Time Bomb(54)
Frankie wiped his forehead with the back of his hand “Wow, you really do hate this school. Guess that’s why you aren’t ever here. If your parents decide to crack down, let me know. I could use another offensive tackle to protect me.”
Z wiped his palms against his shorts. “Well, my father died in a car accident when I was two, so I’m thinking he’s not going to be cracking down on my studies anytime soon. My mom was pretty good at keeping me in line, but the last couple of years, she didn’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it.”
“Why not?”
“Well.” Z panted. “It’s kind of hard to focus on driving your son to school and watching him do his homework when you’re strapped to a hospital bed, busy trying to keep cancer from killing you.” He looked at Frankie and shrugged. “Guess you didn’t expect that, did you?”
No. No, he didn’t.
He tried to come up with something to say, but words failed him as he stood on the chemistry desk, looking at the guy who everyone knew liked to cut class and cause trouble.
“Did your mother’s treatment work?” Rashid quietly asked from the middle of the room.
Z glanced toward Rashid, who was kneeling next to a grid of metal strips he was fastening together with wire and twine. Z’s hands squeezed the wires he was holding so hard that Frankie was amazed they didn’t cut into his flesh. And he felt the answer to Rashid’s question before Z said just as quietly, “She trusted the doctors, who said they were going to beat the cancer. She trusted me when I said I would never let anything happen to her. She died three weeks ago.”
“Man, I’m sorry,” Frankie said, thinking about his own parents. They told him how to act and why and what kind of person he should be. He hated how they got angry whenever he questioned going to youth group or tried to take a class they thought was pointless. They wanted their son to be the best—the most successful. But as much as he hated what they wanted for him and expected from him and how he had to push things he might want to the side . . . “I can’t imagine—”
“No, you can’t.” Z hopped desks, grabbed another fluorescent light, and screamed as he yanked down on it.
The voice on the radio faded, then came back up to full, static-filled volume as Z threw his weight into taking down the light.
Ceiling tiles around the light area cracked. Dust and splinters fell from above as something gave in the ceiling. Cas screamed, and Frankie rushed forward as Z fell flat on his back onto the chemistry table.
“Are you okay?” Frankie asked as Cas and Tad appeared on either side of him.
Z looked up at the colorful wires snaking down from the ceiling and coughed. “You’re right, Tad. The wire is really strong.” He coughed again, and Frankie put his hand on Z’s back as Z struggled to sit up. When he was seated on the table, he looked up at the ceiling and asked, “How much more of it do you guys need?”
Rashid looked down at the braiding Diana was working on and the stretcher he and Tad were creating and smiled. “How much more can you get?”
“I guess we’ll find out.” Frankie grinned back. “But it might help if someone found something we can cut these with.”
“Let me do that,” Cas said as Rashid started to get up. “I want to do something to help.”
She winced and swayed once she was on her feet. Even if they built the strongest rope ladder in history, Frankie wasn’t sure how she’d be able to use it when she was weak and had only one usable arm.
As Z grabbed a fistful of wires and tugged them another foot or so out of the ceiling, Frankie stepped toward the window to see what was happening. The radio was cutting in and out while the announcer gave the weather report and said they would be talking to an FBI spokesman in a few minutes.
It was hard to tell what was going on outside. There were ambulances and fire trucks and people in uniforms and with FBI jackets huddled together.
“Do you think there really are more bombs ready to go off?”
“They must think that there are, or the firefighters would be here rescuing us by now,” Diana said.
“I don’t get it.” Tad frowned. “I mean, if you’re pissed off enough to blow up a school, why not just blow it up all at once? Why do it piece by piece?”
“It’s dramatic,” Frankie admitted.
“It sucks,” Z snapped.
“Frankie’s right. And I’m betting the bomber is waiting for another rescue attempt before setting off any remaining charges,” Diana said. “Killing a whole bunch of people at the very end of whatever this is would make a pretty strong statement.”
“Killing more people would make a statement?” Cas stared at Diana. “That makes no sense. None of this makes any sense.”
“The higher the body count, the bigger the story. And the more they’ll talk about the person who caused the tragedy and the reason behind it, instead of the people who died in the tragedy itself,” Diana said. “Haven’t you ever noticed that one person getting shot gets covered for an hour or maybe a day, but if there are lots of people killed at once, the media runs stories for weeks? The killers’ pictures are plastered on the news day and night, and experts talk about who they are and analyze why they did what they did. And if the killers get away with it, the story becomes even bigger. Congress and the Senate hold hearings. Anyone who plans something like this has to do it in a big way, or it gets forgotten.”