Page 77 of Cyn
She let out a long breath, then nodded. “Done.”
“Then let’s get out of here.” He slipped his hand into hers and started pulling her toward the stairs. She shoved the knife into her pocket and willingly followed, but then paused when they hit the first step.
Joe jerked back when her fingers slipped from his. “What?” he demanded.
“There were four bombs on the top floor, four on the main, and eleven in the basement. I think there’s one more,” she said, her eyes on the sturdy stairs. If it had been her intent to create the type of destruction Harrow, Persons, and Waters wanted, she would have wanted to bring down the stairs as a means of both removing some support from the main floor but then also ensuring that when the floor collapsed, it collapsed all the way down to the bottom of the basement. With the stairs intact, it was possible that the front end of the main room wouldn’t completely give way.
“Cyn?”
She understood the urgency in Joe’s voice, but she couldn’t leave it. She turned her wrist and saw they had sixty-five seconds to both find and defuse what she was sure was the last bomb. She looked up. Joe’s blue eyes were studying her. If she stayed behind, he’d stay with her. She was certain of that.
What she also knew for certain was that his life was more important to her than finding the last bomb. If it had just been her, her spot analysis might have been different. But she wasn’t going to risk Joe. Come to think of it, while her willingness to risk herself might have been true two months ago, she wasn’t so sure now. Since meeting Joe, her life—and her potential life with him—had come to matter to her. They’d defused nineteen shaped charges, and she was confident no other people were in the building who might be injured. She hated the thought of leaving the job undone, but even more, she hated the idea of anything happening to Joe.
“There’s another bomb, I’m sure of it,” she said. “But we don’t have the time. We need to get out of here.”
Joe’s eyes skittered around the basement, then he reached for her hand again and pulled her up the stairs in front of him. “Go,” he ordered.
Without hesitation, she bolted up the stairs. She wished Joe were in front of her, but she didn’t have time to argue about that, so running fast and getting out of his way was the best way to ensure his safety.
His heavy footsteps pounded behind her. When her foot landed on the main floor, she didn’t stop, continuing her sprint toward the door. Thankful to see an empty room and hear the sound of Joe hot on her heels, she breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t know exactly how much time they had left before the last bomb detonated, but they were less than fifty feet from the front door.
Unconsciously, Cyn started to calculate the potential damage if the bomb went off while they were still in the building. She glanced up at the elaborate windows over the front door. In her mind’s eye, she saw them explode outward. Heat would sear her back, and the floor would rumble as pressure built in her ears. Joe would call out to her, and then they’d both be thrown by the force of the explosion.
The possibility was nearly more than she could process and a panic like she’d never felt before seeped and steeped into her body. “Joe!” she called out, reaching her hand out only to find it splattered and marked by blood. Confused, she blinked and looked around. She was no longer headed toward the front door, and everything she’d seen and felt hadn’t been her imagination.
She struggled to clear her mind, but her thoughts felt like they were swimming in oil. Slowly, she became aware that she was on her side on the floor. Her right arm was raised, and her cheek rested atop it. Under—and all around—her, shards of glass twinkled in the morning light. Her back burned as heat licked her skin, and sharp spears of pain stabbed at her nerves.
She shook her head, and glass fell from her hair, one piece sliding forward and bouncing off her nose before hitting the floor.
“Cyn!”
Joe’s voice was hoarse and quiet but not quiet enough to hide his panic. Pushing up, she rolled into a sitting position. The space had filled with smoke and dust, but other than the shattered windows and some scorch marks, the main room appeared mostly intact.
As did Joe.
Cyn wasn’t generally a crier, but she fought back a few tears as she saw Joe crawling to her side. He too had shards of glass clinging to his clothes and hair, but he was moving. Toward her.
“I’m okay,” she called out. “What about you?”
He reached her side, and she raised a hand to brush her fingers along his cheek but drew back when she saw the blood dripping down her palm and a large sliver of glass embedded in her finger.
“Better now that I’m talking to you,” he said, then he smiled. She wasn’t quite ready to smile yet…not so soon after nearly getting him killed. If she hadn’t paused at the bottom of the steps, if she hadn’t stood there and explained to him that there had to be one more bomb, they would have been well clear of the building when it detonated.
But seeing his dimple helped. She didn’t know what, specifically, it helped, but it eased something inside her.
“I think I might love you,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say the words, and she wasn’t even sure they were true. She’d never been in love before. But she’d also never felt the kind of panic she’d felt when, for that moment, the possibility of losing him had been real. She’d also never weighed the value of her own life against completing a mission because the mission always came first. But there was no denying that her desire to protect him and whatever life she might have with him—which required that she stay alive for that life—had been a huge factor in getting her out of the basement at all.
He grinned again. “I won’t hold you to that,” he said as firefighters appeared at the door and started calling for an ambulance. “But if you want to say it again when we haven’t just defused nineteen bombs then been nearly killed, I wouldn’t mind.”
Crews were starting to flood the building. Firefighters, for sure, but she also saw SWAT members and a few from the bomb squad.
She glanced out the door to see her friends huddled together and craning their heads to see inside, Fawkes and Anthony standing sentry on either side of them. A gurney, pushed by three people, came into view. She knew what came next. She and Joe would be transported to the hospital and treated. Depending on what the doctors found, perhaps they’d have to stay the night. Then there would be meetings with Beni and her team and even debriefs with her own agency. It was going to be a long time before she and Joe would be able to speak again, just the two of them.
Turning her attention back to him, she smiled and reached out with her good hand. “We’ll see what the day holds,” she said, repeating what she’d told him in the car.
His laughter still echoed in her mind when minutes later, separate ambulances whisked them away.
Epilogue
