Chapter Sixteen
Eva was surprised something like this hadn’t happened sooner. She knew their luck couldn’t be that good. Still, she was shocked when the bike hit the door, she bounced against Devlin’s back. He stopped her from being pitched forward.
She reflectively was already reaching for the blade nestled in a special pocket in her saddlebag when the rear door opened just enough to hem them in. From her peripheral, she saw one of the men who’d existed the car reaching for her to tug her off the bike. She pulled the blade out and removed him of his arm.
He howled in pain as his blood spurted everywhere. “MY HAND!” he screamed over and over.
His two friends froze in shock for a moment. More than enough time for her and Devlin to make sure they wouldn’t try that with anyone else. Devlin cut off the hand of the man in the front seat, who’d been holding a gun on him. The third, the driver merely dropped the gun he’d been holding and turned around and ran. Leaving his friends, one in the passenger seat and the other leaning against the car screaming in pain.
She pushed the door against the guy behind them, giving them room so Devlin could back the bike up enough for them to maneuver around the door. Starting the bike up again, they continued on their way.
“Is the bike all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. You?”
“Fine.”
“Good. I’m surprised we’ve been traveling for as long as we have without some shit like that happening to us. We’ve seen enough of some of this being done to folks as we passed them by.”
What he said was true. They’d seen people looting stores and people grabbing things out of the looter’s hands. So the robbers were being robbed. They’d also seen people trying to hijack cars but not getting very far for those efforts.
They pulled down a side street in an attempt to get away from a clogged area. The homes on the street seemed well manicured but some of the trees were now lying across the yards, cracks ran up the side of some of the houses and the once green lawns were colored gray. But there were no cracks in the road they could see.
Devlin pulled over to the sidewalk, he kept the bike idling but took out his map.
“How much longer do you think?” she asked as he checked his map. They’d already been on the road for over an hour, they’d spent fifteen minutes at the dealership but they’d only made it as far as a neighborhood in El Monte. Thank goodness they didn’t have to get near LA, they could see the smoke rising into the air from a county over. They might not have made it through LA. She wondered if her store was still standing. Most of the traffic stuck on the highways were people evacuating from LA, they found out when they pulled up next to people in cars stuck in traffic and chatted with them. Still, at this rate it would be another two hours before they reached Palm Springs, at least the second location wasn’t far away.
“Depends on what’s ahead. But doesn’t matter, we have to keep going. If there’s a chance I can redirect any of the aftershocks or stop another one we have no choice,” Devlin explained.
“What do you plan on using as an explosive? I’m assuming that’s what you plan on doing, causing another explosion.”
“Yeah, I’m keeping an eye open along the way for what I might need. I didn’t dare risk going back to my place to get my stuff. Time is too important and I don’t know if my house in the Hills is still standing.” The least of his concerns.
He put the bike back into gear and they took off again, keeping off the main roads as much as possible and avoiding the interstate completely. They drove in stops and starts, some stretches when they could get up to thirty miles an hour. One stretch they hit fifty. Just beyond Beaumont, Devlin veered away from the road they were on and onto a dirt road.
“What’s going on?”
“Construction site, I’ve been looking for one that might be doing blasting work. I might be able to find what we need here.”
The site appeared deserted. There were two cranes in a large hole in the ground, a couple of dump trucks and two mobile offices side by side at the perimeter. Devlin pulled right up to the closest unit and stopped the bike. He got off and she followed glancing around. The road was still being built to the site, what was there was just dirt, enough for the trucks to drive on. The car clogged street was blocks away and barely seen through the foliage.
“I’m sensing someone in one of the trailers,” she whispered to him.
“Can you stay out here and let me know if anyone comes around?” Devlin asked.
“Sure.” She leaned against the bike and kept scanning the area but before Devlin reached the door of the unit, someone stepped out of the other mobile building. He was dressed in a gray uniform. Security maybe?
“Site’s closed,” the man said, his hands rested on his waist something long and dark dangled from his hand.
