Page 58 of Play the Game

TJ joined me and looked down at the screen. “Thedetonator?”

“Best guess, yes,” Alder answered.

“How is this even in the fucking country?” TJ yelled.

“They were probably moving small parts across the border,” I said as my brain connected the dots. “Building it right here, all that time, when we were watching this building.”

“They didn’t have the chemicals,” TJ said. “That’s why they needed the Border Patrol blackout, to smuggle in chemicals.”

“They didn’t need a blackout,” I said. “Just a brownout. Jason, how much energy do you suppose that hacking competition was pulling off the grid?

“Fuck me,” about six people said in my comms.

Kessler ran back into the room. “We rechecked every inch of the building, boss. No sign of a bomb.”

“It’s here,” Pasco mumbled. “I saw it. Monday, when we came here. It was already here.”

TJ started shouting orders, and everyone started responding. Pasco was laid out on a backboard in seconds. Bond spoke, talking to her significant other, Evan Prescott, telling him we needed police help, and he couldn’t ask questions. Jensen and Alder were exchanging seemingly nonsensical phrases. The last of the guards were scooped and hauled into waiting HEAT vans that would transport them to jail cells.

TJ pulled out my arm. “Fall back, Sparks.”

“We have to disarm it.”

“We’re evacuating a wide area,” Penn said. “The four of you are the only ones left in the house, and all the evacuation vehicles are heading out of the zone. We have just over eight minutes left on the timer, and you’ll need at least six minutes to get out beyond the kill zone.”

We started running for the front entrance. Hart jumped into the driver’s seat of the van that was parked outside, and Kessler and Li leapt in through the sliding side door. I almost jumped in behind them, but the overwhelming dread and disjointed thoughts in my brain clicked together in a split second. I slammed the door closed. At that sound, Hart floored it, and the van tore down the street. I ran back into the house. I knew where to find the bomb.

CHAPTER 21

Tamelaason

Kessler and Liscreamed in unison when they realized I wasn’t in the vehicle with them.

“Turn around, Kat!” Kessler ordered.

“Don’t you dare,” I said. “Get every other living soul out of range.” I launched myself down the basement stairs, then jumped down the metal-runged ladder, nearly falling into the sub-basement.

TJ ordered Hart to keep driving. A few seconds later, everything went quiet on my comms unit. I was on a private channel.

“Tamela, what the hell are you doing?” TJ asked.

I turned on my headlamp and ran my hand over the wall where a doorway should be. Drywall, in a brick sub-basement. I pulled out the metal bat and crowbar that were part of the kit I carried on my back and whacked the wall. “It’s here, TJ, I know it.” My bat hit the wall in a hollow spot. “I knew it! They sealed it off. I’m almost through the drywall.”

“Jesus,” TJ muttered. “Why the hell are you doing this?”

“Because it doesn’t matter if we evacuate,” I said as I tore at the drywall with my bare hands. I pulled away one last piece of plaster and finally had a hole large enough to crawl through to the hidden room. As soon as I stepped into the mostly obscured space, I saw it. It was a cube measuring roughly three feet in each direction. “I have it. TJ, I have it!” I snapped my phone onto the front of my ops vest and turned on the camera.

“We see it,” TJ said.

“I can defuse it.”

I quickly perused the bomb. The wiring was easily accessible, but there was an electronic control panel and the wire pattern didn’t look familiar. It was nothing like the bombs I’d defused in training. The counter slipped down to seven minutes.

“I’m letting Jensen take over now,” TJ said. “But I can hear you if you need anything.”

I needed a bomb expert, my canceled vacation, and a do-over of this day, not necessarily in that order. I laughed. It was a thin, pathetic sound, and by the end, it sounded more like a cry.

“Hey, Tam,” Jensen purred in my ear. “Now you decide to go rogue.”

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