Didn’t matter. He was long gone now.
And the timer clicked down.
Fucking45, 44, 43…
Not enough time. I’d disarmed bombs with less time than this, but with a trained team at my back. I couldn’t risk it now, not with Sylvie in the building. Not when the other option was to get the fuck out.
“Sylvie!” I shouted, no longer worried about surveillance. “Run! Now!” I was already sprinting down the aisle, shouting, “Sylvie, get the fuck out, there’s a bomb!”
“I found the box, Eli—” Her voice drifted through the dark, from too far away.
“I don’t care. Run!”
I should have headed straight for the door. But something in her voice had tripped me. She wasn’t going to run unless I made her.
I turned, darting down the aisle where I’d last seen her to find her halfway up a set of shelves, pulling on a box.
“We don’t have time,” I shouted at her.
My internal clock counted down.23, 22, 21, 20…
“I’ve almost got it.” She’d climbed the metal shelves high enough that her feet were even with my ribs, and she was reaching into the box.
In that moment, I didn’t care about Emily Shaw, about Silas, about anything but the bomb on the other side of the building. It had been plugged into enough explosives to take out the entire building, us included.
I wanted answers. But I didn’t want to die for them. Not yet.
I was done talking. I reached up, grabbed Sylvie around the waist, threw her over my shoulder, and tookoff for the door. My feet pounded the concrete, her forehead bouncing off my back. I didn’t stop until we were out of the building, through the gate, and across the street.
I bolted for the SUV, dumping her at the front, shouting, “Get in, get in, get in!”
The second her door closed, I threw the SUV in reverse and sped backward out of the alley, putting as much distance between us and the building as possible. As we cleared the alley, I turned the wheel hard, throwing the back end into another narrow street and hitting the gas.
All I could think was that we had to move.
I had to get us far away from that warehouse.
My memory of the alleys came in handy as I traveled them in reverse, literally, my eyes skipping between looking over my shoulder and at the rearview camera screen as the internal clock in my head clicked down.
5, 4, 3, 2…
The SUV shook from the blast. Above us, a flash of red and orange bloomed in the sky, illuminating billowing smoke.
I slowed down, taking the time to pull off a three-point turn so I could throw the SUV in drive, and we headed for the main road back to the highway. We needed to be gone before the fire department showed up.
I risked a turn that took us back in sight of the storage building.
“Oh God,” Sylvie said, craning her neck to look behind us. “It’s gone.”
I slowed before we took the next turn and followed her gaze. The storage building was rubble, the walls mostly collapsed around a raging fire.
“Holy shit, Eli. I’m pretty sure that had to be the guy who blewup my van.”
I was pissed. At her, at the situation. At the asshole who’d blown up our only lead.
But she’d said exactly what I was thinking.
“Did he look like the person you saw under your van?” I asked, turning away from the fire onto the deserted four-lane road that would take us to the highway.
