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  Kneeling and holding her position for so long beneath the weight of the bomb had her entire body aching, ready to collapse. She just had to stay strong long enough for Drake to get here.

  Then Kasanov surprised her. He leaned back and said, “I really thought Drake would have figured it out sooner.”

  Cassie frowned at that, trying hard not to move. “You want him to come here?”

  “Of course. I want him to suffer as I have. Knowing that you were the cause of all this death and destruction. They can see us clearly through the showroom window—it’s why I chose this place. They’ll call for SWAT and the bomb squad, whoever. Drake will be forced to watch. I’ll wait until the first wave of officers comes in, trips the motion detectors. Or if their SWAT team snipers kill me, then this,” he raised his fist with the detonator, “will set the bomb off as soon as my grip loosens.”

  “A dead man’s switch.”

  “Exactly.” He beamed at her as if she were a slow student who had finally gotten an answer correct. “I didn’t come here tonight to learn about a treasure. I came here tonight to die. With you, Dr. Hart.”

  Chapter 36

  THE HOLE VINCENT had used to escape the fenced in scrapyard was hardly a hole, Drake discovered. More like a place where the dogs had dug out a few inches of dirt below the fence. Still, the dirt was loose and it was easy enough to enlarge it to accommodate the larger bulk of a full-grown man wearing a tactical vest. He just hated wasting the time.

  He knelt in the dirt and used the stock of the shotgun to dig, jabbing it furiously into the earth and ramming the soil out of his way. Usually, situations like this, he was able to keep his heart rate low, slow his breathing, stay focused and in control. But after everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, knowing Hart was in there along with innocent children, knowing the killing spree Kasanov had gleefully left in his wake, there was no way in hell Drake was in control. What he felt was the exact opposite of being in command of the situation, more like a berserker frenzy.

  Which was exactly why Mandy Devlin hadn’t wanted him involved. Too much emotion, too much adrenaline, and he could get everyone killed.

  He cleared enough space beneath the fence. Shedding his vest, he stacked it and the shotgun against the fence and belly crawled through. Spitting dirt, he reached back and dragged the Remington and his vest through, then knelt there for a moment, his vision hazed red. Breathe, damn it. His fingers fumbled the vest back into place, a quick check of the pockets to make sure he still had the flex-cuffs, extra ammo, paint can, OC spray, and flashlight.

  Still shaky and breathing too fast, he climbed to his feet. Saw a shadow overhead: the drone. He waved at it and it did a quick circle in acknowledgment. Mandy had come through with the cell and radio jammer. He drew in a deep breath. Finally, something had gone right tonight.

  Time to finish this.

  His plan was simple: take out the guards and sneak into the car dealership while the SWAT team got in position. Vincent had shown him how to access the car building via a side entrance away from the bombs—Kasanov’s exit strategy, Drake guessed.

  He skirted the piles of broken-down vehicles until the blazing lights of the car dealership came into sight. The large, plate-glass windows of the showroom revealed everything: children lying still on the floor, Kasanov standing, holding a detonator in one hand and a pistol in the other, and Hart. Kneeling. With a suicide bomb vest strapped to her body.

  Time for a change of plan.

  <<<>>>

  “YOU DID ALL this, killed innocent people, just to kill yourself?” Cassie asked.

  “They weren’t all innocent. Certainly not Alicia Fairstone. In a way, you owe your fate to her. She killed my grandson, Anton. Anton was to be the future of my little enterprise. He would carry on my bloodline. Without him, I’m nothing. There’s nothing left for me. Except death. A death of my choosing, not some random whim of fate.”

  Cassie looked past him to the children who all now lay unconscious on the floor. “That’s ridiculous. Look at those children. You could have raised one of them to carry on—”

  He leapt to his feet. “Blood is everything,” he thundered down at her. “My worthless daughter, Natasha, might be content leaving my legacy to gaje, but that’s not why my father died, not what my mother taught me.”

