Chapter 22

I’m naturally irritated when I first wake up. It’s pivotal that you give me a few days to adjust.

Reagan

I made a decision and it was likely a stupid one.

But I didn’t have a choice.

I needed to do something and it needed to be done soon, otherwise I might very well go insane.

Granted, when I walked into the diner—no one with me but myself and my thoughts—I never expected him to just appear almost as if he’d been waiting for me to arrive. Nor did I consider actually having to do anything today without the support of Tyler at my back.

I narrowed my eyes at the lowlife when he sat in the seat across from me, something calm overtaking me.

“You came at last,” he drawled, eyes on me.

My heart started to pound and things inside of me started to shiver in fear.

“I didn’t know that I was meeting you,” I said sweetly.

I looked around to see who else was in the building and was thankful that it was only the owner.

I’d gotten there early. So early, in fact, that the regular crowd that normally congregated there for their breakfast—the eight old men—hadn’t even arrived yet.

I felt something stir in my stomach and returned my attention to Dusty.

“I kept waiting for you to be alone.” He paused. “I’m glad that you came today of all days. It’s going to be a good one.”

I felt myself tighten in anticipation—and not in a good way.

The way he’d said it made me think that he had something planned and that something wasn’t going to be good—whatever it was.

Dusty had never been called dumb. He was a schemer and always seemed to get himself into and out of, trouble. Granted, most of those times it was his father pulling him out of the fire, but he always came out whole on the other side and that was one of the things that sucked about him.

He didn’t have any failures under his belt because nobody ever told him no—nobody but me.

Which was likely why he became so fixated on me. Why he was doing the things he’d done or was about to do.

“What did you do?” I asked, trying to keep the fear out of my voice.

“Call your man,” he ordered.

A thick slice of fear started to crawl down my throat.

The phone was in my hand almost before I had a chance to think about it.

I was dialing Tyler’s number moments later and placing the phone to my ear.

He answered within two rings, but he sounded out of breath.

“Hey, baby,” Tyler said into the phone. “I’m not going to be able to talk right now. There’s a suspicious package in the middle of town and since it’s so close to the daycare, as well as the rest home, we’re a little concerned.”

I felt something inside of me drop like a deflated balloon. “Okay, Tyler. Be careful, okay?”

“Yeah, baby. Love you.”

Then he was gone, making tears clog the back of my throat.

“A bomb,” I whispered, my eyes on Dusty’s contemplative brown ones.

I used to think they were beautiful. Now I thought they were the color of shit.

“It’s a real one, too,” he murmured.

I didn’t doubt it.

“How do they know to treat it as a bomb?” I asked, not thinking I wanted to know the answer.

“Because I called in a tip,” Dusty said.

He sounded so proud, as if he’d done a favor for a friend or something when he was the one who’d freakin’ set it up!

“It has an hour before it blows.” He paused. “Unless what you say right now changes that.”

Tears of frustration finally met my eyes.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

Because I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Tyler would be the one to handle that bomb. Morally and ethically, he’d be unable to send anyone else in and that would likely cost him his life.

I looked down at my bare wrist, wishing that I’d not made the decision to leave my watch at home today.

On days that I didn’t plan on working, I left it there because it caused a funky tan line and I didn’t want it to look weird when I left it off—like right now.

By making that decision, I’d also taken away my covert dialing of 9-1-1, too.

My stomach soured.

“I want you to do a few things.” He sounded chipper. I wanted to punch him in the esophagus. Watch him choke as he tried to draw in air. “First, you need to get in the car with me.”

I wanted to refuse and he saw that, too.

Pulling up his phone, he pressed a few buttons and I felt my heart start to pound.

Moments later, he turned it toward me and I was looking at Tyler standing about twenty feet away, along with a few other officers. Tyler was pointing wildly, his mouth moving a hundred miles a minute.

“We’re going here,” he said. “So, he can see that I have you.”

I felt my heart start to race.

That was the one thing that I did not want to do—distract him. I didn’t want him to know that Dusty was anywhere near me, because if he did, he’d freak the fuck out.

And on top of that, he had a bomb to deal with.

No. I did not want to do that.

“Once he sees that you’re with me, I’ll set the bomb back an hour.” He paused. “That’ll give them roughly an hour and forty-one minutes to figure out what they’re going to do with it.”

“Then what?” I forced myself to ask.

“Then, we ride off into the sunset,” he replied like I was dumb.

“They’ll look for us,” I reminded him of the facts.

“They’ll try,” he admitted. “But they won’t succeed.” He leaned over and extracted a few IDs from his front pocket. “I got us everything we’ll need. And the first stop we’re making is Vegas so you’ll have my name, in real life and in fake.”

No.

No, no, no, no.

“The longer you take to decide, the less time they’ll have to defuse the bomb. And let me just tell you something, where I put it is the place likely to do the most harm. It’s big enough, too, to take half the town with it.”

