hurt anyone. While trying not to be seen. At a police station.
Fortunately, it was the middle of the night, and I was very good at not being seen. Unfortunately, my hands still wanted to shake at odd moments from my encounter with the man who had panic for a face. And I couldn’t help twitching to look over my shoulders constantly, twisting around and up above me and behind me to scan the dark.
Not to mention the station was a lot more awake than it had been before my little dustup with a building down the street. Dammit.
After a few harried minutes ducking around patrols and casing the station, I found a large electrical junction box in the back of the building. Big enough for me to tear apart and pack the device in behind a rat’s nest of wires. The theoretical yield of the explosives wasn’t high—enough to have immolated a lone person, presumably to fake that Arthur had been in danger—but not much more. And since I didn’t only want the bomb squad to cordon off an area but to evacuate the whole station with all due haste, I needed to make it seem like it could be bigger, or had a good likelihood of causing a fire.
My working efficiency ratio had dropped precipitously from my usual, with every useful output trawling through molasses. I tried to loosen the junction box wires carefully and make sure not to disrupt the station’s power flow anywhere, but my fingers were still twitchy enough that I was fairly sure I didn’t even succeed. Hopefully I hadn’t done much more than make the lights flicker. I kept an eye on the back door of the station just in case, while I twisted everything together and made sure the triggering mechanism would be hard to tease out.
The actual device I kept as hidden as possible. The K-9 dogs would be able to smell it once Rio tipped the station off, and I wanted the disarming process to take as long as humanly possible.
I finished and pressed my palms against my jacket. They were sweating. Jesus. I hadn’t made any mistakes, had I? If this bomb actually went off and killed a cop …
I followed the logic train of what I had done one more time. No. I was sure. I wasn’t going to hurt anybody.
With this one device for verification, Rio could probably imply there were a lot more threats on the premises. I closed the junction box, called Rio to give him the details, and then dropped back into Pilar’s Yaris to pull away while he did the threatening part. I kept eyes on all my mirrors, but glimpsed no whispers of a frightening shadow.
I was starting to doubt having seen him again in the first place. But no, the way my whole body was still shuddering, not to mention every thought jumping like it was on a hot griddle—that was proof enough.
I looped in the opposite direction from the grocery store I’d shot up and parked in a bank lot a block down, where I still had a good view of the station. If I’d been in a better state of mind, it would have been funny how fast and brilliantly everything lit up a few minutes later. As if we had whacked a hornet’s nest that had been quietly minding its own business, the activity multiplied until the whole street in front buzzed with flashing lights and people in uniform. In short order, prisoners began filing out between watchful officers.
Yes. It was working.
Checker was easy to spot in his chair—I hadn’t thought of it till I saw him, but I was relieved they’d let him move under his own power, though his progress was stilted enough that I could tell he was probably cuffed to the frame. He sat between two uniforms in the parking lot for a long damn time, many minutes after all the other prisoners had been carted away, until I wanted to scream, because my bomb wasn’t going to go off but if D.J. had left anything, it would take everyone out sooner before later …
Finally a lift van pulled up and swallowed Checker and his escorts. Cursing the ADA under my breath while almost blacking out with relief, I followed them.
* * *
MY FIRM intention was to stay glued to the new precinct until Checker was released. It couldn’t be too long, could it? Now that Arthur was safe, as soon as we got some