It only made sense that Rose had been the one to fire the shot.
A breath later and the woman in question was at his side again. However, there was no gun in her hands.
“How do you shut the bay door?” she asked. Herbreath came out in a pant but there was power behind the words. It pulled an answer from James before a question.
“There’s a chain on the left side next to it. Yank it and it’ll fall.”
She was gone before he finished.
“Don’t move!” Her warning came only a few seconds before the familiar clank of the chain James had pulled slowly and with caution over the last several years sounded. He braced himself for what he assumed came next.
James couldn’t see it, but he sure heard and felt the metal garage door slam into the concrete floor beneath it.
“Does it lock?” Rose yelled out to him.
Again, he answered without wasting a moment.
“A latch in the middle! The bar secures into the ground!”
James could only see the back wall of the shop. Pegboards with tools, a workstation that doubled as a counter that ran the length of the wall, and the only door and its one way to access the never-used traditional front of the shop. The door that led into the office was to his left, out of sight, and to his right was the only other engine bay with its track clear and pit matching the one Rose’s car was sitting over now.
Which meant he had no idea what had gotten the woman more stressed out than the potential bomb beneath his seat.
It must have been enough to have her feel more comfortable locking herself in with a bomb.
After he heard a quick movement somewhere behindthe car, James finally had to do what any normal person might in this situation.
He finally asked some questions.
“What’s going on? Did you just shoot at someone, or did they shoot at you?”
He could hear Rose talking but realized it wasn’t at him. The urge to turn in his seat was so intense his muscles tightened to resist. He was about to ask again when the small woman managed to fill the entire space next to him in the doorway.
She was empty-handed still.
But she wasn’t panting anymore.
In fact, Rose Little looked frustratingly calm.
Which made what she said next even more wild.
“I have some good news and some bad news.”
Chapter Three
Rose was sweating. Her heart was racing and there was a hitch at her side. There was also blood on her right hand, something she only noted after trying to wipe some of the sweat off her palms in preparation for what happened next.
Blood, sweat and tears—not that she was crying—didn’t do much up against bombs. Or guns. Or men who appeared at a time that was too coincidental to not connect to the former, seemingly with no problem using the latter.
Yet in all the quick chaos, there was one thing that surprised her the most.
James Keller hadn’t moved.
At least, not enough to count.
Rose hoped their luck stayed true through this next part.
“The good news is, we don’t have to wait a while for the experts to show up before we move you,” Rose continued from her earlier statement, not giving the man room for a response. This time, though, she did pause a little as she looked at the space between the open car door and the concrete pit of the bay next to them.