  Speaking of Natasha, where was she? The woman had vanished. Cassie focused on the immediate problem—reasoning with Kasanov. “Please. They’re just children.”

  “You think I care? That I haven’t killed women and children before? I had a lot of fun in my youth searching out women who could have been Rosa—I even killed my fellow Roma and others who knew her during the war, trying to find her. You see, she disappeared so completely we could find no trace. My mother didn’t know Padraic Hart’s name, much less where they might have taken the gold. It wasn’t until the Berlin wall came down and the Stasi opened its archives that I even found a photo of Rosa.”

  “That was almost fifty years after she left France—you were still looking for her?”

  “Of course. She owed me a blood debt. I was not about to forget that. By then I had lost much of the fury that drove me as a youth, learned more patience. With the info I found in the Stasi files, I tracked her here, to Pennsylvania, but then lost her once more. When it came time to get Anton the computer skills necessary to revitalize our family enterprise, I sent him here with Natasha and she kept looking.”

  His face twisted with pain. “Fate is cruel, though. After Anton was killed, when I saw the police file and investigated the detectives involved in his case, I found Drake—and photos of you, the spitting image of Rosa. Too late to save my family, but never too late to savor vengeance.”

  “Do it, then,” she challenged him. It was the only way she could save Drake and the other police officers. He’d be here soon. “Kill me now. Let’s die together.”

  His grimace of pain turned triumphant. “It won’t be that easy. Not for the last person on earth who has Rosa Costello’s blood. You deserve a fate that will make the universe forever curse her name as I have. And your Drake? He’ll be a withered husk of a man after tonight, after he witnesses what you have caused. Guilt will gnaw at him, eat him alive, twist and tear at his heart better than any torture I could devise. You’ll die knowing you destroyed the man you love. It’s not the justice my father deserves, but it’s the closest thing I can give him.”

  Tears burned Cassie’s eyes even though she didn’t dare wipe them away for fear of detonating the bomb. She should, she knew. Just jump up, end it all before Drake or the other police officers came in and got themselves killed.

  But she couldn’t. Not because she was afraid of dying, rather because she could not give up hope. Life is hope.

  Typical Rosa. Always had to be right.

  Drake would find a way. He always did.

  Chapter 37

  THE DOGS BEGAN barking. Kasanov stopped his frenetic pacing and smiled down at Cassie. “Sounds like Drake has finally arrived. Better late than never.” He straightened his shoulders and raised his gun to aim it at Cassie’s head. “Let’s see if the SWAT snipers are paying attention.”

  Nothing happened. No laser sights aimed at Kasanov, no shot shattering the windows. He frowned.

  “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” came a man’s voice from a hallway on the far side of the showroom.

  Cassie’s hope died. It was Drake. Accompanied by two of Kasanov’s guards. They shoved him forward and beamed triumphantly.

  Drake winked at Cassie, then focused his attention on Kasanov. She wanted to run to him, leap into his arms. She wanted to slap him silly for walking into Kasanov’s trap—what the hell was he thinking?

  Most of all, she wanted him gone. Far from here. Safe.

  Pinned in place by the bomb, she could have none of that.

  Kasanov appeared equally unhappy. He whirled on the two guards, raised his pistol and shot them both in the face before they could respo
nd. Their bodies slumped to the floor. Drake froze, hands raised in surrender.

  “You were supposed to be watching,” Kasanov shouted at Drake. “Where the hell is your bloody SWAT team? Why haven’t they ended this?”

  “I haven’t given them the signal to,” Drake said calmly. As if he were in charge.

  “Then you can go to hell.” Kasanov raised his hand with the detonator.

  Cassie kept her eyes open. Drake was still a good ten feet away, too far for her to touch, but if she was going to die, she wanted him to be the last thing she saw. He smiled at her. Not a sad smile, not a “good-bye forever, I love you” smile.

  More like a, “don’t worry, we can handle this” smile.

  Kasanov pressed the button. Nothing happened.

  Before Drake could make a move, Kasanov swung on Cassie. He lowered his pistol, resting it against her forehead. “There’s a mercury switch on her bomb,” he told Drake. “I so much as bump her and it blows.”

