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“Sounds like it. And there’s an innocent victim involved, too. So step on it, Caleb.”
“Like he isn’t already going pedal to the metal with lights and sirens?” Isaac muttered. “Cool your jets, man.”
Declan bit back a sarcastic reply, knowing his buddy was right. He needed to get his mind in the zone if he was going to be successful at disarming the explosive device in that classroom.
He went through his pack, double-checking to make sure he had all the equipment he’d need. Two weeks ago, he’d successfully dismantled the bomb that was found behind the counter at the custard stand. He wanted to believe he’d be able to take care of this latest bomb, too. So far they’d been fortunate that they hadn’t suffered more casualties. Although losing three people after the minimart blast, one cop and two civilians, was three too many.
Declan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. When they arrived, the area around the school was vacant. The first cops on the scene had done a good job of getting all the students and faculty as far away from the building as possible. Caleb pulled up to the front door and Declan was the first with boots on the ground, his pack slung over his shoulder.
“I’m going in,” he told them. “Isaac, you and Caleb stay here but keep the lines of communication open. I may need some assistance.”
“Roger that,” Caleb said. “We’ll be ready.”
Declan gave a brief nod before following the cop back into the school. The hallways were lined with coat hooks that were hung at what seemed like dwarf level. Even though he’d gone to school here, the place didn’t look at all familiar now that he was seeing the building through adult eyes. Then again, he hadn’t set foot inside a school since barely managing to graduate from Greenland High ten years ago.
He’d signed up to join the marines and left town a couple of weeks later, without looking back. After completing his six-year commitment, including two tours in Afghanistan, he’d returned home to join the Milwaukee County SWAT team to help support his older sister, Karen, and her young twin daughters.
“Third door on the right,” the cop said, hanging back in a way that made it clear the guy didn’t want to go much farther.
“Thanks.” Declan nodded at him, then headed toward the classroom.
He strode through the doorway, sweeping his gaze over the empty desks, papers and pencils scattered all over the floor. He zeroed in on the slender woman seated at the teacher’s desk. Her long wavy blond hair was pulled back from her face, and when she turned toward him, his gut wrenched with recognition.
“Tess?” He blinked, wondering if he’d made a mistake. But as he came closer, he knew he hadn’t. Tess Collins had been a year behind him in high school, but they’d never really been friends. She was the class valedictorian, while he’d been the town troublemaker. They’d rarely spoken until the night he’d saved her from an assault mere weeks before he joined the service. He wasn’t sure why she wasn’t a doctor the way she’d planned, but there wasn’t time to wander down memory lane.
“Don’t move, okay? I’m going to take a look at this device and see what I can do to get you out of here.”
“Declan,” she whispered faintly. And despite the seriousness of the situation, he was secretly pleased that she’d remembered him, too. “I thought you joined the marines.”
“I did, but now I’m back.” He didn’t want to scare her by pointing out how precarious her situation was, so he chose his words carefully as he gave an update through his radio. “Isaac, this looks to be a homemade device, although it appears the perp stuck a lot of extra wires into it, probably hoping to cause confusion.”
“Roger, Deck. Is there a timer?”
“Affirmative. We have less than twenty minutes and counting.” He knelt beside her and opened his pack. “I don’t want you to worry, Tess. Just stay as still as possible.”
“I’m trying,” she said. “I’ve been telling my students for years to sit still, but I had no idea just how truly difficult a task that really was until right now.”
After taking out his flashlight and peering at the device, he gave Isaac and Caleb more information. “This isn’t the exact same makeup as the device from the custard stand, but I still think it’s the same perp. I’m betting it has basic dynamite inside, along with tacks, just like the last one.”
“Tacks?” Tess echoed in horror.
“Roger that, Deck,” Caleb said. “Can you disarm it?”
“Affirmative.” Declan wasn’t about to say anything else that would scare Tess more than she already was. But the fact of the matter was that the placement of the bomb was ingenious. With it tucked up against the inside wall of the desk, and Tess’s knee pressed against the trigger, his ability to work around the device was severely limited. Their perp was getting smarter and bolder at the same time. Not a good combination.
“I need someone to take the teacher’s place,” he said. “Any volunteers?”
“I’ll do it,” Caleb offered.
“No way,” Isaac said. “You have a wife and daughter depending on you. I don’t have anyone dependent on me so I’ll do it.”
“No,” Tess spoke up. “I’m not switching places with anyone. That’s a waste of time. Just figure out how to shut it down, okay?”
Declan glanced up at her. “Tess, I want you to be safe.”
“I’m not trading places, end of discussion.” Her brown eyes were haunted. “I trust God and I trust you, Declan. We’ll get through this.”
