by Jove Belle
“You’ll try.” Tor said it like she was proofing the words, verifying that’s what Sera had said without actually asking her to repeat it.
She nodded, wanting to explain but unable to offer anything else. Instead, she repeated, “I’ll try.”
Tor sighed, then kissed Sera on the cheek. “Okay.”
Sera couldn’t stand the expression on Tor’s face, as if she were disappointed but not surprised. “It’s complicated, Tor. I’ll tell you what I can. That’s the best I can do.”
Tor opened her mouth to respond. Then she closed it and shook her head instead. “So, let’s go find the other bomb.”
Sera nodded, thankful to be able to turn her attention to a problem that, while terrifying, had a clear solution and deadline. Of course, this was the first time she’d worked against a timer that would actually kill her if she didn’t finish before it ticked down, but still the pressure felt familiar.
With her gun in one hand and Tor’s hand in the other, she moved swiftly toward the door. Entering the hallway was another story completely. She angled her body between Tor and the door, then slowly eased it open. She moved carefully, listening for any sound that might tell her where Marcus was hiding, and prepared to slam the door if she heard even the slightest hint of him readying to fire. Not that she’d get any warning. Pulling a trigger was generally a silent event.
Tor pressed tight against her back, closer than Sera wanted her under the circumstances because it made it harder to respond, to move quickly if the situation demanded it. She didn’t stop her, though, because the slight tremble that ran through Tor wouldn’t let her. The day had been hard on both of them.
When she got the door open wide enough to peer out—a good four to five inches—she figured Marcus wasn’t waiting in ambush in the hallway. If he was, he would have already shot her. He’d proved pretty patient that morning, and in general, really, but that had to be wearing thin. There was no reason for him to not take the first opportunity to shoot.
She eased the door open a little wider, and Tor fisted her hand into her shirt. With every additional inch she opened the door, her shirt pulled a little tighter into Tor’s grip. She wished she could offer some sort of comfort, even the smallest touch, to make this easier on Tor, but she needed one hand on her gun and the other on the door. Marcus had talked his way up and down this hall. Now that she could use the help locating him, he opted for silence.
“Do you see anything?”
Sera stopped moving completely when Tor whispered the question to her. She couldn’t give in to her innate response of shushing Tor because that would just offer more noise for Marcus to potentially use to home in on them. She couldn’t even signal the message by placing one finger in front of her lips in the universal “be quiet” gesture because she was so focused on the dim hallway, tensed and ready to act when needed. All she could do was stand motionless and wait.
It wasn’t the most comfortable feeling in the world, lurking in a place she shouldn’t be and unable to determine if her next breath would be her last. At least, however, she understood this type of situation. An undercover agent constantly experienced a sense of jeopardy warring with the natural human desire to relax, to be lulled by momentary safety. Every day she went to work was a day when someone could discover her truth and kill her because of it.
Finally satisfied after several long, painstaking moments, she eased the door open another inch, and then another. When the door stood open all the way and she still saw no sign of Marcus, she responded to Tor.
“I don’t see him in the hall,” she whispered. Just because she didn’t see him didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding somewhere, waiting for the perfect moment to pop out. Once again, she fleetingly wished she’d worn her Kevlar that morning.
The hall ran the length of the building but didn’t offer many places for someone to conceal himself. There was the HVAC room they were standing in, then three other doors on the same side, plus the one that led to the main bank floor where they’d come in earlier.
“Where do you think he is?” Tor stepped out around her and checked for herself.
Sera tried to hold her back, but the sharp pain in her chest from the broken rib stopped her from being effective. “I’d guess we’ll find him when we find the bomb.”
“Great.”
Sera thought back to Beth’s description of where the explosives were positioned. The first one, by the elevator, had already been detonated. She’d deactivated the second one by the heating unit. That left one by the fire risers. Typically the long red pipes that fed the fire system were huge, yet somehow easy to overlook. People saw them but didn’t realize what they were. She scanned the hall again. They could just as easily have been in the hall than in a dedicated room.
