all the energy she had left into not passing out.
* * *
CALEB WAS SWEATING BULLETS.
He split his focus between Charlie trying to fool the bomb by thinking Alyssa was still sitting on top of it and the woman herself. Since the water and fan hadn’t worked, she’d spent almost forty-five minutes being drained, and now he wasn’t sure if she’d make it past another minute.
Her head was leaning back against the headrest, and her eyelids seemed to be fighting gravity. Caleb wanted to touch her, to remind her he was there, but he couldn’t. Not just because of the bomb. While he was starting to get an idea of her character, she still had no idea about his.
And he wanted to keep it that way.
“Okay. Here we go. Get ready to grab her,” Charlie commanded. “I think I’ve—What the hell?”
Alyssa must have really been out of it. She didn’t look alarmed in the slightest at the sharp tone the man trying to disarm the bomb beneath her took on.
But Caleb did. “What’s go—”
Click.
“Damn,” Charlie interrupted. “Grab her!”
Click. Click.
“Grab her now,” Charlie yelled again, struggling out of the back seat in his uniform.
Caleb didn’t have to be told a third time.
He threaded his arms beneath Alyssa’s legs and back and hoisted her out in one quick move.
Click.
Charlie was already yelling, “Now run!”
Caleb tucked Alyssa against his chest and ran faster than he’d ever run before.
“Eight seconds,” Charlie yelled out to anyone who could hear.
Like ants in the rain, everyone in front of or behind the blocked-off perimeter of the parking lot scurried this way and that, trying to get as far away as they could. The crowd that had formed was yelling while deputies and bomb squad alike were barking orders to each other and bystanders.
Two members of the squad in particular stood out. Instead of running away from the car, they were running toward Caleb, Alyssa and Charlie with two dark blankets. When the five of them finally collided, Charlie yelled to hit the ground.
Caleb dove onto his side so he would take the brunt of the fall, and then just as quickly rolled over to cover the woman in his arms. The bomb squad men positioned themselves on either side of Charlie and Caleb and threw the blankets—which Caleb now realized were bomb blankets, made from layers of Kevlar—over each of them.
Caleb felt like he was being pulled every which way in the moments that followed. What-ifs sprang up in his mind like flowers in the spring—What if they hadn’t cleared the blast area? What if the bomb blanket didn’t help them? What if he never got to take Alyssa out for that drink of sweet tea he’d offered?—while his body seemed to be running on instinct. It created a cage around the woman, trying to make itself as big as possible to protect her at all costs. But then another part of him, one he didn’t know where it was coming from, was looking down at her face—slack from the unconsciousness she finally had given in to—and thinking how beautiful she was. But then everyone was yelling and he remembered to fear what was about to happen.
Not for himself, but for Alyssa.
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