“Aside from Colton using paintball guns meant for children to shatter the windows?”
“No, I mean it’s really quiet now.They were firing like crazy and then when we got out here, they retreated.”
Crew inhaled with a growl.“Zara.”
“What about her?”
“I don’t know.I can feel her.Something’s wrong.”
They raced to the farmhouse, Avi worrying that one of the herd males had gone into the house where the females were hiding in the pantry.
Zara was at the front door and waving her arms.“Don’t come onto the porch!It’s a trap!”
Avi and Crew skidded to a halt a few yards from the bottom step of the porch.Zara pointed down.“I could feel something was wrong, so I snuck out of the pantry and saw Weston kneeling on the porch.When he ducked away, I saw a wire.”
Avi pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight, illuminating a nearly invisible tripwire stretched across the bottom step.
Ford and Grey appeared, pausing as they saw the light focused on the wire.
“This must be why Weston took off,” Grey said with a snarl.“I had him in my sights and then he disappeared like a jack rabbit.I couldn’t find him.”
“Those fuckers turned the house into a trap,” Ford said.
“They wanted us to chase them so they could take us out when we came home,” Avi said.“Colton is a menace.”
The thin black wire ran just inches above the porch step, stretched taut across the threshold of the front door and anchored to a support beam, which led to a small bundle tucked into the shadows behind one of the rocking chairs.
Crew crouched and looked at the bundle.Avi joined him, shining his light on it.It was a small propane tank, the kind used for camping, rigged with nails taped around it.
His heart dropped into his stomach.
“If we’d come charging up the porch, this could have taken us out,” Avi said.
There was a crude spark mechanism next to the tank, a rusted lighter striker tied to the wire.It would scrape and spark when pulled tight, igniting the propane tank and turning it into a shrapnel-filled fire bomb.
“They lured us out of the house to plant this,” Crew said.
Avi looked at Zara.“It’s a good thing you had a second sense about something going on, or we might have been in deep shit.”
She nodded.“Should we check the other doors?”
“I’m on it,” Grey said.He disappeared around the house.
“Baby?Head back inside with the others.If things go south, I don’t want you to get hurt,” Crew said to Zara.
“I don’t want you to get hurt!”
“I’ll be careful.We all will be.”
She nodded and blew him a kiss before hustling away.
The three males inspected the bomb carefully, finally figuring out how to disable it thanks to Ford’s mechanical mindset.
Ford pinched the spark mechanism to keep the striker from hitting it, while Avi clipped the wire with his pocket knife.As the tension in the line released, Avi exhaled slowly as no fire or explosion followed the snap of the wire.
Crew took the tank away from the porch and placed it gently in the center of the yard, then walked back to the porch.“He was trying to maim or kill us.It’s like he was trying to remind us that he’s still around and dangerous.”
“We got that message loud and clear,” Ford said with a grimace.