“Where are the risers?”
“Risers?” Tor raised one eyebrow.
“Big red pipes that run from the floor to the ceiling. They usually have pressure gauges on the front of them.”
The look of confusion on Tor’s face didn’t ease but rather grew more defined. She shook her head. “Sorry.”
How else could she explain the system? “What about the fire alarms? Do you know where that system is?”
There was no guarantee they were in the same place, but she had to start somewhere.
“That’s in the mechanical room.” She pointed at the last door on the left.
The location made sense. This bomb had been placed near a support column on the north side of the building. If the next one was in that room, they were positioned on opposite sides.
“What about those rooms?” She pointed at the other two doors.
“Storage rooms, I think. I don’t spend a lot of time back here.”
Sera reached behind her and locked the door to the HVAC room. If Marcus decided he wanted in there for whatever reason, at least he’d have to work for it. She’d be pissed if he doubled back behind her and somehow reinitiated the bomb sequence she’d just disabled. She didn’t actually think that was possible, but Marcus was just the right kind of sadistic fuck to make it happen. They stepped fully into the hall, and she pulled the door shut behind them.
“Let’s go.”
She took Tor’s hand again, using the contact to guide Tor to walk half a step behind her. She drew comfort from Tor’s touch and from knowing she was blocking her from direct danger.
She checked the two doors as they walked past, but they were both locked. If she didn’t find the bomb in the mechanical room, she’d have to figure out how to get them open, but for now she was satisfied to pass them by. Hopefully that decision wouldn’t bite her in the ass later.
When they arrived at the last door she hesitated, conflicted. She couldn’t think of any clear way to keep Tor safe in this situation. If she left Tor alone, Marcus or Craig could happen across her. She was unarmed and vulnerable and would surely be used as leverage against Sera if Marcus found her. If she took her with her, she was putting Tor directly in the line of fire. Either way, Tor was at risk. Ultimately, she knew going toward the bomb was definitely dangerous, but leaving Tor alone in the hall was only potentially dangerous. It was a shitty distinction.
“Can you wait out here?”
This conversation seemed pointless since she knew Tor wouldn’t do as she asked, and she didn’t have time to argue with her. Tor’s lips drew tight and she shook her head once, emphatically, but she didn’t respond. Sera sighed.
“At least stay behind me.”
Tor nodded and Sera opened the door. The sounds of the machines—large industrial pieces of machinery Sera didn’t recognize—were much louder in here than they had been from the hall. The low-decibel drone covered the sound of the door opening, as well as their footfalls as they made their way to the back of the room.
They found Marcus pacing in front of a box that looked like the one in the HVAC room. Just the visual caused Sera’s stomach to roll, and she paused for a moment to let it settle. Thank God she didn’t defuse bombs for a living. S
he’d never digest anything if she did.
Marcus muttered to himself and checked his watch every few minutes. He hadn’t noticed them yet, but he could look over at any moment. Tor squeezed her fingers, and then her hand slipped free. Sera glanced behind her to see Tor tiptoeing in the other direction, retracing their steps until she broke off and went around the big machine on the other side. As Sera watched, her hands began to sweat and she wiped them on her jeans. A loose grip on her gun could make the difference between living through the next few minutes or dying.
She saw movement to her left, and then a pipe flew out of the shadows and clattered on the floor near Marcus. He whirled around and Sera took aim. Shooting a man with his finger on the button of a detonator should always be a last resort. Thankfully, she also knew enough about portable detonators to know the one Marcus held required direct pressure to toggle the switch to the on position. It wouldn’t be activated if he dropped it.
Sera pulled the trigger twice—pop! pop!—and the report of gunfire echoed through the room, dampened by the low-decibel hum of the equipment but not eclipsed completely. Marcus dropped to the ground, and the detonator skittered across the floor to land at Tor’s feet. Sera kept her gun trained on him for a few long seconds, then sprinted over to him. Her side and chest throbbed sharp and hot with every step. She checked for a pulse. It was faint but there. She automatically reached for her cuffs, but of course she didn’t have them. They, along with her vest and badge, clashed with her cover. She hadn’t worn cuffs on her belt since she’d gone under.