Devlin glanced at the man as he changed course and walked toward him. He didn’t appear to be carrying a gun, just what looked like a long stick. There were three steel steps that lead to the open door the man stood in front of. Devlin stopped at the bottom and captured the man’s gaze, until he’d grabbed his mind. “I need to see inside.”
The man backed up a few steps until he’d crossed the threshold, Devlin moved quickly so he was right behind him and shut the door. He scanned the room, they appeared to be the only ones here, but he wanted to be sure. “Are you here by yourself?”
The man stood rigid, unblinking under Devlin’s control. “No.”
“Who else is here with you?”
“Pete.”
“Where is Pete?”
“Just went to get us some dinner.”
“When will he be back?” Devlin asked.
“Not sure.”
“Guess.”
“At least twenty minutes.”
“Okay good. Where are the explosives?”
“In the next room.”
“Is it in a safe? And do you have the key?”
“Yeah, it’s in a safe but I don’t have the key.”
“Okay.” Devlin glanced around and saw the man might have been sitting on a couch, there was a table in front of the couch and cards laid out on it. “Continue your card game. There is no one here with you. I am not here. You are alone.”
“I will continue my card game. No one is here with me. I am alone.” The man turned away, returned to his seat, and picked up his cards.
Devlin moved in the direction of the back room the guard had indicated. He found the safe. He was hoping it would be a coded lock safe and not one that had a more sophisticated lock, like thumb recognition. The hunter who’d trained him had been by trade a locksmith and had taught him a few tricks about opening safes. It had been a few years since he’d tried to do this but he was sure he’d remember. It took him a bit longer to crack it but he got it opened and it had the things he needed. He found a canvas bag that he placed the explosives in and the charges. He went back to the main area.
The man was still playing cards, he never looked up when Devlin walked past him.
“Everything go okay? You find what you need?” Eva asked.
“Yeah.” He opened up the storage compartment under the seat where his helmet would be stored and placed the bag inside.
She handed him the bottle of water she’d been drinking. He finished the half bottle and tossed it in the trashcan near the unit. “Let’s ride.”
They put their helmets on, got back on the bike, and Eva wrapped her arms around his waist again. He loved the way she pressed against his back. Even in this situation, he took pleasure in being with her and her nearness was keeping him semi-hard. It could have been worse, it could have been blue balls, which would have made it damned impossible for him to concentrate and drive, and he needed to focus. He needed to get them to the ground site before the sun went down. He had to be able to see what the hell was going on. He agreed with Eva, his gut told him the worst was yet to come.
It took them three hours, but finally they got to the coordinates Eva had on her phone. Her GPS wasn’t working too well, so they used a combination of the map and her phone. They left the bike and hiked up the mountain trail for a couple of miles. He knew when they found the spot. There was a crater in the ground right on the fault line.
The ground beneath their feet began to shake a little. Not as badly as earlier but still, it knocked them off their feet. “You okay,” Devlin asked as he helped her up.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Is this natural?” she asked.
“It’s not. Someone set off an explosion here.”
“And you think setting off another explosion will stop it from getting worse?” she asked.
“Yeah, I do. But first, I have to check the other site.”
“Okay, then what?”
“Then I plant other explosives to try to shift the plates back in line with each other.”
“Can you do that?”
He shrugged. “In theory, but it’s worth a shot.”
They found the other detonation by using the map and Eva’s GPS. Then just damn well crossing their fingers, as he found two counter points. He bent down to divide the charges he’d set, hoping the blast would be strong enough to shift and settle the plates.
Together, they set the new charges and the timer. It was best they not be near the zone when it went off. He gave them enough time to get back to the bike and out of the area. By the time they returned to the bike, the sky was blown up in an orange blaze just before the sun set.
“We’ve got to get back to my place,” Eva said.
“Shit.”
The roads appeared even more clogged. Just as the sun went down, they felt the ground shake so hard, Devlin had to stop the bike in order to keep them upright. He prayed what he’d done worked.
They would know soon enough.