“You call. I’m checking it out.”
“Sam!” Gillis hissed. “Sam!”
Adrenaline pumping, Sam ignored his partner’s warnings and started toward the warehouse. The darkness was in his favor; whoever was inside wouldn’t be able to spot his approach. Through the cracks in the truck bay doors, he saw more light, vertical slivers of yellow.
He circled the building, but spotted no ground floor windows, no way to look inside. There was a back door and a front door, but both were locked.
At the front of the building, he met up with Gillis.
“Backup’s on the way,” Gillis informed him.
“I have to get in there.”
“We don’t know what we’ll find in there—” Gillis suddenly paused and glanced at his car.
The phone was ringing.
Both men scurried back to answer it.
Sam grabbed the receiver. “Navarro here.”
“Detective Navarro,” said the police operator. “We have an outside phone call for you. The man says it’s urgent. I’ll put it through.”
There was a pause, a few clicks, and then a man’s voice said, “I’m so glad to reach you, Detective. This car phone of yours is coming in handy.”
“I’d like to issue a personal invitation, Detective. To you and you alone. A reunion, with a certain someone who’s right here beside me.”
“Is she all right?”
“She’s perfectly fine.” Spectre paused and added with a soft tone of threat. “For the moment.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing at all. I’d just like you to come and take Miss Cormier off my hands. She’s becoming an inconvenience. And I have other places to go to.”
“Where is she?”
“I’ll give you a clue. Herring.”
“What?”
“Maybe the name
SPECTRE HUNG UP the phone and smiled at Nina. “Time for me to go. Lover boy should be here any minute.” He picked up his toolbox and set it in the car, which he’d driven through the loading bay to keep it out of sight.
It was cool in the warehouse, but she felt a drop of sweat slide down her temple as she watched Spectre reach down for the radio transmitter. All he had to do was flick one switch on that radio device, and the bomb would be armed, the countdown started.
Ten minutes later, it would explode.
Her heart gave a painful thud as she saw him reach for the radio switch. Then he smiled at her.
“Not yet,” he said. “I wouldn’t want things to happen prematurely.”
Turning, he walked toward the truck bay door. He gave Nina a farewell salute. “Say goodbye to Navarro for me. Tell him I’m so sorry to miss the big kaboom.” He unlatched the bay door and gave the handle a yank. It slid up with the sound of grating metal. It was almost open when Spectre suddenly froze.
Right in front of him, a pair of headlights came on.
“Freeze, Spectre!” came a command from somewhere in the darkness. “Hands over your head!”
“Hands up!” yelled Sam. “Do it!”
Silhouetted against the headlights, Spectre seemed to hesitate for a few seconds. Then, slowly, he raised his hands over his head.
He was still holding the transmitter.
“Sam!” cried Nina. “There’s a bomb! He’s got a transmitter!”
“Put it down,” Sam ordered. “Put it down or I shoot!”
“Certainly,” agreed Spectre. Slowly he dropped to a crouch and lowered the transmitter toward the floor. But as he lay it down, there was a distinct
“Better run,” said Spectre. And he dived sideways, toward a stack of crates.
He wasn’t fast enough. In the next instant, Sam squeezed off two shots. Both bullets found their target.
Spectre seemed to stumble. He dropped to his knees and began to crawl forward, but his limbs were moving drunkenly, like a swimmer trying to paddle across land. He was making gurgling sounds now, gasping out curses with his last few breaths.
“Dead,” wheezed Spectre, and it was almost a laugh. “You’re all dead….”
Sam stepped over Spectre’s motionless body and started straight toward Nina.
“No!” she cried. “Stay away!”
He stopped dead, staring at her with a look of bewilderment. “What is it?”
“He’s wired a bomb to my chair,” sobbed Nina. “If you try to cut me loose it’ll go off!”
At once Sam’s gaze shot to the coils of wire ringing her chair, then followed the trail of wire to the warehouse wall, to the first bundle of dynamite, lying in plain view.
“He has eighteen sticks planted all around the building,” she said. “Three are under my chair. It’s set to go off in ten minutes. Less, now.”
Their gazes met. And in that one glance she saw his look of panic. It was quickly suppressed. He stepped across the wire and crouched by her chair.
“I’m getting you out of here,” he vowed.
“There’s not enough time!”
“Ten minutes?” He gave a terse laugh. “That’s loads of time.” He knelt down and peered under the seat. He didn’t say a thing, but when he rose again, his expression was grim. He turned and called, “Gillis?”
“Right here,” Gillis answered, stepping gingerly over the wires. “I got the toolbox. What do we have?”
“Three sticks under the chair, and a digital timer.” Sam gently slid out the timing device, bristling with wires, and set it carefully on the floor. “It looks like a simple series-parallel circuit. I’ll need time to analyze it.”
“How long do we have?”
“Eight minutes and forty-five seconds and counting.”
Gillis cursed. “No time to get the bomb truck.”
A wail of a siren suddenly cut through the night. Two police cruisers pulled up outside the bay door.
“Backup’s here,” Gillis said. He hurried over to the doors, waving at the other cops. “Stay back!” he yelled.
“We got a bomb in here! I want a perimeter evac
She tried to calm her racing heart, tried to stop her slide toward hysteria, but sheer terror was making it hard for her to breathe. There was nothing she could do to save herself. Her wrists were tightly bound; so were her ankles. If she so much as shifted too far in her chair, the bomb could be triggered.
It was all up to Sam.
