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She spent the next two hours catnapping, and she suspected that Joe did as well, while Riley stayed awake and alert to any ht have dared to try He played nice, though, and Lonnie see used to his choice of e kind of wired-up country It see, after a while, and the road vibration was a constant, gentle e That was a fantasy life, right there, ever being able to look forward to so an hour when people weren’t trying to destroy her An hour to let her guard down, utterly, and put herself in the healing hands of so, always tense so--this was real life now

But the fantasy of that

"Wakey wakey," Joe said, and touched her shoulder, bringing her out of what she supposed must have been a wary doze, instantly and painfully alert "We’re here Gear up--we’ll need the guns"

She shot an alarave her a broad sular folks about two hundred ht? So? That’s cool I won’t blow your cover Most excite But Bryn didn’t see any way around it; Lonnie was bound to make assu the to Joe, who said, "Yeah,is eyes only clearance, so I can’t tell youis vital to our national security"

"Cool," Lonnie said "Are you going to giveher a competent and deadly as ever, and Bryn quickly followed suit "You do exactly e say, e say it, and keep your head down, Lonnie Let the professionals work"

"Yes, o with the eager smile

God, Bryn hoped they didn’t get hi close," Joe said Lonnie slowed the truck down, and Joe turned toward Thorpe "What exactly are we looking for?"

"There’s a billboard to the right What we’re looking for will be duct-taped to one of the posts"

"Anybody waiting?"

"No It’s a dead drop"

Bryn kneas a technical term, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t ominous Out of the truck they were exposed and vulnerable

"Thorpe," she said He looked at her with a frown grooved into his brow, and there was fright in his eyes, as well as distaste "You’ll go out with me to retrieve it Riley and Joe stay here to cover us and make sure Lonnie is safe" What she really meant was make sure Lonnie doesn’t run out on us, but the other way sounded better

Thorpe looked ht it waspaired up with her He preferred to hang out with Joe Fideli She understood that Hell, she preferred to hang out with Joe, too But he was going to have to suck up his prejudices and deal with it for five minutes God only knew, she’d had to put her own preferences on hold forwhat seeet a weapon?" he asked plaintively, as she checked her sidearave him a lifted eyebrow for answer, and threw open the door to juround That was a cell-deep relief, just to be still for a , but she couldn’t stand in place, either She grabbed Thorpe and pulled hiently swayed and creaked in the breeze The air felt clean and fresh to her, with the scent of sage rease of the truck As they stepped away from the cab, the industrial stench faded, and left theherbs and brush

Thorpeexposed, because he rushed forward toward the billboard’s base There were four heavy posts driven into the ground, and between theled spiderwebs

But the one on the end was cleaned of all that There was a dried-up stack of weeds packed in there, but it looked constructed, not natural

Thorpe shoved at the weeds, and revealed a shiny gray oblong of duct tape, lumpy in the middle He stepped forward and reached out for itand Bryn heard a very clear, crisp click A sound she knew all too well It sent a bolt of cold through her, and as Thorpe looked down, probably wondering if he’d stepped on a twig, she grabbed him and said, "Hold still"

"Why? What in the world--"

"Just don’t move," she said, and dropped to her knees next to him The dry, sandy soil had bloay a little and revealed the curved dull gray side of the top plate of the bomb She bleayIt wasn’t h she couldn’t be sure of anything without a better look at it

A look she wasn’t likely to get, considering that Thorpe was resting his full weight on it But she had dealt with enough of these types of bombs, and bomb makers, to know that the point wouldn’t be flash and show--not like a movie explosion, all flame and smoke This would be a dirty, hard sort of bomb, one packed with shrapnel that would rip Thorpe and her apart, and probably severely injure everybody in the truck, too Shrapnel was cheap and easy and utterly, horribly effective

It was all going to depend on the structure, and there was simply no way, and no time, to do an effective analysis of it Thorpe was screwed He didn’t have the discipline to hold perfectly still for hours on end, and even if he did, they couldn’t possibly stay here The very existence of the trap o over his face in waves of emotion that finally settled into a pale, still mask

"Listen," Thorpe said He licked his lips, and his eyelids fluttered shut briefly, and then he looked straight into her eyes "If you use this on Jane, you won’t have anything left to use on anyone else--nothing to backward engineer A weapon doesn’t do you any good if you don’t have the ability to reproduce it"

"We et the cure to our scientistsI proh," he said "Redundancy is everything, Bryn I lied to you There’s one more dose, the prototype I sent it as far away as I could with soht need it More than that, you need to keep it out of her hands"