A timer was scarier. That meant that someone knew the comings and goings of Gideon and the rest of the team.
Mateo looked at his watch. It’d been four and a half minutes since Gideon had sent the text to their teammates, and nobody had texted him to say they were close to the house to help him out.
Dammit!
He thumbed off the latch of the tall electrical panel and there it was.
A bomb.
Not just any bomb.
A timer connected to three bricks of C-4.
Three bricks.
Someone wanted to annihilate Gideon’s house.
It was set to go off in eighteen minutes. Mateo did the calculations in his head and realized it would have been fifteen minutes after the kids were actually due to arrive from the games center, but an hour before the men would have arrived from the pub. Somebody was keeping track of the members of Omega Sky, and they were aiming for their families.
He needed Nolan O’Rourke; he was the guy who knew demolitions inside and out, forwards and backwards. Linc and Braxton weren’t far behind in their skills, but he’d prefer Nolan, and if Maggie had been with the girls, then Nolan couldn’t be far away.
“It’s gotta be Nolan,” he muttered.
Mateo pulled his phone out of his back pocket and hit Gideon’s number.
“Found a bomb. Eighteen. Nope, scratch that. Seventeen minutes and nineteen seconds before it goes off.” He ignored the clap of thunder. “It’s connected to the electrical housing for the pool pump. Shit, man, I can’t tell which wires are for the pool and which wires are for the bomb. I need Nolan.”
“Nolan’s with Lark and Ryker. We’ve hopped the meridian. We’re flagging down drivers heading west on the expressway. So far, no takers. I’ll call Brax for his ETA. Linc and Leila are up in Maine for the weekend.
“Tell Brax to get here fast.”
The timer now said sixteen minutes and fifty-one seconds. Mateo set the timer on his watch to coordinate with the timer on the bomb while Lucy growled at him, then she ran off.
What the ever-loving fuck?
“I found the bomb, girl. It’s okay, now.” Mateo yelled after her as he climbed over the wall enclosing the pump. Lucy had run around to the other side of the house, but now she came running back to him. She butted her huge head against his thigh.
“What, girl?”
She gave him that same look again. The look that told him he was being a dumbfuck.
“Show me.”
Lucy streaked off and Mateo ran after her.
The dog careened around past the patio to the other side of the house and ground to a dead halt in front of the air conditioning unit. She looked up at Mateo.
Fuck, I have another bomb.
Looking at the unit, he didn’t see shit, then he spotted the connection point to the house's electrical box. That was it. He yanked open the door, expecting to see the C-4. There was nothing. There weren’t a lot of electrical wires like he’d seen on the pool pump, and there was no sign of a bomb. He looked down again and examined the hose connecting the unit to the house. Every bolt looked shiny and new. There was no way to know if somebody had recently unscrewed them and shoved C-4 inside with a timer.
He looked all around the bottom of the unit, and it was the same thing. None of the bolts connecting the unit to the concrete pad looked like they had recently been turned, but he couldn’t really tell with the rain pouring down. Lucy began to whine.
“Quiet. I need to think.”
Mateo peered down into the unit. It was too dark to see anything but the fan at the top. The grill and screens on the sides wouldn’t let him look into the unit either.
Mateo looked sideways at Lucy. “Are you sure about this?”
Again with her look of superiority.
Mateo looked down at his watch. They now had thirteen minutes and ten seconds on the bomb. He pulled his phone out of his back pocket and pressed in his voice recognition button and yelled at it to call Braxton.
“I’m on my way,” Braxton answered.
“What’s your ETA?”
“Eight minutes.”
“Make it three and bring your flashlight and wire cutters. I’m in the backyard. I’ll leave the gate open.”
Mateo rushed to the back gate, unlocked it, and flung it open. Then he yelled at his phone again, this time to call Gideon. Before the man had a chance to answer, he demanded to know where he kept his tools.
“In my garage. What kind of tools do you need?”
“I need a screwdriver. Phillips.”
“My electric tools are in the cupboard beside the red Stanley tool chest. You’ll find the cordless screwdriver in its black case. I have it labeled so you can tell which one it is.”
“Are you shitting me?” Mateo was already running back through the sliding glass door that he’d left open.
“You don’t have time to criticize, just get the job done.” Gideon hung up.
