ELEVEN #3
Caryssa swept a look around the parking lot.
A handful of cars sat scattered across the other end of the broken asphalt, with a convenience store at one end and a row of darkened storefronts at the other.
Beyond the lot, traffic moved along the two-lane road, the drivers oblivious to what Reid had just uncovered.
Her gaze dropped to the box.
It sat several yards away where Reid had left it, mostly hidden beneath the blanket. Plain cardboard, roughly the size of a shoebox. Nothing about it screamed bomb.
Her office still hadn’t picked up. The call rolled to voicemail.
Caryssa lowered the phone, frustration biting hard. She’d bristled at Blackout’s refusal to trust the Bureau, but standing beside a possible bomb while her own people failed to answer made their paranoia a hell of a lot easier to understand.
Worse, she was beginning to wonder if it was paranoia at all.
She focused on Reid. He stood angled toward the package, shoulders bunched as he listened to Rome on speaker.
In a calm, clipped voice that made her chest tighten with fear, Rome walked him through the situation. Which—she suddenly realized as the fog started to clear—meant defusing a bomb.
“Use your knife to poke the corner of the box.”
Without even hesitating about the fact he was about to poke a bomb, Reid hunched over the box. “Is it a good idea to disturb it?”
“No. But leaving it there without knowing what we’re dealing with isn’t a great option either.”
She burned to rush to his side, needing to be near him, to feel him near. But she stayed rooted in place. The last thing Reid needed now was her distracting him.
He held his phone over the package, giving Rome a clear view of what he was doing. His movements were controlled, his attention fixed entirely on the device.
Caryssa curled her fingers into her palms.
This was the part she hated. Standing back. Watching. Knowing Reid was inches from a bomb while she could do absolutely nothing to change what happened next.
Her phone buzzed hard against her palm, and she jerked it to her ear. In a few breathless words, she told her boss what was happening.
“We can be there in forty-five minutes.”
Caryssa looked at Reid.
Forty-five minutes might as well have been tomorrow.
“The team is on it now. You might be too late,” she said.
Her breath caught as she watched the man she loved ease up the corner of the packing tape just enough to peek inside the layers of cardboard. He shined his phone light inside.
“It’s a bomb.” His voice grim. “Confirmed.”
“How does a bomb get through the mail!” Her voice rose several notches, her boss on the other end of the phone line completely forgotten.
Reid glanced over his shoulder, saw her standing closer than he wanted her, and jerked his jaw to indicate she needed to get back.
She took several steps away but her heart was slamming at the thought of Reid hovering over that bomb. If it detonated—
Rome’s voice projected through the phone. “Government shipments barely get screened unless something flags it. This box doesn’t look suspicious.”
“Lane.” Doyle’s voice brought her back to the present. “The shipping label. Is it paper or a blister pack with an invoice inside?”
“It’s a blister pack.”
“Have the team slit the sleeve. We need that packing slip if you can get it.”
Reid heard the instructions and cleared it with Rome before proceeding. With a swift, confident move, he slit the clear plastic sleeve on top of the box and extracted the packing slip.
He passed it back toward her—
And then shoved her hard behind him in the same motion, throwing the blanket over the box in one desperate final move.
The blast hit before Caryssa fully registered the danger.
Sound and pressure slammed into her. She threw up her hands as the force knocked her backward, her feet leaving the asphalt.
Dirt, rock and debris ripped across the parking lot.
She hit the ground hard, her elbow taking the worst of it before she pitched sideways. Pain shot up her arm. Her ears rang so violently the world seemed to disappear beneath the high-pitched whine.
For a few seconds, she didn’t know which way was up.
Shapes sharpened through the haze.
Reid.
He was between her and what remained of the package, his body a shield against the blast.
Then he was on his knees beside her.
His hands moved over her fast, checking her arms, her face, her torso. His mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear him.
“Reid.” She couldn’t even hear her own voice.
“Ryss. Ryss. Look at me. You hit anywhere bad?”
“I’m fine.” Her voice came out thready. She scanned the area but barely saw what happened beyond the two of them.
Her gaze landed on his forearm. A gash opened along the muscle, blood already flooding out, dark and steady.
“You’re bleeding!”
He huffed out a breath. “Girls like scars.”
To her astonishment, his face split into a grin that had no business existing five seconds after a bomb had nearly taken both of them out.
Before she could argue, he kissed her—fully on the lips, hauling her to his chest hard enough that she felt his heart slamming against her own.
Both of them were alive and shaking and clinging to each other in the middle of a parking lot that had almost become the last place either of them ever stood.
Right this minute, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.