“Damn it.” She didn’t have time to find a substitute for cuffs, like tape or a zip tie. “Watch him. If he moves, yell at me.”
Tor stared at Marcus, her eyes flitting from the spreading pool of blood then to his face. She nodded.
Tor’s voice was high and strained, and Sera felt shitty for giving her one more dead body to stare at. Yes, Marcus still had a slight pulse, but that wouldn’t last long. Without medical care, he was going to die very soon.
She sprinted toward the bomb. Then she pointed toward the detonator and said, “Don’t touch that.”
She didn’t want Tor to accidentally activate the bomb she was trying to disarm. She slid to a stop on her knees in front of the box. Unlike the last one, this one didn’t have anything blocking the top. She could see the entire mechanism clearly without moving anything out of the way. The timer showed two minutes until detonation. Nothing like cutting it close.
The pliers she’d found earlier were jammed into her front pocket. They’d poked her while she’d walked, but it was totally worth the discomfort. She wiped her hands on her pants again and took a deep breath to settle her stomach. Vomiting on the bomb probably wouldn’t detonate it, but it would get her made fun of from now till eternity.
Her hands shook slightly as she raised the pliers to the wire. The green one, she reminded herself, bypassing the red and the black. There was always the chance the schematic was wrong. Even though the bombs looked the same, there could be one subtle difference, like which color wire led to the power supply. She didn’t know enough about electronics or bomb-making to inspect it, to break the pieces apart and make them make sense beyond “Cut the green one.”
She took another steadying breath, this time to clear her mind, and then closed the pliers over the green wire. As the two lengths of wire fell apart, stopping the timer at one minute, fifteen seconds, she heard Tor scream.
The relief flowing through her froze and tightened into fear at the sound. She turned, her hand on the gun in her waistband. Before she could pivot far enough to see the cause of Tor’s distress, the back of her head exploded in pain. She collapsed onto the concrete as her awareness faded to black.
Chapter Seventeen
Tor watched as Sera worked, hunched over the bomb, for about two seconds before she realized she was being useless in a situation that needed her to be useful. She couldn’t help with the bomb and would probably make things worse if she tried.
The man, Marcus, lay on the floor. As was the apparent theme for the day, he was covered in blood. Then again, so was she. Her slacks were stiff with it, cracking as she walked. Sera had asked her to watch him, but she didn’t understand why. He was obviously dead. The detonator, now out of Marcus’s hands, looked harmless. She stared at it for a moment, trying to imagine how one small object could hold the power to end her whole world. She couldn’t reconcile her terror through the day with something that could just as easily be packaged in a children’s toy rocket kit.
A rifle sat on top of a stack of boxes and she picked it up. She had no idea how to use it, or how to even tell if it was loaded, but she liked the way the wooden handle felt in her hands. And the long, smooth barrel looked menacing. This was the gun Marcus had used to kill that woman when Edmund hid the detonator. The damage it had inflicted—the woman’s head was half gone—made her think maybe it was a shotgun instead of a rifle. But maybe not. Either way, it didn’t really matter.
A few feet away from Marcus was another gun, a handgun. She picked it up and tucked it in her waistband the way Sera had done with her own earlier. It was heavier than she expected, weighing down her pants on one side and making them hang funny. When Sera walked around with a gun, she looked badass. Tor just felt silly, sure that in any other situation someone would take it from her with a tsking shake of their head.
She watched Sera, looking over her shoulder from a distance, and wanted to ask how it was going. Again, she felt silly. Her need for idle chatter, to fill the air with her voice, didn’t trump Sera’s need to concentrate on defusing the bomb. Instead, she paced the length of the back wall, purposefully not vocalizing her thoughts because, even though she was off-kilter for the day, she was self-aware enough to see that line before she crossed it. Pacing was effective self-preservation since it kept her from distracting Sera. Pacing and muttering? That was clearly madman territory.
