Tess Gerritsen - Keeper of the Bride

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 now! And get an ambulance here on standby.”

I won’t need an ambulance, thought Nina. If this bomb goes off, there’ll be nothing left of me to pick up.

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.

Sam’s jaw was taut as he studied the tangle of wires and circuitry. There were so many wires! It would take an hour just to sort them all out. But all they had were minutes. Though he didn’t say a word, she could read the urgency in his face, could see the first droplets of sweat forming on his forehead.

Gillis returned to his partner’s side. “I checked the perimeter. Spectre’s got the building wired with fifteen or more sticks. No other action fuses as far as I can see. The brain to this whole device is right there in your hands.”

“It’s too easy,” muttered Sam, scanning the circuitry. “He wants me to cut this wire.”

“Could it be a double feint? He knew we’d be suspicious. So he made it simple on purpose — just to throw us?”

Sam swallowed. “This looks like the arming switch right here. But over here, he’s got the cover soldered shut. He could have a completely different switch inside. Magnetic reed or a Castle-Robins device. If I pry off that cap, it could fire.”

Gillis glanced at the digital timer. “Five minutes left.”

“I know, I know.” Sam’s voice was hoarse with tension, but his hands were absolutely steady as he traced the circuitry. One tug on the wrong wire, and all three of them could be instantly vaporized.

Outside, more sirens whined to a stop. Nina could hear voices, the sounds of confusion.

But inside, there was silence.

Sam took a breath and glanced up at her. “You okay?”

She gave a tense nod. And she saw, in his face, the first glimpse of panic. He won’t figure this out in time, and he knows it.

This was just what Spectre had planned. The hopeless dilemma. The fatal choice. Which wire to cut? One? None? Does he gamble with his own life? Or does he make the rational choice to abandon the building — and her?

She knew the choice he would make. She could see it in his eyes.

They were both going to die.

“Two and a half minutes,” said Gillis.

“Go on, get out of here,” Sam ordered.

“You need an extra pair of hands.”

“And your kids need a father. Get the hell out.”

Gillis didn’t budge.

Sam picked up the wire cutters and isolated a white wire.

“You’re guessing, Sam. You don’t know.”

“Instinct, buddy. I’ve always had good instincts. Better leave. We’re down to two minutes. And you’re not doing me any good.”

Gillis rose to his feet, but lingered there, torn between leaving and staying. “Sam—”

“Move.”

Gillis said, softly, “I’ll have a bottle of Scotch waiting for you, buddy.”

“You do that. Now get out of here.”

Without another word, Gillis left the building.

Only Sam and Nina remained. He doesn’t have to stay, she thought. He doesn’t have to die.

“Sam,” she whispered.

He didn’t seem to hear her; he was concentrating too hard on the circuit board, his wire cutters hovering between a life-and-death choice.

“Leave, Sam,” she begged.

“This is my job, Nina.”

“It’s not your job to die!”

“We’re not going to die.”

“You’re right. We aren’t. You aren’t. If you leave now—”

“I’m not leaving. You understand? I’m not. ” His gaze rose to meet hers. And she saw, in those steady eyes, that he had made up his mind. He’d made the choice to live — or die — with her. This was not the cop looking at her, but the man who loved her. The man she loved.

She felt tears trickle down her face. Only then did she realize she was crying.

“We’re down to a minute. I’m going to make a guess here,” he said. “If I’m right, cutting this wire should do the trick. If I’m wrong…” He let out a breath. “We’ll know pretty quick one way or the other.” He slipped the teeth of the cutter around the white wire. “Okay, I’m going with this one.”

“Wait.”

“What is it?”

“When Spectre was putting it together, he soldered a white wire to a red one, then he covered it all up with green tape. Does that make a difference?”

Sam stared down at the wire he’d been about to cut. “It does,” he said softly. “It makes a hell of a lot of difference.”

“Sam!” came Gillis’s shout through a megaphone. “You’ve got ten seconds left!”

Ten seconds to run.

Sam didn’t run. He moved the wire cutter to a black wire and positioned the jaws to cut. Then he stopped and looked up at Nina.

They stared at each other one last time.

“I love you,” he said.

She nodded, the tears streaming down her face. “I love you too,” she whispered.

Their gazes remained locked, unwavering, as he slowly closed the cutter over the wire. Even as the jaws came together, even as the teeth bit into the plastic coating, Sam was looking at her, and she at him.

The wire snapped in two.

For a moment neither one of them moved. They were still frozen in place, still paralyzed by the certainty of death.

Then, outside, Gillis yelled, “Sam? You’re past countdown! Sam! ”

All at once, Sam was cutting the bonds from her hands, her ankles. She was too numb to stand, but she didn’t need to. He gathered her up into his arms and carried her out of the warehouse, into the night.