Allison Brennan - If I Should Die

Ricky didn’t answer right away. “Aunt Bobbie will come in here. Then it’ll all come down.”

“You don’t want to kill someone in cold blood,” Lucy said. “Not even Bobbie.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child!” Ricky said. He pressed the palms of his hands against his forehead. “She stole everything from me. My whole family is gone. Joe.” His voice cracked.

“She kidnapped Sean. She’s not getting away. Help me stop her without anyone else dying.”

Patrick’s attention was diverted from the C-4 to movement outside the mine. Lucy followed his gaze. Bobbie was forcing Noah and Jon toward the mine at gunpoint. Lucy didn’t see Sean anywhere. Where had Bobbie left him?

She’d killed him .

Lucy refused to believe that. But she couldn’t get the thought out of her mind.

“What’s in here that she wants so badly?” she asked.

“A half-million dollars.”

Patrick said urgently, “Lucy, we have to get out of here now.”

Lucy said to Ricky. “He’s right. Let’s go.”

He was still uncertain, and Lucy grabbed his arm to encourage him. Patrick led the way, then Lucy heard a female voice shout, “Ricky, stop.”

Ricky did, forcing Lucy to stop as well. Lucy didn’t know how she hadn’t spotted Patrick. Then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a glimpse of his face. He’d stepped into a small, natural alcove in the mountain. If he stood still, Bobbie might not see him. But if she did, he was an easy target.

Bobbie walked to Ricky and Lucy. “You’re the girlfriend.” Her face twisted as she looked back at Noah. “You-you’re both supposed to be dead!”

“I think-” Lucy began stepping to the left to keep Bobbie’s attention on her.

“Not a word from you. Carl, watch them. Jon, come with me. You, this bitch, and I are getting my money.”

From the second Sean knew Bobbie and the reverend were out of earshot, he started working on the handcuffs. They were too tight to slip off, a trick he’d done a few times in his life. But deep in the pockets of his jeans was a bobby pin. He remembered when he was little his sister had once told him she always had bobby pins in her hair and a rubber band around her wrist because they could solve any number of fashion emergencies.

Sean took the advice, but applied it to personal security. He always had a bobby pin in his pocket, pushed into a seam, so that on a quick search, it couldn’t be felt. He couldn’t risk it while being watched because he had to go through contortions to remove the pin and then to pick the handcuffs.

He had to remain calm and steady, because if he dropped the pin it would delay his escape, putting Lucy and everyone else at greater risk. He closed his eyes and felt for the small hole in the cuffs. He bent the bobby pin and inserted the thinner end into the lock. He moved it slowly around, using his skills and sense of touch and a hint of a sixth sense that had helped him more times than he could count. Clearing his mind, he pictured the inside of the lock, focused on seeing the pin hit the right spot to spring the latch. Click .

Sean removed the cuffs and pulled the duct tape from his mouth, then let out a long breath as he tore through the duct tape around his ankles, which took him longer than picking the lock.

Free, he searched the car for a gun or knife, anything he could use as a weapon. The only thing he could find was an old tire iron, which he grabbed, then ran through the woods toward the mine.

He reached the edge of a cliff and stopped, his momentum almost taking him over the edge. But it wasn’t a long fall-below him was the roof of a small building. To one side was Callahan’s truck, to the other was the white truck. Now that he was closer, he saw that it wasn’t his rental and he breathed a bit easier. There was still trouble, but Lucy wasn’t here.

There was a lot of movement at the mine entrance, and he saw Noah and Ricky emerge, followed by Reverend Browne, who had a gun on them.

Timing was everything. Browne glanced back at the mine, distracted. Someone else was in there. Sean slipped down to the roof, then dropped off the side, out of sight from the entrance. That’s when he saw Patrick, flush against the rock wall of the mine, tightly wedged in a crevice only yards from Browne’s position. If Browne looked to the right, he’d see Patrick and have a direct line of fire. There was no way Sean could get to the group without being seen.

Trusting both Patrick and Noah to take advantage of the opportunity, Sean exposed himself to distract Browne. He ran from the building, directly toward the group, his eyes on Browne’s gun.

Browne turned and aimed his gun toward Sean. Sean dove for the ground, rolled to the right, and jumped up again. Browne was thrown off guard just enough for Noah to push Ricky down and put himself between the kid and Browne. Simultaneously, Patrick charged from his hiding spot and tackled the older man, pinning his gun hand to the ground. Noah disarmed him, then retrieved two more guns from the back of Browne’s pants.

“Good work,” Sean said as he ran over. He pulled the handcuffs he’d escaped out of from his pocket and said, “Let me.”

Sean cuffed Carl, smug and satisfied. “One down. Where’s that insane woman? And Jon?”

Noah said, “In the mine.”

“Great-they’re trapped. We’ll wait for backup and then-”

A dark expression crossed both Patrick and Noah’s faces. “Where’s Lucy?”

“She’s with them.”

“Why are we standing around here?” Sean ran into the mine.

Patrick followed. “Wait, Sean!”

“Don’t tell me to wait for backup, not when that lunatic has Lucy.”

Patrick pointed to the ceiling. Sean looked up. At first he didn’t know what he was supposed to see, then Noah shined a flashlight and exposed multiple charges sticking out of what could only have been the C-4 Bobbie had been ranting about.

“We need to pull every blasting cap out of the C-4,” Noah said, reaching up to the charge closest to him.

Omar Lewis came in. “There’s no one around the perimeter. Good work, Armstrong.” Then he looked up. “Oh shit.”

“Who has the detonator?” Sean demanded as both he and Patrick followed Noah’s lead.

Ricky replied. “Jon.”

Jon and Lucy had flashlights; Bobbie had a gun. Jon took the lead, which meant Bobbie had the gun at Lucy’s back. Every few feet she poked Lucy with the barrel, and Lucy tried not to stumble. She didn’t want to fall down an exploration shaft a hundred feet to her death.

Jon whispered, “Keep your hand on the wall. Test each spot of ground before you step. About seventy feet in there’s an exploration shaft.”

“Give her the money,” Lucy told him. She didn’t want to walk that far into the mine. They had already started a gradual descent.

“Where is it?” Bobbie demanded.

“Victoria’s coffin,” Jon sneered. He stopped walking and turned to face Bobbie. In the yellow glow of the flashlight, he looked gaunt and determined.

He opened up his right hand. Inside was a small box with a switch. His thumb rested on the switch. “You’re not getting the money,” Jon told her. “This ends now.”

“This is about a woman ? She was an FBI agent ! She only seduced you to get close to me .”

“No. I knew she was an agent. She was going to save this town.”

Bobbie stared at Jon in shock and disgust. “You knew?” She held her gun in his face. “You fucking knew she was a Fed?”

“She wanted to bring in a team, but we both worried you’d smell the operation. So we worked together. And you never knew there was another undercover operative. You’re not as smart as you think, Roberta.”