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It was a terrible image, but something about it amused her. Razor blades and alcohol. Throw in a little fire to boot.

Fire.

There’d been a fire!

Jean-Marc. She had to warn him. He was in danger. She opened her mouth to scream, but the well wouldn’t let her. Not yet. Yelling as loudly as she could, all she could produce was a moan. Look out! she shrieked. But there was no sound.

“She’s stirring,” a voice said. “She’s waking up.”

Yes! Tell her about Jean-Marc. Warn him!

“Connie?”

Yes! I’m here!

“Connie, can you hear me?”

The light grew brighter still and some of the color drained away. Help me! I’m here! Pull me up! Jean-Marc is-

“She still out of it, Doc?” another voice asked. This one wasn’t as friendly. Wasn’t friendly at all, in fact.

“She’s coming to,” the first voice said. “Hello, Connie, I need you to wake up for me.”

Wake up. Wake up from what?

From the explosion.

Oh, Jesus, Jean-Marc was taken by the-

She returned to consciousness with a giant gasp. The sheer effort of it made her jump and the jumping added more alcohol to the razor blades. The light turned to white and surrounding the white, there was even more white.

And then a face staring down at her, his silhouette mercifully casting a shadow over her eyes. “Hello, Connie,” the face said. He spoke English, but with a thick accent that she knew she recognized, but couldn’t quite place. It was Indian. Maybe Pakistani. Just where the hell was she?

“Jean-Marc!” she said. To her own ears, her voice sounded normal, if distant, but the angle of the man’s head told her that she was wrong. “Save Jean-Marc!” she insisted. She tried to sit up, but that proved impossible the instant her wounds flashed again.

“Connie, you’re fine,” the face said. “You’re in a hospital. I am Doctor Ahmed. You’ve been in an accident.”

Fragments of a thousand accidents raced through her mind. How did she get to India or Pakistan? “Where am I?”

“You are in Tampa General Hospital. You were flown here by helicopter.”

“Tampa,” she said, testing the word. “Tampa, Florida.” It was coming back to her. The abandoned office. The dust. The closet.

“Is Jean-Marc OK?” she asked. But as her head cleared even more, the true imagery of that moment crystallized for her. There was no way he could have survived that blast.

“Ms. Carson,” another man said from off to her left. It was the other man who’d seemed unfriendly as she was climbing out of the Jell-o well. “My name is Detective Langer with the Tampa Police Department. I need you to answer some questions for me.”

She moved to look at him, but another stab of pain stopped her. “What happened?”

“There was an explosion,” Langer said.

Carson snapped, “I know there was an explosion. I was there. I meant what happened to me? Why do I hurt so badly?”

“You broke your right arm,” the doctor said. “In three places. And there are some burns.”

Her stomach flipped. “Bad burns?” she asked. It was the injury that she feared perhaps more than any other. The pain. The disfigurement.

“You’ll need some surgery.”

“But I need to talk with you first,” Langer interrupted. “A bomb like this, we need as much information as quickly as we can get it.”

“You can say no if you don’t feel up to it,” the doctor said.

“Actually, you can’t,” Langer said. “Not if you want to avoid obstruction of justice charges. Either one of you.”

All over the world, police forces drew their personnel from the same breed. “Then why don’t you stand where I can see you?” Carson said.

Langer turned out to be a Ken doll. Six-one with a head of thick blond hair, he wore khaki slacks and a blue knit shirt that made her wonder if her misfortune hadn’t pulled him off the golf course. “Tell me what happened,” he said.

It took all of two minutes to relate the facts. When she was done, she concluded, “Jean-Marc is dead, isn’t he?”

Langer nodded. His eyes showed pity, but she sensed that it was manufactured. “Yes, I’m afraid he is. You never said why you were there.”

“I know,” Carson said. “That’s a longer story.”

“I have time.”

“Apparently, I don’t.” She glanced toward the doctor, who recognized it as his cue to move ahead with his treatment plan.

Langer raised his hand to freeze the action. “Don’t push me, Ms. Carson. Right now you’re the only living person found at the scene of a bombing. That makes you a suspect.”

“I’m not going far,” she said.

“She has a point,” Dr. Ahmed intervened. “Speak with her now, speak with her in twenty hours, after surgery and recovery. What difference does it make?”

“It makes a lot of difference,” Langer said. “This wasn’t just any bomb, Doc.” He shifted his gaze to Carson. “This was a thermobaric device, much more-”

Carson gasped. She hadn’t intended to and if it weren’t for whatever meds she was on, she never would have shown her hand like that.

“That mean something to you, Ms. Carson?” Langer asked.

Hell yes, it meant something to her. Thermobarics were a class of explosives that allowed low-density charges to produce high-density yields. Whereas standard explosives contain chemical oxidizers in high concentrations to allow the mixture to consume all of its fuel in a single instant, thus producing its blast effects, a thermobaric device has relatively low levels of oxidizer, but is packed with highly combustible, often exotic fuels. When the charge detonates, the finely divided fuel is dispersed over a wider area and the oxygen in the air performs the role that the chemical oxidizer performs in standard explosives. In effect, the disbursed cloud of fuel continues to detonate, often at higher temperatures, thus expanding the kill radius tremendously.

“Not a thing,” Carson lied.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then arrest me.”

“Consider it done.”

“Excellent,” Carson said. She turned to the doctor. “Can I go to surgery now?”

Dr. Ahmed smiled. “Absolutely.”

“Consider her to be in custody, Doc,” Langer said. But he seemed suddenly flummoxed, as if this new turn had been totally unexpected.

“It will be foremost on my mind,” the doctor said.

Three minutes later, they were on their way to the elevator-all three of them, plus a couple of nurses and seeming hangers-on. Langer made a point, it seemed, to always be within Carson’s eyesight. The elevator took them to a set of double doors over which a sign read: SURGERY. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Below that was a smaller sign with an arrow that directed everyone else to the waiting area.

“You cannot go in,” Ahmed said to Langer.

The cop seemed to be struggling for words. “She’s your responsibility, then,” he said. He probably wanted it to be a more withering threat than it turned out to be.