“Jules.” He tried to keep his voice calm, although in his head, he was screaming. “Stay as still as possible.”
“Sorry,” she apologized in a small voice, moving her hands back to their original position. He lowered the bolt cutters again, working them around the chain until they were in position. “I’m really sorry if I get you killed, too.”
“Not your fault.” It was his. Once again, he’d been blind. Don, Sherry…who else was hiding their true desperation behind an amiable mask? He gritted his teeth as he squeezed the handles together. He’d missed the warning signs, and now Jules and Viggy could die.
The chain resisted, and Theo pressed harder, twisting the cutters from side to side until Jules gave a pained yelp.
“Sorry,” he told her, wiping the sweat from the side of his face onto his shoulder. “I can’t get a good angle.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Even in the bad lighting, her face looked too pale, almost green. “I’ll stop whining. Try again.”
Instead, he put down the bolt cutters and examined the chain. There was a small dent, but it wasn’t even close to being severed. The cuff around Jules’s right wrist had tightened even further, digging deeply into her flesh. A line of dark-red blood streaked the metal bracelet.
Theo swallowed a torrent of curse words. The cutters weren’t working. The way Jules was chained to the shelving prevented him from getting a good angle, one which would allow him to put enough pressure on the chain to cut it.
“Plan B,” he said, running a gentle finger over Jules’s purpling wrist and turning away. He was just going to have to use his rudimentary explosives knowledge and disarm the bomb.
No problem.
“Plan B?” Jules sounded a little panicky, but Theo figured she’d earned it. So far, she’d been pretty calm for a person chained in a walk-in cooler with a beeping bomb. “What’s plan B and how quickly can it get us out of here?”
“I’m just going to shut this thing down,” he said, still trying to use his calm voice. As Hugh and Otto had both told him many times, however, comforting people was not part of his skill set.
“Okay.” Her voice was higher-pitched than normal. “That sounds good. Shutting it down would be very good, especially if you can do that before it blows up.”
“Yeah.” He snorted, shocked that he could experience even a second of amusement, considering the situation. “That would be good.”
Using the same pen as earlier, he lifted the flaps slowly, one at a time. There were so many ways to trigger an explosion. Even removing a cardboard tab inserted in the electrical switch could set it off. Once he’d managed to get the box open, he blew out a slightly shaky but thankfully silent breath.
It was a good-sized bomb, homemade by the look of it, and the blasting cap was obvious. This would be simple. All he’d need to do was disconnect the blasting cap, and there would be no explosion—at least until the bomb squad took it away and did a controlled blast.
He pulled his multipurpose tool out of his BDU pocket and reached toward the box, but then paused, his hands hovering. The position of the blasting cap bothered him. It was too obvious, too glaring—almost like someone wanted him to find it.
There had to be a secondary one, one that would be triggered if the current running through the first was cut off. With the flashlight in one hand and the tool in his other, he gingerly moved aside wires, peering into the depths of the box to the piece of plywood at the base.
There! Almost hidden by the bundled explosives, a second blasting cap was tucked in the shadows, deep in the box. He kept searching, looking for a third, but he couldn’t find any more. If he could remove the second one from the circuit—assuming there weren’t any motion sensors or other traps—then he might have a chance of disarming it.
A bone-deep tremor vibrated through him. If he screwed up again, if he made a mistake that cost Jules and Viggy their lives, killed them just because they were connected to Theo… The thought was unbearable. Glancing over his shoulder, he couldn’t resist a final look at Jules. As bruised and scared and mussed as she was, Jules was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Viggy sat next to her, his eyes on Theo, that silly penguin at his feet. For them, for these two who, for whatever misguided reasons, loved him and trusted him, he’d do this. He’d fix it, fix what his mistakes and inattention had caused.
Pulling out the wire cutters in his multipurpose tool, he took a deep breath and reached in with surprisingly steady hands. The beeping had accelerated, making his heart pound in sync with its rapid rhythm. This was it. He detached the hidden cap, carefully snipping it clear. As he squeezed the handles on the wire cutters, he held his breath, half expecting that disconnection to trigger an explosion.