Torin (Hope City #9) - Maryann Jordan Page 0,44

gaze met Timothy’s before lifting a brow.

Timothy growled, “Shut the fuck up, Bob, and just listen. Stop showing everybody what a moron you are.”

Roger nodded, then began again. “IED just stands for improvised explosive device. It isn’t something you order out of the fuckin’ catalog and make out of a kit that gets delivered in the mail. Most of the time, IEDs are made out of old explosives or anything that can create deadly projectiles.”

“How did you learn this stuff?” Marty asked, his forearms resting on the table and his hands around his beer.

Roger grinned. “Hell, I learned a lot of this in the military. And you can find anything on the Internet. This shit was even written up in a magazine posted by Al Qaeda.”

“I don’t trust that foreign shit,” Bob mumbled under his breath.

Timothy shot another glare toward his son, thankful when Bob shut up.

Tyrone ignored his cousins but looked straight across the table to Timothy. “Look, you told me you needed something, and I feel like I owe you. You took me in after my mom died, so you got my gratitude, Uncle Timothy. Roger here knows more about the shit than anyone. I know you said something about an old, empty building, and I don’t know what you’re going to use it for, but I know you gotta do it right, and you gotta do it smart, or we could all be spending the rest of our life in jail.”

Roger shook his head emphatically. “Let’s get one thing straight here and now. I’m here to give information only. I’m not going to make the shit for you. I’m not going to get this shit for you. I’m not going to set the shit for you. I don’t want to know what you are going to use the shit for. I’m here purely as a consultant.” His hand fisted on top of the table, then he added, “This shit is not going to be traced back to me, but I sure as hell will be paid for my time and trouble.”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” Timothy assured. “You teach me and the boys what we need to do, and we can take care of it.”

The next couple of hours were spent as Roger explained each step of creating a pressure cooker bomb. Bob remained quiet, doubt written on his face until Roger showed them videos of the results of one exploding. Then, Bob suddenly sat up and grinned. “That’s fuckin’ amazing! I can’t believe we can make that!”

Roger described the materials they would need, and Timothy nodded his head slowly. We can get everything from our local superstore.

Marty had been taking notes, then looked up and asked, “I get how to put it all together, but what about getting the pressure cooker to go off when we want it to?”

“If you’re looking for a specific time, then it’s going to be harder because you’ll have to be precise with the type of incendiary material you enclose in the detonation.”

“The huh?” Bob piped up.

Timothy sighed and shook his head slowly. “What makes it get hot and what makes it go boom, you idiot.”

Seeming to now ignore Bob, Roger continued. “If you’re not trying to get one to go off at a certain time, you can get it set up, detonated, and then when it goes off, it goes off.”

“That ought to be good enough,” Marty said. “Because we just wanted to—”

Roger cut him off. “No! I don’t want to know. All I’ve done is come here with my friend, Tyrone, to spend the day with his family, have a few beers, and then I’m going back to North Carolina. We did nothing but chat about my time in the military. Anybody here fucks up something and it gets back to me, I didn’t know nothing. Don’t want to know nothing. You’re on your own.”

“Understood,” Timothy said, nodding his agreement. “But I don’t see how this can be traced back to us. Everything we need can be bought by anybody. We wear gloves for handling the shit, there ain’t going to be no fingerprints to trace back.”

Roger continued with his explanation, showing websites and pictures, careful not to write anything down himself but looking over the notes that Marty was taking.

Finishing their beers, Roger stood and leaned over the table with his hand out toward Timothy, who stood as well. Shaking hands, Timothy felt more excitement than he had in months. A reason to get out of bed. A reason