Time Bomb(59)

“I didn’t do this.”

“Of course not.” Tad stood up and stepped over the cords and the stretcher and everything else in the middle of the floor. “It’s not you, and it sure as heck isn’t me.”

“How do we know that?” Cas asked. “You could be lying. Anyone in this room could be lying, and we wouldn’t know until it was too late.”

“I don’t believe he’s lying.” Rashid stepped around the desk to stand at Tad’s side. He’d seen Tad’s face when he realized there was a bomb in the locker. He hadn’t a clue what he was looking at until it was almost too late.

“You can’t know that for sure,” Diana said. She’d crossed to the door and peered down the hall.

“He had a chance to get out of the school after the bombing, and he didn’t take it,” Rashid said, then turned toward Cas. “Tad rescued me instead and got trapped with the rest of us.”

“That proves nothing,” Cas shot back. “He might be a suicide bomber. He might want to die to prove his point.”

“Dying doesn’t prove a point.” Rashid threw up his hands and kicked a box of Bunsen burners across the floor. “It’s crazy that some people think suicide bombing is a noble thing that will change the world. All it does is kill people. Killing doesn’t change minds. It doesn’t change the Koran or the teaching of Allah that taught me to be kind to all people and humble in all things. It just kills.”

“And trust me when I say that I don’t want to die,” Tad added.

“But they think one of us was working with the other bomber,” Cas said.

Another bomb, Rashid thought. “If they are right and there is another bomb, the bomber would want to make sure it went off.”

They all turned toward the door.

“Z came up with the plan to leave,” Tad said. “What if he was just trying to get away so he could detonate the last bomb?”

“What did Z say to you?” Diana stormed toward Cas. “When he left, what did he say?”

Cas looked toward Tad, then to Rashid, and finally back at Diana. “He said that he knew what it was like to want to die.”

“It’s got to be him,” Diana said.

“And Frankie’s out there with him.” Cas bit her lip. “He doesn’t know Z might be trying to set off another bomb.”

The radio crackled, and the woman’s voice said something about firefighters pulling another person out from the first floor. Then the sound faded. Rashid leaned closer, trying to hear the announcer as she talked about the identity of the first bomber, who . . . then there was nothing. The batteries had finally died.

“We have to warn Frankie.” Diana tried to push Tad out of the path of the door.

Tad held his ground. “Stay here. Z and Frankie were going to go in opposite directions. If they did, then Frankie is most likely on the other side of the school from where the bomb will go off, and that’s probably the safest place to be.”

“What about us?” Cas asked, stepping toward Kaitlin.

“The bombs didn’t destroy this area before,” Rashid explained, trying to calm the panic growing inside him. The bomber might not be Z. If not, then it was someone else . . . maybe someone he was looking at now. “This room was the one least touched by the explosions.”

“This room didn’t get destroyed by those bombs,” Diana said. “If the next explosion is above or below us, we won’t be that lucky.”

Cas shook her head.

“That’s not going to happen,” Tad insisted.

“How do you know?” Cas asked. “Why were you in the school anyway?”

Tad stared at her. “Didn’t you just say the bomber was Z? Why question me?”

“I want to know why you were here. Do you have a reason?”

“Yeah. I had a reason.” Tad looked toward the open doorway. “I got involved with someone this summer who I thought really liked me and I liked him, only he decided to stop answering my texts and my calls. I knew he’d be here today. I wanted him to have to face me instead of pretending like I didn’t exist. I wanted him to have to look me in the eyes, because I’m tired of people not looking at me so they can pretend that I’m what they want me to be instead of facing who I really am.” Tad spat out the last angry words. “I wanted him to know what it felt like to be me.”

Rashid felt that anger down to his soul. He knew it better than he knew anything else in his life. He was Muslim. He was American. Most people seemed to think he couldn’t really be either by being both. Too American to be a true Muslim. Too religiously observant to be a real American. There was no right way to be both. But he was both. All he wanted was to be himself—whoever that was. He just wanted the freedom to find out. “So you were going to try to make him really see you—kind of like me shaving my beard.”

Tad cocked his head to the side. “Yeah.” He nodded, almost to himself. “Yeah.” He turned toward Cas. “But just because I’m tired of people pretending I’m not gay or that I’m not more than just white or black or whatever doesn’t mean I was looking to blow up the school and my ass along with it.”

“Well, the cops say they’re looking at one of us.” Cas looked around the room at each of them. “It could be Z, but it could be someone else. How can we be sure who it is?”