“Will do,” he said. “And Daws?”
“Yeah?”
“Luck.”
Damn, I really was almost in tears when I hung up. I rubbed my eyes and then called Malone back.
“Yeah?”
“You on your way yet?” Malone’s gruff voice asked. He was still at the residence they’d rented down the street from Jada’s place, tucked in with a skeleton crew.
“Soon. Probably need a few more minutes. I want to make sure I hear from someone about the delivery before I get in the car,” I told him.
“We may have a problem on this end.” He hesitated, and my adrenaline punched into overdrive. “I guess they needed insurance that Jada would go back.”
“What did they do?” Fear settled into the pit of my stomach.
“They planted a bomb in Violet’s lab.”
My legs gave out. I grabbed a chair and sat down before I hit the ground. “Did you disarm it?”
He hesitated.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Disarm it.”
“Langley. We are literally hours away from the biggest takedown of the decade. We’re not just throwing it away if we don’t have to,” Malone said. “From the pictures Violet took?”
“What the hell? You let her go in there, knowing there was a bomb?!”
“She volunteered.”
“I don’t care if she screamed and yelled and threatened to sue. You shouldn’t have let her go in.” My chest ached. Truck’s words about not fucking it up were doubly powerful. I couldn’t let anything happen to Violet because of me. Because of this.
“Calm down, Langley.”
“Do not tell me to calm down. She is not part of this. She isn’t an informant or an agent or anything. She isn’t trained. She will not be put at risk for any reason,” I growled.
“You have to stop letting your personal feelings cloud things,” he said.
“You haven’t even come close to seeing my personal feelings. If something happens to her, you’ll know what I mean.”
“Listen. We think we can catch the wireless feed, loop it, and send someone in to disconnect it, but we’re playing it safe. I’ve got an expert coming. They’ll be here before you even leave the city.”
I rubbed a hand over my face. My exhaustion was almost tangible with the combination of no sleep and deep emotions swinging from extreme highs to extreme lows. Fear. Triumph.
A bomb was in the garage at Mandy and Leena’s.
The reality of my hidden world blowing back in epic proportions onto the people I loved gathered in my chest like a rock.
“What’s happening with the guests at the B&B?” I asked.
“Nothing yet. If we think we can’t disarm it, we’ll come up with an excuse to clear them.”
My third phone vibrated, and I picked it up to see a text.
UNKNOWN: Leave the cabin key in the black box in the water tank of the toilet in the third stall of the men’s restroom.
ME: When’s pick up?