Mateo damn near skidded on the wet tile in the kitchen and grabbed the doorknob to the garage, shoving it open. He zeroed in on the red tool chest in the corner and saw the white cupboards beside it. He flung open the cupboard and was confronted with at least eight black cases of power tools.
Who in the hell needs this many?
As he read the labels and didn’t find what he was looking for, he tossed the case over his shoulder until he came up with the case with the cordless screwdriver. He followed Lucy’s barking to the backyard. Why was she barking if there was a bomb? That wasn’t protocol.
Hallelujah, Braxton must have arrived!
No such luck. Two dogs who looked just like Lucy were at the adjoining six-foot steel fence and were barking at her. A teenage girl came running out of the house yelling at the dogs. Shit, if a bomb did go off, she’d be hurt too. Mateo took out his phone again.
“Gideon, the girl next door is in her yard. Call the?—”
“On it.” The line went dead.
Shoving his cell back into his pocket, he dropped the case beside the air conditioner and opened it up. He pulled out the Phillips head he needed, then shoved it into the head of the battery-operated screwdriver and released the first screw, then did the next one and next one and next one. He was halfway through when he heard a man yelling for the dogs and the girl to come into the house next door.
At least that was taken care of.
For one brief moment he looked at his watch and his sphincter tightened when he saw he had ten minutes and twenty-four seconds on the clock.
“Mateo! Where do you need me?” Braxton shouted.
Thank fuck!
“Cinder block enclosure next to the pool,” Mateo yelled. “Bomb’s in the pool pump electrical panel. Do it fast, we have another one. I haven’t found it yet, but it’s in the HVAC unit.”
“Aye, aye.”
Braxton would be on that like flies on shit.
Mateo went back to working on the screws in the unit, trying to make the process go faster. Trying and failing.
This bomb would be the worst. Having it so close to the house meant the flying debris would be catastrophic.
“Mateo! Where are you?” he heard a woman yell out.
Bonnie?
“At the side of the house.”
What in the ever-loving-fuck was Bonnie doing back in the house? He dropped everything and stood, horrified, as he saw her racing around the corner of the house towards him.
“Goddammit, Bonnie, get back to the cars!”
“One girl is still in the house,” she screamed as she slammed into his chest.
“How—?”
It didn’t matter.
“Braxton,” he yelled. “One kid is still in the house.”
“Fuck!” Braxton yelled back at him. He might not be able to see the man, but at least Mateo could hear him from where he was.
“Work faster,” Mateo hollered as he glanced at him on the way back to the patio and the sliding glass door. “Then go to the AC unit. I’ve got to go help find the girl.” Mateo yelled, hoping he would be heard over the rain.
“Gotcha,” Braxton yelled back.
Good, he heard him.
As soon as they got inside the great room, Bonnie careened to a halt. “It’s bad, right?” She was trembling, her face the color of parchment.
“There are two bombs. I don’t know if we can diffuse them in time,” Mateo burst out. “We’ve got to get her out of here. What’s her name?”
Bonnie didn’t bother to answer him, just turned around and shouted, “Laura!” at the top of her lungs. “Laura, honey, you need to stop hiding. Your dad is worried about you.”
The house was two stories, and massive. There were at least four bedrooms upstairs and one bedroom downstairs.
“You take downstairs, I’ll take upstairs.” He didn’t wait for Bonnie’s response; he just ran to the staircase and took the steps three at a time as he pulled his phone out of his back pocket.
“We’re in a car and on our way,” Gideon said as he answered his phone.
“You’ll be too late.” Mateo looked at his watch. “We have six minutes and fifty-five seconds. Two bombs and one girl hiding in your house. Are there any hiding places we should know about?”
Mateo hit the first bedroom on the right. “Laura, I need you to come out and stop playing. The other kids are worried about you.”
He scanned the room. Just a bed, dresser, chair, and closet. She was little, but she wasn’t behind the curtains or the chair. Not under the bed, and not in the bathroom or the glassed-in shower. Next door was a closet with towels and sheets. He yanked out the folded sheets at the bottom of the closet and found nothing.
He hit the next room; it was another guest room. He checked the closet first. It was piled high with shoeboxes. He tore through them, seeing if the girl was behind them.
“Mateo!”
Shit, he’d forgotten that Gideon was still on the line.
“What?”
“Don’t forget to check the deck off the master. Jada washed out the planters. They’re empty. She could be there.”
