Page 48 of The Vigilante's Lover

The explosion rocks the house and my first thought — and hopefully not my last — is Mia. She’s going to panic.

The reverberations continue as the house shudders, wood splintering, chaos raining down.

But I’m glad I caught my mistake in time to get behind a steel door. This building is full of them, being a safe house.

But I’m still seething at Klaus and Jovana.

The knot was a trick.

It wasn’t a blood knot. The trigger was made of completely different ropes. It took my adjusting the tension to notice the trick, and by then the coils had already released.

Very clever, Klaus.

I clutch the handle on the reinforced door, glad I was familiar with the safe house and its protected spaces. I go over the bomb’s working again in my mind. What had they wanted to happen? Mia to die? Me? Both? Then why the smaller bombs on the way in?

They hadn’t wanted me to escape. Maybe they thought Mia and I would work on this one together, and they would get us both. Mia had tied Klaus up. They knew she was well versed in knots.

To do it alone, I had to clutch the two ends of rope together, my hand serving the role of the fake coils.

The barest perceptible click from the other side of the door told me the bomb had been tripped.

I knew that if I let go, the sudden loss of tension would set it off immediately.

Pulling the ropes too far from the door would do the same.

Still, I couldn’t just tie the two ropes back together. There was no telling what was attached to the lower line, and I dared not test the amount of free slack I had left in the top line. I also couldn’t stay by the bedroom door forever.

What saved me was realizing that I needed something to replace my hand. To hold the tension long enough for me to get away.

I looked around at the hall. Nothing was within reach, except what I had on me. But that included a shoe.

Carefully I shucked one of them off and weighed it in my free hand. On its own I feared it was too light, but with its mate I knew it just might be enough. I lifted my leg, removed the other shoe, then tied them together. It would have to do.

My question was, as I held that weighted string in my hand, waiting for the bomb — was the reinforced room at the end of the hall strong enough to survive the force of the explosion?

I’m still waiting on that. More debris rains down.

I push on the side of the closet and feel it give.

The connecting wall has probably collapsed.

I’m safe here for the moment, so I wait a little longer for the house to settle.

It won’t help to survive the blast just to have the roof collapse on top of me when I try to leave.

It was a good bomb, probably the best I’ve seen Klaus do, since he’s not an ammunitions man. If I’d misjudged Klaus’s handiwork, it would have gone off almost immediately. But I was right, and I bought myself a few precious seconds as the weight of the shoes kept the line taut.

When I let go of the line, I didn’t wait to see the results and instead raced down the hall to the linen closet. I yanked the door open just as Mia’s voice started bellowing from the camera in my pocket. I had no time to answer. I shoved myself inside.

I almost didn’t get the door closed in time.

I felt the explosion through the floor a fraction of a second before I heard it.

A blast of heat and force pushed its way through the gap in the door as I slammed it closed.

Even inside the reinforced walls the sound was deafening.

The walls shuddered and vibrated with the impact and I was flung back.

I felt the crack of my video cam as I hit the wall, and Mia’s voice ceased.

Now that the worst of the crisis is over, I pull the video chat device out to examine the damage. The little screen is cracked and black. I push the buttons but get nothing. It’s completely inoperable. Mia will panic and run toward me. I know it.

And there are five working land mines still out in the field. I only disarmed one on the way in.

The urgency to get out obliterates everything else.

Don’t come toward me, Mia, I silently insist.

Wait by the car. Wait by the car.

I press my hands to the door. The metal panel is slightly bowed but otherwise intact.

I wrench it open and peer out. Where Mia’s room had been is nothing but a gaping hole looking out into the front yard.

The hallway is scorched and filled with debris.

Parts of the walls are missing. Bits of roofing and insulation hang down like old party decorations. The windows have been blown out.

I can’t see out the back. Enough of the walls are standing that the fields and the car where Mia waits aren’t visible from my viewpoint.

Surely she’ll wait by the car. Surely.

I take a tentative step out, making sure the floor is sound, then push through the mess to find a way out.

Then I hear it.

An explosion outside.

The land mines.

“Mia!” I shout, and crash through the debris.