She did, her green eyes wide with shock and fear.
“I can fix this. But you can’t move. You have to remain as still as possible, understand?”
She nodded, almost imperceptibly, but still shook in his hands.
“Th-there’s more in the truck,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“I know. One thing at a time.” He let go of her and pulled his fully loaded Swiss army knife out of his pocket. Not ideal, but it would do. It had to.
“Ms. Flynn?”
John glanced over his shoulder and did a double take. For a brief moment he thought she was Rowan. She wasn’t.
“Tess, where does Bobby want her to go?” John asked.
“It won’t work. He’ll know she’s not Rowan and you’ll die, John. We’ll all die. He’ll kill us!” Tess was shouting hysterically.
John slapped her, wincing at the sound his hand made against Tess’s cheek. Her head jerked back and her hand came up to her face. “Hey!” she said, frowning.
“Tess, I’m sorry. You have to stay with me here.” He started separating the wires so he could see how the bomb was put together.
“I’m Special Agent Francie Blake, Ms. Flynn. I need to know where to go. Now.”
Tess pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to her. “Be careful. When he realizes you’re not Rowan, I don’t know what he’ll do, but he won’t be happy. He knew there was a decoy at her house.”
“What?” John asked, pausing briefly in his assessment of the bomb. He resumed.
“He watched the house somehow. Saw her running and he told me he knew she wasn’t Rowan. That Rowan had run away. Francie, you can’t go. He’ll kill you.”
“I’m trained, Ms. Flynn.” She was reading the note.
John had a bad feeling. He turned on the mike so he could speak to Collins and the rest of the team. “Collins? Tess said MacIntosh knows about the decoy in Malibu. Saw her running.”
“That can’t be. We had three teams covering the outside of the house, one inside.”
“Boat? The cliffs? I don’t know.” He clipped one wire, bracing himself. Good. The right one.
“How fast can you diffuse the bomb?”
“I think I can get Tess done, but not in three minutes. Correction, ninety seconds. We need that extra ten minutes.”
He snipped another wire and swore. There was a failsafe. He had to start from square one.
“He’s not going to give you ten minutes, John. He’s not,” Tess said. “Go. Please. I-I’ll be okay.”
John ignored his sister’s pleas. “Get out of here, Blake. Stall as best you can. I need at least five minutes for Tess’s vest, then we’ll run like hell.”
“I’m outta here. I’ll give you as much time as I can.” She sprinted back to Roger’s car.
John moved Tess fifty feet from the SUV, but he couldn’t work and talk at the same time, so he focused on the bomb. But a familiar voice came through on his mike.
“Roger, I have to go,” said Rowan.
“No,” Collins said.
John glanced over his shoulder. There she was.
“Dammit, Roger!” Rowan snapped. “When he sees it’s not me, he’s going to detonate the bomb.”
“Blake, go.”
A moment later, Roger’s SUV passed John, heading southwest across the dry field.
“Roger, he’s going to kill her! Call her back.”
“Francie Blake is suited up. She’s going to buy us time to dismantle the bomb, and then-”
“Get out of here, Rowan,” said Roger. “Peterson, get her out of here.”
“Let me go, Quinn!”
“Rowan,” Collins said, “there’s a bomb in that SUV over there. As soon as Ms. Flynn is in the clear, we’re all running.”
John wanted to wring Rowan’s neck for leaving the safe house, but right now he had too much to worry about. Sweat poured off his face as he unscrewed the faceplate of the timer with the tiny screwdriver in his knife. He dropped it to the ground and concentrated on the remote timer.
“John?” Tess asked, her voice high-pitched and soft.
“Two more minutes.” He hoped.
“Two minutes?” Collins repeated over the mike.
“I think so. Maybe three.”
The next minute passed too quickly, but he made some progress. Collins, Peterson, and Rowan approached and stood a few feet away. He spared a glance at Rowan. She was covered in dust, her face cold and unreadable. Except her eyes.
She was frantic.
“You should have stayed at the safe house,” John told her, his voice low and angry. He turned his attention back to the bomb.
“You shouldn’t have left me there.”
He couldn’t rush the procedure, but he worked as fast as possible. Faster than he would have liked.
A shotgun blast resonated through the still air and Tess screamed. It took John a second to realize she hadn’t been hit. The blast was too far away.
Agent Blake.
He heard the chirp of a cell phone. It wasn’t his.
Roger answered. “MacIntosh?”
“She wasn’t Lily. I want to talk to my sister. Now. Ten seconds or I blow the SUV. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six.”
Rowan wrestled the phone from Roger’s hand.
“Bobby, it’s me. Stop the bomb. You don’t want to kill me like this, do you?”
“I knew you were there. Sending another woman to die in your place.”
“That wasn’t my choice.”
“Right. We all have choices.”
“I’ll come.”
“No!” John shouted.
“Stop the bomb.”
“When I see that it’s you.”
Rowan mouthed to John.
He held up two fingers, then moved his hand back and forth.
“Where are you?”
“Follow the car tracks that your fake left. Quarter-mile.”
“It’ll take me five minutes.”
“I’m giving you three. Better run fast, Lily Pad.”
He disconnected.
Rowan looked at John and saw the conflict on his face. “You have three minutes, John. That’s the best I can do.”
“Don’t you dare go with him.”
“I’ll do what I can. But he
“Rowan, wait!”
“I can’t.” She caught his eye.
Then Rowan turned and ran.
Bobby kicked the fake Rowan’s body. He wasn’t positive she was dead, but her face was bleeding and she was definitely unconscious. He raised the shotgun to take another shot when he glanced up.
A lone woman ran toward him. He checked his watch. Two minutes, fifty seconds.
He lowered the shotgun to watch her run, making sure this time that it was his bitch sister. Yes, it was Lily. No
