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Not waiting, she rolled to her side and pounced on top of him again. A blind fury of hate, and blood, and burning fear surged through her.
She was going to kill him. He’d killed Finn; he deserved to die. Revenge wouldn’t bring Finn back, wouldn’t bring back the dream of the two of them sharing a life together. But if she had to live without Finn, then this man was going to die.
Somewhere behind her, someone was yelling, but she didn’t turn around to see who it was.
Rough hands grabbed her under the arms and lifted her away from the man lying on the ground.
“Leave me be,” she screamed. “I’m gonna kill him. He murdered Finn.”
But the arms were too strong, dragging her away from Swampy, her heels leaving twin divots in the dust. In her peripheral vision, she saw two more men dive on top of Swampy as he attempted to get up.
“Settle down, Miss Solomon,” a gruff voice commanded. “Let us handle this. I’m Detective Sergeant Mike Rogers, and we’re here to help.”
“No. No,” she sobbed. “You’re too late. We’re too late. Finn was in there when the house blew up. He’s dead,” she wailed, collapsing in a heap on the ground, her knees no longerstrong enough to hold her weight. Mike knelt down and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. She wanted to shrug him off, but she no longer had the strength.
“Hey, Sarge. You need to come and look at this,” a deep voice echoed out of the night, coming from somewhere in the front yard. Indy tuned him out, too lost in her own grief to even wonder what he was calling the sarge for.
“I’m busy,” Mike replied, not removing his arm, which was beginning to feel like it was the only thing anchoring her to this world.
“No, boss, you need to see this,” the man continued to request his presence. “I think it might be Detective Carmody. I believe he’s alive.”
Indy lifted her head, hope flooding through her.
* * *
Finn dragged in another lungful of air. Sweat was pouring freely down his back as he pushed himself up another step. Two more, and he’d be at the top. Who would’ve thought dragging yourself up a flight of stairs by your elbows and knees could be this taxing? Perhaps he was still suffering a concussion. No, that was a definite, his cognitive abilities were not up to scratch. And also suffering from whatever they’d drugged him with, which must be still circling around his system.
His shoulder ached like a bitch from where he used it as a battering ram to knock down the door at the base of the steps. It’d taken him four hits to finally splinter the door enough to knock it away from the lock. Thankfully, the door was made of typical, cheap fiberboard. If it’d been metal, he would never have escaped the basement. It was nearly dark outside; the sun having set half an hour ago. Which meant there was only just enough light inside the house to make out walls and doorways, but not the details.
Finn moved carefully and slowly, checking every square inch of ground before he moved forward. He didn’t know what kind of booby trap Garrett and Swampy had set, but he was guessing it was possibly a bomb of some kind. If the criminals were planning on murdering a bunch of cops, the best way to do it was to explode the whole house. He’d studied bomb making, detection, and how to defuse a simple incendiary device as part of his training.
There were many ways to trigger a bomb. The easiest way was to have someone push a button. A person would have to be nearby and be able to see when the detectives entered the house to do this. But he’d heard the vehicle drive away after a loud altercation. And then silence. From the little info Garrett had given him, it seemed like everyone was leaving. Going to the docks, it sounded like. Which left the idea that the bomb would have to be triggered internally. There were all sorts of ways to set up an ambush. Pressure pads under the floor; but that seemed a little too high tech for this duo. A simple tripwire set across an entrance or hallway, but they were easier to spot and could possibly be avoided. Which left the other common and simple-to-construct method of sensors around the door and windows. It was the technique a lot of household security systems used to detect break-ins. Easy to hide, unless you knew what to look for.
With all of these thoughts in mind, Finn had carefully made his way up the stairs. He wasn’t going to sit here like a helpless kitten. He was going to fight until the end. And save Mike and the rest of his team from annihilation.
He’d taken a calculated risk when he’d bashed his way through the basement door. The door could have been wired, but there was nothing obvious on his side, and from the quick glance he got as Garrett hustled Indy through the door, he could see nothing on the other side, either.