Her faith, even after all this time, was as strong as ever and only proved once again how far out of his league she was. “Negative, Isaac. She’s refusing to leave. Sixteen minutes and counting.”
“I trust you, Declan,” Tess said again.
Humbled by her faith, he wanted more than anything not to let her down. “I’m going to move your chair as far over as possible so I can get closer to this thing, okay?” Deck stuck his flashlight in his mouth and turned over on his back, scooting under the desk. He held the wire cutters and then painstakingly followed the various wires.
Sweat beaded on his brow, rolling down the side of his face. Normally he was glacier cold when it came to disarming bombs. He didn’t mind putting his life on the line to save others. In fact, he figured this weird talent he seemed to have was his calling.
But knowing that Tess would suffer—and probably die if he failed—elevated the tension to a whole new level.
He twisted several of the wires and found the bogus ones, holding his breath as he clipped them and tugged them from the clay inside the box. When he was down to four wires remaining, he wiped his brow with his forearm.
“Five minutes and counting,” Isaac said in his ear.
He didn’t want to think about what Tess was going through right now. She hadn’t said a word as he worked, not even to ask how close he was to disarming the bomb.
“I’ve got four wires left. The rest were decoys,” he informed Isaac. “They’re all the same color, so I have no way of knowing which one is the ground, which one is attached to the timer and which one is the live wire leading to the fuse.”
“You can do it, Deck,” his teammate said. “Go with your gut.”
Normally that was good advice. But not now. Not when Tess was the one who’d die alongside him if he failed.
He closed his eyes and cleared his mind, trying to imagine what the device looked like on the inside. With Tess’s knee pressed up against the trigger, he hadn’t been able to get the casing off to see for himself.
“Three minutes and counting,” Isaac said.
“Dear Lord, please guide Declan,” Tess whispered. “If it be Your will, give him the wisdom and strength to disarm this bomb. We ask for Your mercy and grace, Amen.”
Tess’s prayer caught him off guard, but then again, praying certainly couldn’t hurt. He opened his eyes, and lifted the wire cutters.
“Two minutes, ten seconds and counting,” Isaac told him.
Declan stared at the wires. He grabbed the one that was farthest away from the timer. If he were the one creating the bomb, he would thread it through to come out the opposite end as a confusion tactic. He clipped it with the wire cutters. The timer stopped and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’ve got it,” he muttered. He clipped the next wire and relaxed when the bomb didn’t blow. “Tess, I want you to slowly move your knee away from the box.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, fear evident in her tone.
“I’m sure.”
She moved her knee and the trigger popped back out. And then nothing. Relief flooded him. He’d done it. But the danger wasn’t over quite yet.
“I’m going to ease out from under here, okay?” Declan slid out on his back, until his head was clear. He rose to his feet and then slowly pulled her chair back until her knees were free. He helped her to her feet and she clutched his arms, as if her legs weren’t strong enough to hold her up.
“I need you to get out of here. I still have to get rid of this thing.”
“Come with me,” she begged.
“Shh, it’s okay.” He pulled her close for a quick, reassuring hug, before he spoke into his radio. “The teacher is clear, I’m sending her out.”
“Roger, Deck. Good work.”
“Go now, and I’ll be out shortly, okay?” He hated pushing her away, but he needed her to be safe.
She stumbled a bit but then managed to get out of the classroom under her own power.
After summoning Isaac inside to lend a hand, he shoved Tess’s chair out of the way and peered beneath the desk. The device had been neutralized for the moment.
But until they’d safely taken it off the desk and placed it inside the cast-iron container, there was still a chance it could detonate.
Blowing him and everything around him to smithereens.
* * *
Tess shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms, chilled to the bone despite the warm September sunshine. She hadn’t wanted to leave, not until she knew Declan and the rest of the SWAT team were safe. Thankfully, no one asked her to; in fact, they requested that she stay, explaining that she still needed to give a statement.
The parking area was deserted, although there were plenty of cops along the perimeter. She saw a flash of green out of the corner of her eye, and when she swung around to look, she glimpsed a man wearing a green baseball cap, brown shirt and blue jeans hurrying away. She stared for a moment, thinking he looked familiar, but then shrugged it off. No doubt, he’d been told to steer clear of the crime scene by one of the officers.
“What’s taking so long?” she asked after a long thirty-five minutes had passed.
The guy in charge, who’d introduced himself as Griff Vaughn, barely spared her a glance. “They’re trying to cut through your metal desk in order to remove the device. They need to get it inside the steel box for safe transport and disposal.”
