Page 127 of Wilde and Deadly

A long string of Cajun French flowed from Sabin.

“Shit,” Weston breathed.

thirty-three

Liam’s head rose,slow and sluggish. His face was bloodied, bruised, and his eyes were glazed. “Took you long enough.” His voice was little more than a harsh whisper.

“Jesus,” Bridger said and hurried to his brother’s side, crouching down. “You okay?”

“Be better when you get this thing off me.”

Davey crouched at his other side and drew a steadying breath as he studied the vest—wires, explosives, a small LED screen blinking way too fast.

Four and a half minutes.

He knew bombs. Not like Weston did, but enough to know this wasn’t a quick and dirty setup to facilitate an escape.

This was calculated. Cruel. Meant to kill as many as possible and bring down the tunnel, burying the evidence.

His pulse pounded against his skull as memories of other bomb vests tried to claw out of the lockbox in his head.

A vest strapped to a kid, too young, wide-eyed, shaking—his hands trembling over the trigger.

Fuck. Not now. No time for that.

He shoved the memories down. Locked them tight.

Rowan brushed her fingers against his arm. A fleeting touch, barely there, just a silent,I’m here. But it was enough. He wanted to lean into her, let her anchor him. But he couldn’t. They didn’t have time.

He had to think. Lead.Assess, not react.

“Where’s Brody?” he forced out.

“Set the timer and left. Knew you were coming.” Liam’s skin was ghost-white beneath the grime and blood. “He’s working with someone else. Someone who knows our movements.”

Another fucking mole in WSW?

Jesus.

Maybe his uncles had been right to pass the torch to him. Old age had made them sloppy if they’d let that many double agents onto the payroll.

Davey tapped his earpiece. “Elliot, I need to know our nearest exfil routes.”

“Give me thirty seconds,” Elliot responded.

Davey eyed the clock on the vest. “We don’t have thirty seconds.”

“Yeah, we do,” Weston said, already dropping to his knees in front of Liam, ripping open his bag. His hands were steady, his voice clipped. He was fully in bomb tech mode. “Sabin, get those cuffs off?—”

“Already on it,mon ami.” Sabin circled to the back of the bench, pulling out a well-used leather roll of lock picks. He bent over the handcuffs and got to work, fingers moving with the kind of smooth confidence that came from breaking into far too many things. “Ooo-wee,cher. Bet ya can’t even feel them fingers no more, huh? They white as a gator’s belly in the moonlight.”

Liam exhaled a rough chuckle. “’S okay. The headache makes up for it.” His words slurred. He’d sounded weak when Daphne tapped into his implant’s audio back at HQ, but now he was fading. His eyelids fluttered for half a second before he forced them open again. “And fucking—the static…”

Tessa crouched next to him and checked his ear. “Your processor’s cracked.”

Liam muttered a curse under his breath. “Figured. Feels like a damn wasp nest in my skull, and you sound miles away.”

Bridger hadn’t moved.

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