Under the Knife(116)
“How much time do we have?”
“Plenty. Fifty minutes and change.”
By then I’ll be in Mexico.
Using Blade’s instructions, which he’d memorized, he initiated the hacking program. Three beeps sounded from his phone. There. I’m in. He rapidly inputted a series of commands, pushed the SEND key, and waited.
The screen flashed.
The timer halted its countdown.
He smiled. His shoulders, which he only now realized were hunched up to his ears, relaxed. “There. That should—”
The timer started spinning backward again, this time at a dizzying rate, the numbers blurring together as they spun toward zero.
What the hell?
He frowned and quickly began to restart the hacking sequence.
“Oops.”
“Oops? What do you mean, ‘oops’?”
“The countdown started again. But faster.”
“What?”
“Just—hold on a sec, Doc. I’m working on it.”
Goddamn you, Blade …
RITA
Rita didn’t like this. She frantically patted her jeans, looking for her phone. It wasn’t there. So she bent over and searched Spencer’s pockets until she came up with his. He groaned but didn’t open his eyes.
Luckily, Spencer hadn’t enabled the phone’s security lockout (typical Spencer, always trusting that way). She punched in Darcy’s number from memory, ignoring the LOW BATTERY warning flashing at the bottom of the screen, and the multiple text and voice-mail messages from Spencer’s friend Raj.
The phone signal was weak, one bar only. The call connected briefly, then dropped.
She dialed Darcy’s number again.
SEBASTIAN
Three more beeps from his phone as the hacking sequence finished its second run. Sebastian tried a slightly different command sequence, hit SEND.
The countdown slowed to its previous, normal pace.
But it didn’t stop.
Shit.
The timer was down now to nineteen seconds.
Okay. Let’s try this.
He started inputting more commands. Making things up as he went now.
“How much time do we have?” Wu asked. He registered out of the corner of his eye that she was now holding a phone up to her ear. Probably Cameron’s, since he’d disposed of hers earlier.
“You don’t want to know,” he said calmly.
Fifteen seconds.
His fingers danced across the screen.
Ten seconds.
“Sebastian?”
“Working on it.”
Tap, tap, tap went his fingers on the screen.
“Sebastian?”
Five seconds.
“Almost got it.”
“SEBASTIAN!”
He transmitted the final command sequence and held his breath.
Three, two, one.
Zero.
The waveform transmitted by the bomb vanished.
Christ, he thought. I’m too late.
RITA
Sebastian rapped on the phone’s side with his knuckles.
“Sebastian? What happened?”
He didn’t answer.
The call to Darcy cycled through several rings.
Then Darcy’s voice: “Hello?”
“Darcy?”
She’d never heard anything sweeter than that voice.
“Ree? What’s up?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Darcy said, sounding surprised. “Are you all right? Why are you calling—”
That’s when Darcy started to scream.
Rita felt as if her insides had turned to liquid.
She dropped the phone.
SEBASTIAN
Wu fell to her knees and splashed about in the mud, fumbling for the phone. She retrieved it and, clutching it in one hand, glared up at him, her face streaked with soot, blood, and tears.
In all of his years of doing what he did, Sebastian didn’t think he’d ever seen such an expression of pure, unbridled hatred.
All of it directed at him.
She hissed, “I promise you, you bastard, if anything has happened to my sister—”
RITA
She broke off as she brought Spencer’s phone back up to her ear. The call was still connected, but the LOW BATTERY signal was flashing more quickly.
What?
What exactly would she do to Sebastian?
Kill him?
Maybe, she thought. If she could. If her baby sister really was dead.
“Darcy?” she said meekly into the phone, her heart pounding and sinking at the same time.
No response.
She wondered if she could somehow grab the gun from Sebastian and—
“Hello? Rita? Are you still there?”
“Darcy?”
“Yeah. Hey, Ree. Sorry I yelled. I was out in the backyard, having a smoke—you know, because you don’t want me smoking inside. And this big-ass opossum just walks right up. Scared the living shit out of me. Big as a golden retriever. Swear to God. With that freaky long rat tail. And those teeth! It hissed at me, Ree. God, I hate those things. So. What’s up?”
Rita started laughing hysterically as the battery ran out on Spencer’s phone.