Logically, she understood what they needed to do, but she was still inwardly reeling from seeing Declan Shaw again. He looked different from the eighteen-year-old she remembered. Granted, he still had his dark brown hair and penetrating ice-blue eyes, but he was bigger, more muscular than before. And his face had matured, as well. Back when he was younger, he’d worn his dark hair long enough to brush his shoulders, but now it was cut military short, giving him a tough, no-nonsense look.
They’d been as completely opposite as two people could be, yet she felt oddly connected to him, just the same.
How ironic to meet him again in yet another circumstance where she needed to be rescued.
“They’re coming out, boss.”
“I see them. Caleb, get the woman out of here.”
“Come on, ma’am,” Caleb said, taking her arm.
She didn’t want to leave the vicinity, but since she wasn’t exactly given a choice, she allowed the tall, lean, dark-haired man to hustle her away. She glanced up at him, remembering the brief conversation between the guys, when Declan wanted someone to take her place. Caleb was the one who had just gotten remarried, and he had a young daughter. She found herself wondering what it was like for his wife to know he went into dangerous situations every day. She shivered and imagined it couldn’t be easy.
“We’re clear,” Caleb said into his mic.
They were too far away for her to see much, but she shielded her eyes with her hand anyway, catching a glimpse of Declan and Isaac carefully carrying a large box between them as they stepped slowly across the school parking lot. They tucked the box inside the back of the armored truck and then shut the back doors.
The two men spoke for a few minutes before the sandy-haired one opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. Declan jogged over to where she and Caleb were waiting.
“Good job, Deck,” Caleb said as he approached.
Declan brushed off the praise with a quick shrug and focused his intense gaze on her. “Tess, we need to talk.”
This must be the part where she was to give her statement. She nodded and Declan took her arm, guiding her over to another sheriff’s department vehicle parked in the shade of a tall maple tree that was just barely beginning to change colors in the warm autumn sun. She glanced over her shoulder, watching thankfully as the armored truck drove away with the bomb.
She slid into the backseat, feeling inexplicably nervous when Declan joined her. He turned sideways in the seat so he could face her.
“I need you to start at the beginning,” Declan said as he pulled out his notebook.
Tess explained how the events transpired in the classroom before she inadvertently triggered the bomb.
“How often do you sit at your desk during the day?” he asked.
“Hardly ever,” she admitted. “I tend to stand in front of the room and walk around as I’m teaching, but I do sit down for tests. And at noon, since I normally eat a bag lunch at my desk while grading papers.”
He nodded, jotting down a few notes. “Do you have anyone who might be holding a grudge against you? A boyfriend? Maybe an ex-husband?”
She blushed and glanced down at her hands entwined in her lap. “No, I’m not seeing anyone and I’ve never been married.”
“Tess, this is important,” Declan persisted, his gaze serious. “I need you to tell me anything in your personal life that might be remotely connected to this.”
She didn’t understand what he was getting at. “What? Why?”
Declan paused for a moment. “I believe your desk was chosen on purpose. And if you’re the target, we need to figure out what connection you have to the perp.”
TWO (#ulink_2f500c63-96d7-506a-b3ef-9caba4c913b7)
Tess instinctively wanted to protest, but the somber expression on Declan’s face forced her to bite her tongue. She thought back over the past few months. Pathetic as it sounded, she led a boring, noneventful life. She volunteered at the church, playing piano for the choir, and couldn’t imagine anyone who’d want to hurt her.
She didn’t have any enemies that she was aware of. In fact, she couldn’t even think of one single thing that she’d done to make anyone angry.
The thought that someone might have purposefully planted a bomb under her desk made her feel sick. She glanced at Declan, grateful to know she wasn’t alone. Just like ten years ago, she felt safe with him sitting beside her.
“There isn’t anyone I can think of,” she said finally. “The last guy I dated was the vice principal of Greenland Middle School, but he moved last year to take a principal position down in Missouri. I’m sure Jeff would never do something like this.”
“What’s his full name?” Declan asked, a frown puckered in his brow.
She sighed. “Jeff Berg. And I’m telling you, he’s not involved.”
“How long were you two seeing each other?”
She grimaced, wondering if this interrogation was really necessary. “A little less than four months. We weren’t engaged or anything. When he told me about the job offer, I was happy for him.”
“You didn’t want to follow him to Missouri?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, feeling defensive. Maybe she once had a silly schoolgirl crush on the younger version of Declan, especially after he’d saved her from that disastrous prom date with Steve Gains, but at the moment, she didn’t much like the man he’d become. Declan was all business, determined to get to the bottom of whatever connection he thought she had to the person who’d planted the bomb under her desk. There wasn’t a speck of personalization in his tone.
In that moment, he reminded her too much of her father. The thought was enough to get her ridiculous schoolgirl emotions back under control.
