Page 62 of Play the Game

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Pasco tugged his hair with both hands. Poor guy was close to a meltdown. “I didn’t know we had ten years for me to teach you how to retrofit a fucking program on the fly while—”

“I’ve got this.” I patted Pasco’s shoulder. “We’re agreed I’m going?” I asked the team, but I was only looking at TJ, because rule number one was he would have to give me permission for something this dangerous.

“Jensen goes,” he said. “Penn drives him.” TJ caught Penn’s eye. “When that countdown timer hits T minus four minutes, be ready to extract them both, at gunpoint, if that’s what it takes.”

* * *

Tamela

My arms achedfrom holding them up to secure the cut wires. My head throbbed from the overdoes of adrenaline coursing through my veins. I was thirsty. I had to pee. It seemed like hours since I’d heard Jason’s voice, but I was still alive, so it couldn’t have been that long. I asked Hart and Li how much time was left. They refused to answer.

Seconds later, Jason spoke in my ear. “Hey Tam, I’m still here. Penn is looped in now, too.”

“Penn?”

“I’m here, Sparks.”

I was happy to hear his voice and overjoyed to hear Jason’s, but I wondered what it meant that they were together. Maybe this was how the team had decided to break it to me that there was no way out of it. My lover and my boss, tag-teaming the terrible news.

“We have a solution,” Jason said.

“A solution?” My mind jerked back from the abyss of acceptance. “What is it? What do I need to do?”

“Keep doing what you’re doing,” Penn said. “We’re coming to you.”

“You can’t.” I couldn’t be responsible for taking them to their deaths beside me. “TJ, are you listening? I need you to make them fall back.”

“Tam, you missed the part where we have a solution,” Jason said. “I’m holding it in my hands. I have to bring it there.”

Either TJ had signed off on this plan, which meant it actually might work, or Penn had joined Jason in going rogue, which meant we were all about to die. I was in no position to make that call. “If this is you being a cowboy again, Jensen, I will kick your ass.” If I lived long enough to do it.

He laughed. “I think you’ve officially surpassed me in riding off the ranch.”

He was right. I’d finally decided to bend the plan, break the rules, and disobey an order. Just my luck, I was going to die the first time out.

“And despite what you’re thinking, Tam, you’re not going to die because of it. Penn and I will make sure of it. You swooped in to save the world, and now we’re coming to help you.”

He sounded so sure of me. It made me want to cry because I didn’t deserve his blind faith. But there was no crying in HEAT. An unwritten rule, but still, I’d broken enough regulations for a lifetime today, so I wouldn’t add to the list.

“I was just trying to call an audible,” I said. “I had no idea it wouldn’t be that simple, although I should have. Is that why they needed Pasco, do you think, to disarm it if something went wrong?”

“I don’t think so,” Penn answered me. “I’ve talked to a number of our logistics agents tonight, and our best guess is they planned to get it into the subway tomorrow morning during rush hour. The way Pasco described it, we tripped a security alarm when we sent you the tracking signals for the guards, and they panicked.”

“They knew they were going down, but they planned to complete their mission anyway,” I said.

“Good news, Tam. We’re here,” Jason said. “Penn and his broken ribs are hanging back, ready to drive us to safety once we’ve disarmed this thing, and I’m coming to you.”

“You are?” My arms shook. “You’re going to have to hold the wires for me. My hands are going numb.”

He dropped into the sub-basement with a soft thud, and then he was there, like an angel, a vision, a dream. He wore a helmet with a face shield and a chest blast plate, more for protocol than protection, because if this thing blew, those wouldn’t be enough to save him.

“I have a solution for your hands, too.” He pressed a long, flat piece of Styrofoam against the bomb, then, one by one, took the wires from me and taped them to it so they couldn’t touch the surface.

“Nice low-tech solution,” I said.

“Sometimes the simplest things are the best.”

Like love, I thought.

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