He dragged himself up the final two steps, and lay panting, getting his breath back, while at the same time studying his next move. A hallway ran directly from the stairs toward the front of the house, doorways leading off left and right. The first doorway to the right led into a kitchen; he could just make out the peeling linoleum floor and the edge of some cupboards from his position on the ground. There had to be an entrance leading from the kitchen out to the backyard, because that was where the voices had come from right before the vehicle pulled out of the driveway.
For a second, Finn lost his train of thought as images of Indy crowded his mind. The tears tracking down her face as Garrett hauled her to her feet. The despair and anguish in her beautiful brown eyes as she’d turned to glance at him over her shoulder before Garrett pushed her through the door.
Finn was going to kill Garrett when he got out of here. If he got out of here. The traitorous fucker. But he’d have plenty of time for that later. All he could hope now was that Garrett had kept his word, and got Indy well away from here. Was she safe? He wouldn’t put it past Garrett to use Indy as a human shield if need be. But Finn had had no choice. He knew Indy probably hated him for what he’d done. For making that phone call and putting his own team in danger to save her. But he couldn’t live with Indy’s certain death on his conscience. This way, he’d been able to get her out of imminent danger. He hoped she would forgive him one day.
With a deep breath, Finn levered himself onto his knees and elbows and began to shuffle carefully down the hallway. Time to get to work. Mike had said he’d be there in twenty minutes. Finn calculated that had been fifteen minutes ago. They were due here soon, and he needed to stop them from coming inside. Crawling into the kitchen, he located the rear door, but it was too dark inside to make out anything clearly. With a grunt, he used acupboard and then a countertop to heave himself up to standing, and awkwardly hopped over to study the door frame.
Yep, just as he thought. Now he was close enough to see it in the dim light, the door frame had wires running around the inside. Hopping over to peer out the kitchen window, he could see the same white wires tucked into the window frame. It was a dodgy job, but it didn’t need to be perfect. By the time Mike and his crew noticed there was something odd about the window, it’d be too late. But how was he supposed to get out without triggering the bomb? If Garrett and Swampy knew anything, then they’d probably set a delay on the trigger, allowing more people to flood through after they breached the door, killing the maximum number of victims. How long was that delay? Five seconds? Ten? Twenty? If he breached the window, how long would he have to get away before it blew up?
Hoping to find something, a tool or a knife, that might help him escape his bindings, he searched the kitchen. But there was nothing on the countertops, and the drawers were hanging open, empty. The house had clearly been abandoned for a while, and whoever had moved out had taken everything with them.
Where had they hidden the bomb? He half-heartedly opened and closed a few cupboard doors. But even if he found the explosives, it was too dark for him to try to defuse the bomb.
He considered the kitchen windows. If he were to throw himself through those, he’d have to first clamber up onto the countertop, which would be tricky. He could do it, but if he didn’t break the window the first time, he’d be losing precious seconds while he tried again. He looked at the door. Same with that. If it took him as long as it had to break through the basement door, he’d probably be fried before he even got out.
Time was ticking down, he was aware he had less than five minutes up his sleeve. But if he was going to jump through a window, if that was his only avenue of escape, he needed a largerwindow that he could bodily throw himself out of. Shuffling back into the hallway, he headed for the front of the house. There might well be a living or dining area in this direction, with more accessible windows.
He was right. The large front room was empty, much the same as the kitchen. Disused and un-lived in. The main door sat between two large picture windows. Approaching the front door, he could see it was wired, as well. Hopping to the left, he peered through the window without touching the pane of glass. Wired. They’d done a thorough job. It looked like every access way was booby-trapped. He stared out into the dark front yard, which was much the same as the back. Dead grass, a few neglected trees, a leaning mailbox. Right below the window was an old garden bed with a row of half dead hedges. It wasn’t much of a soft landing, but it would have to do. Wishing he had more clothes on wasn’t going to help now. He was going to have to jump through the window practically naked.
A flash of movement caught his eye. It was there, and then it was gone. Someone was hiding out there in the gloom near the front corner fence of the house next door. Someone moving stealthily, not wanting to be seen. Was it Mike and his team? Had they arrived earlier than expected? Or was it someone else? Swampy, or someone from the drug gang? Whoever it was, they couldn’t be allowed to enter the house. He had to do something. It was now or never.