I didn’t doubt it for a second.

“Let’s go.”

***

Tyler

“You’re saying that it’s rigged to blow the moment that we tamper with the doors?” Johnny asked.

I nodded. “Yes.”

“How do you know?” he pushed, wanting confirmation.

I gestured to the lower half of the door. “The wires. Right there.”

Johnny lowered the binoculars and whistled. “Fuck.”

“Then what do we do with it?” Rodriguez asked, sounding disheartened.

I didn’t know.

The closest bomb squad was in Bear Bottom of all places and that was at least an hour away and that was being generous. More like an hour and twenty minutes realistically. The squad would have to get to the station—which would take at least fifteen minutes for all individuals since the bomb squad itself was made up of about eighteen officers from eight police stations within the immediate vicinity. Longview, Kilgore, Bear Bottom, Lone Star, Gun Barrel, Hawkins, Waskom, and Hallsville. And fifteen minutes was just an average time. Some it might take upwards of twenty to thirty—if they were at their stations.

“I called the bomb squad in Bear Bottom,” I said softly. “And now we…”

A vehicle pulled up and my anger started to get the best of me.

“Who the fuck is supposed to be doing traffic control?” I snarled at Johnny.

Johnny’s eyes were pinned on the car, though.

“Chief,” he whispered. “Look.”

I did and saw the last thing I ever thought I’d see getting out of the car.

Dusty and Reagan.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

Reagan was crying fat tears as she stared at me from across the distance and everything inside of me screamed to go to her.

But I stayed still, certain in the knowledge that if I made even a single step in her direction, I wouldn’t like the consequences.

“Well, hey there, Hostel’s finest! How’s it going?” Dusty drawled over the hood of his car.

Reagan’s eyes stayed downcast and that was how I knew that whatever the hell was going on, she wasn’t there by choice.

“Can I shoot him?” Johnny whispered.

My hand clenched with the need to have my gun in my hand.

“Dusty Rhymes,” I said, my voice coming out calm and even. “Please, tell me why the fuck you’re here…with my fiancée?”

Dusty stiffened and looked over at the back of Reagan’s head.

“I don’t see a ring on her finger,” Dusty said. “But it won’t matter. By the end of the day, we’re going to be married, so that’ll cancel out your ‘fiancée’ status.”

I felt something deep in my gut start to burn.

That was when Reagan lifted her eyes and her gaze met mine.

What I saw was not something that was calm and collected. What I saw was the rage of an inferno boiling deep below the surface.

Her eyes pleaded with me to fix the place she found herself in and I wanted to. Oh God, did I want to.

I took a step forward almost as if I was being forced to and Dusty lifted his hand. “Take a single step more toward us and I’m blowing this hell hole sky high.”

I froze, seeing what looked like a crappy cell phone that was one of those ones that you bought at the grocery store—a pay as you go phone.

“Now that I have your attention,” he said. “We’ll be leaving. I just wanted you to know who this came courtesy of.” He paused as he started to drop into his truck. “If you try to stop us, I’ll blow it. If you try to open those doors to disarm it, it’ll blow…good luck!”

With that, he dropped in the car, but I didn’t move because Reagan’s eyes were still locked on mine.

She watched me steadily, her eyes so full and filled with anger that I ached to hold her in my arms. To tell her everything was going to be okay.

Only problem was that I couldn’t promise her that. How could I choose?

If I went after her, the bomb blew and who knew how many people would die.

If I stayed, the love of my life was going to have to be in the arms of that madman.

I saw her shoulders straighten and resolve steel her spine.

She mouthed ‘I love you’ at me and then got into the car and didn’t look back.

The moment that she pulled out of the parking lot, I had my cell phone in my hand.

Once I relayed what was happening to Bennett, I hung up and made another call.

“I need a tow truck here in about three minutes,” I ordered Rafe.

Rafe didn’t argue.

The moment that he hung up, I placed a third call, this one to Parker.

“Whatever you need, man,” Parker said once I’d told him what happened.

“I need you to follow them,” I said. “Keep an eye on them, but don’t get made. He’s got the fuckin’ remote detonator to a bomb that’s smack dab in the middle of the town’s epicenter.”

The fourth and final call came moments later just as Rafe was pulling into the driveway.

I swallowed as the phone connected.

“Yo,” Coke said. “What up, cop boy?”

I didn’t beat around the bush. “I need to borrow your place…and I need you to be prepared for anything. And…get the fuck out. Just keep the gates open.”

Coke’s place was outside of town.

With it being about ten acres of nothing but scrap, it would be as good of a place as any—as long as Coke and June were nowhere in the vicinity when I came rolling through.

A couple of months ago, Coke had done much the same thing with his own little bomb, parking it in his car crusher and hauling ass out of the yard with only moments to spare.

Me? I only hoped I had that long.