  Drake nodded as if he’d expected this. “I came here to update you on Alicia Fairstone. Turns out we won’t be charging her with murder after all.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kasanov’s voice was tight with fury.

  “She’s innocent. Your grandson was already lying dead on that road before her car hit him.”

  “But how—who?” The gun pressed against Cassie’s forehead bounced with energy. It took everything she had to not let it rock her body.

  “I think maybe it was his landlady,” Drake said in a calm voice as if they were playing a game and he’d just suggested the killer was Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead pipe. “Not exactly sure why. But when we went back and interviewed his friends at school, we learned he was saving money, planning to move out. And he’d already approached his professors about job opportunities with several Fortune 500 companies.”

  “No. He’d never…” Kasanov shook his head. “Young, foolish, traitor.”

  “Natasha had to punish him.” Cassie tried to fill in the blanks, help Drake. She had a feeling he was bluffing. Despite the fact his face was devoid of emotion, she was expert in reading his body language. He wasn’t as confident as he sounded. “Natasha could never let him betray you like that—she was loyal to you, to your family.”

  Kasanov frowned in thought. He glanced around, seemed to realize Natasha had vanished.

  Drake picked up on it as well. “Or maybe the opposite. Maybe she liked living here as well, feared that if Anton left her, pursued his own dreams, then she’d be abandoned, left behind to face you and take the blame. I imagine she knows better than anyone how you reward failure.”

  “I’ll kill the bitch—” Kasanov faltered, obviously seeing the paradox. He’d boxed himself in.

  “Lower the weapon and surrender,” Drake coaxed him. Cassie realized that as they talked, he’d been edging forward, getting into position to tackle Kasanov. But he’d have to do it without knocking into her or allowing Kasanov to move her.

  Kasanov appeared to actually consider it. He straightened, his gun leaving Cassie’s forehead—although still aimed at her.

  The glass behind her cracked. A dark spot appeared directly between Kasanov’s eyebrows. Drake hurtled through the air to push Kasanov’s body away from Cassie.

  They crashed to the floor. Kasanov’s foot knocked into Cassie’s arm. She held her breath, tightened every muscle in her body, and strained to hold still, her gaze fixated on the silver mercury in its glass enclosure. It jiggled and slid a hair’s breadth to one side.

  And then Drake was there. Kneeling in front of her, steadying her. The mercury stabilized. Cassie looked up, let her breath out.

  “Sorry I’m late to the party,” he said. He rested his forehead against hers, his hands bracing her shoulders, keeping her still and safe.

  Chapter 38

  “Muriel?” Cassie whispered. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. They never hurt her—had some woman scream as if she was being tortured, but all they did was drive her around in circles.”

  “You need to leave. Take the children with you,” Cassie begged. “Please, Drake. Think of your mother. And those kids need you. Start with the smallest, they’ll need treatment faster than the others.”

  Footsteps sounded from the same direction Drake had come from. A woman carrying a toolbox and wheeling what looked like a tiny cement mixer joined them.

  “I’m Mandy Devlin. I’ll be your friendly neighborhood bomb removal expert today. Now let’s see what we have here.” She put her hand on Drake’s shoulder. “You need to step back now, Drake.”

  He nodded and moved reluctantly to one side, ending up at the body of one of the guards. He bent and retrieved his service weapon, holstering it, then stepped as close to Cassie as he could without getting in Mandy’s way. Too close. Cassie felt her strength ebb, knew she couldn’t hold out much longer.

  “No,” Cassie said to both Mandy and Drake. “Get the children out first. He poisoned them, I don’t know with what, but they need to get to a hospital.”

  “Sorry,” Mandy answered. “I can’t let anyone else in here until we defuse this. Can’t risk it.”

  “Drake, you have to do it, then.”

  Mandy concentrated on a dental mirror she used to examine every nook and cranny of the bomb vest. “She’s right. Go. Now. Just make sure you follow the same path out as you did coming in. We can’t completely clear the building of the other IEDs until I finish here.”

