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God, Bryn hoped they didn’t get him killed.
“Getting close,” Joe said. Lonnie slowed the truck down, and Joe turned toward Thorpe. “What exactly are we looking for?”
“There’s a billboard to the right. What we’re looking for will be duct-taped to one of the posts. ”
“Anybody waiting?”
“No. It’s a dead drop. ”
Bryn knew it was a technical term, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t ominous. Out of the truck they were exposed and vulnerable.
“Thorpe,” she said. He looked at her with a frown grooved into his brow, and there was fright in his eyes, as well as distaste. “You’ll go out with me to retrieve it. Riley and Joe stay here to cover us and make sure Lonnie is safe. ” What she really meant was make sure Lonnie doesn’t run out on us, but the other way sounded better.
Thorpe looked momentarily very unhappy with this proposal, but she thought it was mainly because he was being paired up with her. He preferred to hang out with Joe Fideli. She understood that. Hell, she preferred to hang out with Joe, too. But he was going to have to suck up his prejudices and deal with it for five minutes. God only knew, she’d had to put her own preferences on hold for . . . what seemed like forever.
“Don’t I get a weapon?” he asked plaintively, as she checked her sidearm. She gave him a lifted eyebrow for answer, and threw open the door to jump down to the ground. Solid, unmoving ground. That was a cell-deep relief, just to be still for a moment, after that eternity of driving, but she couldn’t stand in place, either. She grabbed Thorpe and pulled him next to her, then thrust him toward the billboard that gently swayed and creaked in the breeze. The air felt clean and fresh to her, with the scent of sage mixed in with the hot metal and grease of the truck. As they stepped away from the cab, the industrial stench faded, and left the much nicer smell of blooming herbs and brush.
Thorpe must have decided he didn’t like being exposed, because he rushed forward toward the billboard’s base. There were four heavy posts driven into the ground, and between them were drifts of trash and tangled spiderwebs.
But the one on the end was cleaned of all that. There was a dried-up stack of weeds packed in there, but it looked constructed, not natural.
Thorpe shoved at the weeds, and revealed a shiny gray oblong of duct tape, lumpy in the middle. He stepped forward and reached out for it . . . and Bryn heard a very clear, crisp click. A sound she knew all too well. It sent a bolt of cold through her, and as Thorpe looked down, probably wondering if he’d stepped on a twig, she grabbed him and said, “Hold still. ”
“Why? What in the world—”
“Just don’t move,” she said, and dropped to her knees next to him. The dry, sandy soil had blown away a little and revealed the curved dull gray side of the top plate of the bomb. She blew away more of the sand, careful not to touch anything. It wasn’t military-issue, more of an IED-type device, though she couldn’t be sure of anything without a better look at it.
A look she wasn’t likely to get, considering that Thorpe was resting his full weight on it. But she had dealt with enough of these types of bombs, and bomb makers, to know that the point wouldn’t be flash and show—not like a movie explosion, all flame and smoke. This would be a dirty, hard sort of bomb, one packed with shrapnel that would rip Thorpe and her apart, and probably severely injure everybody in the truck, too. Shrapnel was cheap and easy and utterly, horribly effective.
It was all going to depend on the structure, and there was simply no way, and no time, to do an effective analysis of it. Thorpe was screwed. He didn’t have the discipline to hold perfectly still for hours on end, and even if he did, they couldn’t possibly stay here. The very existence of the trap meant they were blown.
He knew all that, too. She saw it go over his face in waves of emotion that finally settled into a pale, still mask.
“Listen,” Thorpe said. He licked his lips, and his eyelids fluttered shut briefly, and then he looked straight into her eyes. “If you use this on Jane, you won’t have anything left to use on anyone else—nothing to backward engineer. A weapon doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have the ability to reproduce it. ”
“We may not have a choice. If she comes at us before we can get the cure to our scientists . . . I promise, we won’t use it unless we have to. ”
“Not good enough,” he said. “Redundancy is everything, Bryn. I lied to you. There’s one more dose, the prototype. I sent it as far away as I could with someone I trusted. You—you might need it. More than that, you need to keep it out of her hands. ”
“Who has it? Thorpe, you’re out of time!”
“I know. ” He smiled sadly, palely, and nodded just a little. “Her name is Kiera Johannsen, and she’s a climatologist living in a remote research station outside of Barrow, Alaska. She doesn’t know what she has. I told her it was just a failed formula I wanted to keep on hand for research purposes, and asked her to store it for me. She agreed. Try to protect her, if you can. ”
“I will,” Bryn said. Suddenly, all his bullshit and prejudice and annoying little quirks didn’t seem to matter all that much. This was a man on the edge of eternity, and he knew it. “I’m sorry. ”
“Not your fault. ” He took in another deep breath. “The person I called sold us out. It probably doesn’t matter now, but it’s my brother-in-law, Jason Grant. Jane probably got to him, and he’s probably dead. Everyone I knew is probably dead, but they might not know about Kiera. Not yet. ” He gave her a sudden, cynical grin. “You ever been blown up?”
“No,” she said. “Shot, stabbed, fallen from a height, several inventive things that Jane cooked up, but not completely blown up. Are you asking if it will hurt?”
“I’m fairly sure I won’t feel much,” he said. “P
lease ask them to move the truck back. ”
Bryn nodded, opened her phone, and called Joe. He answered before it even rang. “The fuck?”
“IED,” she said. “Get the truck back. Way back. It’s going to go off. ”
“Then get your ass back here and we’ll go. ”