She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, clearly in the wrong place for Sera. She was a little farther forward and more to the right. She turned as Marcus lurched to his feet with the pipe Tor had thrown to distract him clutched in his hand. He walked with a limp, his body curled into itself on the left side, pipe in his right hand. Tor stared, disbelieving. He was dead. Wasn’t he? Sera had shot him twice.
His gaze was zeroed in on Sera, his eyes narrowed, red-rimmed to match the blood soaking his clothes. She was frozen, unable to move, or even to speak, and then he smiled. His mouth curved up and his face transformed into a sinister caricature, as if he were some evil jack-o’-lantern come to life intent on causing havoc. When he raised the pipe, poised to strike Sera, Tor screamed.
Sera fell hard. One second she was in control of her body, then the next a crumpled heap on the ground, unmoving, with Marcus crowing over the top of her. Tor ran, the gun in her waistband completely forgotten. She threw herself between Sera and Marcus, her body the only thing she could use to protect the woman she loved.
“Stop, please.” She held her hand up to block his next blow and pleaded with him, begged for him to not hurt Sera any more. Words flew out of her mouth, promises she’d never remember, anything to keep Sera safe.
He stared down at her, that evil smile stretched even wider across his face, and raised his arm, ready to deliver another killing blow. Tor curled herself over the top of Sera and pressed her face into the side of Sera’s neck. Her nostrils filled with the coppery scent of blood. She waited.
“Marcus, stop!” A man’s voice rose above the dull cacophony of the machine room. Tor didn’t dare look. The thought of being caught in the face with the pipe kept her cowering, an ineffectual hero, but trying hard to do the right thing nonetheless.
Marcus made a feral, keening sound but otherwise didn’t respond.
Tor should have been braver, brave enough to unfold herself and pull Sera to safety, out of range of the man who clearly wanted her dead. Instead, she waited, frozen, for something to happen, for Marcus’s tenuous self-control to snap
completely or for the other man to do something.
A gunshot sounded, echoing louder than Sera’s had earlier. She didn’t know if it was because the gun was larger or if it was just because the shot had been so unexpected. She jumped and cried out because of the shock. Sera didn’t respond at all.
Marcus fell to the floor, clutching his throat. Blood rushed out between his fingers, and he made a harsh gurgling noise. Then, the fight in his limbs lessened, his fingers softened at his neck, and his head lolled to the side. Instead of spurting, the blood seeped from the wound, like a garden hose after the water had been turned off.
“Are you okay?” The man shook her shoulders, jolting her vision away from Marcus’s dead body. She turned and stared at him mutely, unable to process what he’d said. He repeated, “Are you okay?”
It was the last gunman. His dark hair hung limp and greasy in his eyes, and he pushed it to the side, slicking it down. He didn’t look old enough to be called a man. He was a boy. A boy with a really big gun who couldn’t stop shaking. He looked like Sera did right after she killed the guy with the scissors and right before she vomited. What had Sera called him? Carl? Curt? Craig? Craig, yes. She nodded unsteadily. Marcus was dead, and she didn’t feel any safer than she had been with him standing over her ready to strike.
“We need to get out of here. Can you stand?”
She could, but Sera couldn’t. She sat up and gestured loosely at the inert form of her girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, she corrected herself. It felt strange, having her heart and mind disagree so completely.
“I’ll carry her. Come on.”
Craig set his gun on the ground and helped Tor to her feet. Then he scooped Sera into his arms and led her out of the room and back down the hall. He didn’t stop until he reached the main entrance. He waited patiently for Tor to raise the shutters and open the door.
The street was filled with emergency-response vehicles, mostly police cars with flashing red and blue lights streaking across the buildings. Rows and rows of guns were pointed at them, and Craig stopped, waiting for someone to tell them where to go.