even to ask how close he was to disarming the bomb.
“I’ve got four wires left. The rest were decoys,” he informed Isaac. “They’re all the same color, so I have no way of knowing which one is the ground, which one is attached to the timer and which one is the live wire leading to the fuse.”
“You can do it, Deck,” his teammate said. “Go with your gut.”
Normally that was good advice. But not now. Not when Tess was the one who’d die alongside him if he failed.
He closed his eyes and cleared his mind, trying to imagine what the device looked like on the inside. With Tess’s knee pressed up against the trigger, he hadn’t been able to get the casing off to see for himself.
“Three minutes and counting,” Isaac said.
“Dear Lord, please guide Declan,” Tess whispered. “If it be Your will, give him the wisdom and strength to disarm this bomb. We ask for Your mercy and grace, Amen.”
Tess’s prayer caught him off guard, but then again, praying certainly couldn’t hurt. He opened his eyes, and lifted the wire cutters.
“Two minutes, ten seconds and counting,” Isaac told him.
Declan stared at the wires. He grabbed the one that was farthest away from the timer. If he were the one creating the bomb, he would thread it through to come out the opposite end as a confusion tactic. He clipped it with the wire cutters. The timer stopped and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’ve got it,” he muttered. He clipped the next wire and relaxed when the bomb didn’t blow. “Tess, I want you to slowly move your knee away from the box.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, fear evident in her tone.
“I’m sure.”
She moved her knee and the trigger popped back out. And then nothing. Relief flooded him. He’d done it. But the danger wasn’t over quite yet.
“I’m going to ease out from under here, okay?” Declan slid out on his back, until his head was clear. He rose to his feet and then slowly pulled her chair back until her knees were free. He helped her to her feet and she clutched his arms, as if her legs weren’t strong enough to hold her up.
“I need you to get out of here. I still have to get rid of this thing.”
“Come with me,” she begged.
“Shh, it’s okay.” He pulled her close for a quick, reassuring hug, before he spoke into his radio. “The teacher is clear, I’m sending her out.”
“Roger, Deck. Good work.”
“Go now, and I’ll be out shortly, okay?” He hated pushing her away, but he needed her to be safe.
She stumbled a bit but then managed to get out of the classroom under her own power.
After summoning Isaac inside to lend a hand, he shoved Tess’s chair out of the way and peered beneath the desk. The device had been neutralized for the moment.
But until they’d safely taken it off the desk and placed it inside the cast-iron container, there was still a chance it could detonate.
Blowing him and everything around him to smithereens.
* * *
Tess shivered and rubbed her hands over her arms, chilled to the bone despite the warm September sunshine. She hadn’t wanted to leave, not until she knew Declan and the rest of the SWAT team were safe. Thankfully, no one asked her to; in fact, they requested that she stay, explaining that she still needed to give a statement.
The parking area was deserted, although there were plenty of cops along the perimeter. She saw a flash of green out of the corner of her eye, and when she swung around to look, she glimpsed a man wearing a green baseball cap, brown shirt and blue jeans hurrying away. She stared for a moment, thinking he looked familiar, but then shrugged it off. No doubt, he’d been told to steer clear of the crime scene by one of the officers.
“What’s taking so long?” she asked after a long thirty-five minutes had passed.
The guy in charge, who’d introduced himself as Griff Vaughn, barely spared her a glance. “They’re trying to cut through your metal desk in order to remove the device. They need to get it inside the steel box for safe transport and disposal.”
Logically, she understood what they needed to do, but she was still inwardly reeling from seeing Declan Shaw again. He looked different from the eighteen-year-old she remembered. Granted, he still had his dark brown hair and penetrating ice-blue eyes, but he was bigger, more muscular than before. And his face had matured, as well. Back when he was younger, he’d worn his dark hair long enough to brush his shoulders, but now it was cut military short, giving him a tough, no-nonsense look.
They’d been as completely opposite as two people could be, yet she felt oddly connected to him, just the same.
How ironic to meet him again in yet another circumstance where she needed to be rescued.
“They’re coming out, boss.”
“I see them. Caleb, get the woman out of here.”
“Come on, ma’am,” Caleb said, taking her arm.
She didn’t want to leave the vicinity, but since she wasn’t exactly given a choice, she allowed the tall, lean, dark-haired man to hustle her away. She glanced up at him, remembering the brief conversation between the guys, when Declan wanted someone to take her place. Caleb was the one who had just gotten remarried, and he had a young daughter. She found herself wondering what it was like for his wife to know he went into dangerous situations every day. She shivered and imagined it couldn’t be easy.
“We’re clear,” Caleb said into his mic.
They were too far away for her to see much, but she shielded her eyes with her hand anyway, catching a glimpse of Declan and Isaac carefully carrying a large box between them as they stepped slowly across the school parking lot. They tucked the box inside the back of the armored truck and then shut the back doors.
The two men spoke for a few minutes before the sandy-haired one opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel. Declan jogged over to where she and Caleb were waiting.
“Good job, Deck,” Caleb said as he approached.
Declan brushed off the praise with a quick shrug and focused his intense gaze on her. “Tess, we need to talk.”
This must be the part where she was to give her statement. She nodded and Declan took her arm, guiding her over to another sheriff’s department vehicle parked in the shade of a tall maple tree that was just barely beginning to change colors in the warm autumn sun. She glanced over her shoulder, watching thankfully as the armored truck drove away with the bomb.
She slid into the backseat, feeling inexplicably nervous when Declan joined her. He turned sideways in the seat so he could face her.
“I need you to start at the beginning,” Declan said as he pulled out his notebook.
Tess explained