  Drake crouched down, one palm on each side of Cassie’s face. “I’ll be back.”

  He left Cassie and ran to grab the two smallest of the children, one slung over his shoulder, the other in his arms, and left. Mandy took his place in front of Cassie, her toolbox open beside her.

  “How come you’re not wearing one of those bomb suits?” Cassie asked, not sure if that was a good thing or not.

  “You ever try one of those on? They take forever to get into, weigh like ninety pounds, and smell like a football team’s unwashed jockstraps. Ugh. Trust me, something like this, we’re both better with me going hands-on—not like the suit would actually save me from this kind of blast.”

  “Why didn’t it go off when you killed Kasanov?”

  “We jammed the radio and cell transmissions. Thanks to Drake giving us a head’s up so we had time to get here and have our equipment ready to go. I don’t think your friend,” she jerked her chin at Kasanov, “was anticipating us getting here so fast.”

  “No. He was expecting you to storm in—” Cassie remembered something Kasanov had said. “Did you deactivate the motion detectors? He said they’d trigger the bomb. He also said there were more.”

  “That’s why I’m the only one here. But yes, we got the motion detectors. We’ll clear the rest of the building—” She was interrupted by Drake’s return. “Thought we got rid of you.”

  “Told you, I’d be back. I’ll get the kids out—no need to risk anyone else. You just get her free of that goddamn bomb.” He grunted as he hoisted another kid, this one bigger, across his shoulder, and then squatted to lift a little girl into his arms.

  Mandy withdrew a small aerosol canister along with some wire from her toolkit. “Here’s how this will work. First, I’ll set up a bypass circuit. Then I’ll freeze the mercury switch and cut it loose so you can move. Finally, I’ll disarm the secondary trigger and cut the vest off you. Easy-peasy, one-two-three.”

  Cassie nodded. Her legs had gone numb beneath the weight of her body kneeling in the same position for so long and her arms were trembling from the pressure of holding her upright. “Just hurry.”

  She couldn’t see what Mandy was doing, but the bomb technician hummed a merry tune—Drowning Pool’s, “Bodies,” the same song Cassie used to teach CPR to first responders—as she clipped and snipped wires near the mercury switch. Then she used the aerosol spray. Freezing cold droplets hit Cassie’s breastbone.

  “Sorry about that,” Mandy murmured. She finished spraying and moved in with w
ire clippers. “Okay, that’s done, you can move a little.”

  “I’m kinda stuck. Are you finished?”

  “Hold on, just one more second.” She moved around to Cassie’s back and began to work there. Drake returned, smiled at Cassie, and gave her a thumb’s up as he gathered a teenaged girl into his arms.

  “Hey, lover boy,” Mandy called to him. “Tell my guys they can come in and remove the other casualties—only them, you show them the route. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  The sound of wires being cut came as Mandy’s hands moved over the blocks of explosives. “Most people don’t realize it, but trigger devices—in this case, blasting caps—can cause a heck of an explosion on their own. And we don’t want that, do we?”

  “No, ma’am.” It was nice to be able to breathe and shift her weigh—although the movement released a barrage of stabbing pain up her legs.

  Mandy kept working. Drake returned, accompanied by three more men—enough to remove the rest of the kids. He came and sat in front of Cassie, letting her lean her weight onto him, her arms over his shoulders, their foreheads bowed together. “You know, after this, my wedding surprise for you is going to seem really, really lame.”

  She couldn’t stop the laughter that shook through her.

  “Can we save the jokes for later?” Mandy asked. “Just a few more to go.”

  Cassie and Drake sat obediently silent, simply staring into each other’s eyes. Somehow, with him there, Cassie wasn’t afraid of anything. Mandy deposited the blasting caps into the same special container she’d placed the mercury switch into then pulled a pair of trauma shears from her toolkit. “Ready to cut this sucker off? As a fashion accessory, it kinda clashes with your dress.”