“Got it.” Mateo shoved his phone back into his pocket and raced to the room at the end of the hall, hoping it was Gideon and Jada’s room. As soon as he opened it, he struck gold. The size of the bed told the story. He glanced at his watch.
Three minutes, seven seconds.
“Laura?” Mateo called out in a normal tone, trying not to scare the girl so she’d come to him. “I need you to come here. Bonnie’s worried about you, honey. Your dad is worried. I need you to quit hiding.”
With the storm outside, he was pretty damn sure little Laura wouldn’t be hiding out on the deck, but he checked out the potting containers, anyway. They were empty. He checked under the bed. Nothing.
He went to the bathroom and didn’t see her. Then he flung open the door to the toilet and saw a tiny huddled little girl staring up at him with wide, terrified eyes as she tried to jam her body between the wall and the back of the toilet bowl. But she couldn’t. He would have loved to have coaxed her out of hiding and soothed her fear, but there was no damned time.
No damned time.
He grabbed the little girl underneath her armpits and she whimpered. Then he grabbed her around her waist.
“I want my Daddy,” she pleaded.
“Hang on, we’re going to go fast.” He glanced at his watch.
One minute, twenty-eight seconds.
“I’ve got her, Bonnie!” he yelled as he raced for the stairs. “Bonnie? I’ve got her.”
When he got to the first floor he saw that the front door was wide open.
Bonnie came from down the hall and almost bumped into them. “Let’s go!” he yelled.
He took a millisecond to turn toward the open sliding glass door that felt miles away.
“Braxton, stop what you’re doing. I’ve got the girl,” he roared at the top of his lungs. He turned back and ran out the front door, thankful that there were no steps leading up to the house. Instead he just hit the circular drive, making sure that Bonnie kept up with him.
He couldn’t check his watch, not with Laura in his arms.
Then he was at Bonnie’s side when she stopped at the open door of a minivan. He put his arm around her and forced her to run beside him. There was no time to drive, only run.
He didn’t have time to look behind him to find Braxton, not while helping Bonnie run.
If the bomb in the HVAC unit was anything like the pool pump, Braxton wasn’t going to survive the blast, not with three bricks of C-4. But he had to get Bonnie and Laura to the end of the drive. He counted in his head. He knew he was down to seconds.
He knew it.
They were halfway down the drive. He looked over his shoulder.
He had to.
No Brax.
Bonnie slipped on the wet drive and fell to the ground.
It was a done deal.
He dropped down on top of her, making sure to cradle Laura’s head and little body so she wasn’t hurt.
The noise pummeled his eardrums as Laura shrieked, and then his body jolted so hard that he was lifted up then dropped back down onto the two bodies underneath him.
“Fuck!”
Before he could agonize over hurting Bonnie and Laura he was punched in the ribs. He took another shot in his ass. Then he was battered over and over again by hot rain. He gritted his teeth, trying not to scare Laura as he took the beating. The fiery hammer that hit his head forced a cry from his lips.
“Mateo?”
Something was shoving at him. He groaned as his back hit concrete. He peered up into the sky. It was wet and ashy. Ashy?
Smoke.
He tried to sit up. Mateo rolled over and pushed himself up onto his knees. Everything was coming together. He squinted and saw Laura and Bonnie. Both standing. That was good.
Real good.
Laura was sobbing, but she didn’t look hurt.
“Braxton? Did you see Braxton?”
Bonnie’s mouth was moving, but he couldn’t hear her.
“What? Did you see Braxton?”
Her mouth moved again.
“I can’t hear you!” he yelled.
She finally shook her head. That was when he realized that besides the rain, she was crying.
“No! That can’t be right,” he yelled.
Mateo turned to look at Gideon’s demolished house. He didn’t hear anything.
Nothing.
“Braxton!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. At least he thought he did; he couldn’t hear shit. He started to run forward, but his knees gave out and he fell on his face.
He lifted his head. “Braxton!” he yelled again.
Was he hearing sirens? Who the fuck knew.
“Braxton!” Over and over and over again, he yelled for his friend.
He felt something touch his head. A hand. He looked up. It was Bonnie.
“Lucy?” he croaked out her name.
Bonnie slowly shook her head.
The smoke seemed to swirl around him, turning everything gray. He watched the tears drip down her face, leaving clean tracks through the ash. Then his world went black.