“Lobby has them now,” replied Callan. “Assets now clearing floors above and
below.”
“Reporting positive audio fix on target inside 4-A, no visual yet.” Nikki looked
up the hall and continued, “Door still intact.”
“Instruct you to hold for bomb clearance.”
“Copy. Holding.”
Nikki made eye contact with Rook for the first time. “You OK?” he asked.
She nodded. “You?”
The elevator doors parted, and an ESU sergeant in a hooded blast suit clomped out
flanked by two Hercules cops. As they passed, Rook said to Heat, “I officially feel
like I’m in Star Wars.”
Everyone waited in the stairwell while the bomb squad hero opened the door, just in
case of a booby trap. “What do you think that was about?” asked Rook. “Did Wynn
know we were here? Was he making bombs and screwed up?” When Rook realized he was
the only one talking, he stopped. “Shutting up now.” He waited.
They all waited. Finally, Heat heard the all clear in her headpiece… followed by
the call for paramedics to aid a victim.
“He’s alive,” she said hurling herself back to the hall. On the way to Wynn’s
door, she keyed her mic. “Let’s move on those paramedics—now.”
The apartment had two floors. The blueprint she’d committed to memory back at the
staging area showed a living room, hall, powder room, kitchen, and dining area
downstairs, and two bedrooms and two baths upstairs. Heat hustled in the front door
and broke left—the bomb sarge had radioed that the victim was down in the kitchen.
Her face plowed through the thin layer of blue smoke suspended in the hall. Nikki
hand signaled Raley and Ochoa, who had her back, to clear the closet and powder room
as she passed each. Five paces ahead, a stream of bright crimson leaked across the
hardwood from a source unseen around the corner in the kitchen.
A surreal view greeted her as she made the turn. The bomb sergeant, still cloaked in
his bulky armor suit, knelt on the floor, applying direct pressure to the wound
gushing red from Tyler Wynn’s neck. Heat made a flash assessment of the damage. All
of the old man’s wounds were from the torso up on one side of his body, the side
that had been exposed to the blast, which she could see—quite graphically—had come
from the dining table on the other side of the counter. The eating area had been
ripped by the explosion: leather dining chairs shredded; glass from the solarium-
style windows gone; vertical blinds—those that remained—wagging back and forth in
the breeze, mangled, sawed-off, and powder-charred; the thick glass table shattered
into bits. Some of the glass was spread across the floor like fractured bits of ice.
The rest of the jagged shards had been broadcast around the place, blending with the
shrapnel packed inside the bomb: a mix of screws, nails, and ball bearings that
peppered the ceilings and walls.
Wynn had taken the blast while in the kitchen. The granite counter had blocked his
lower half from injury; meanwhile, his upper body resembled tartare. Heat knelt
beside the man from the bomb squad and reached out to plug another ugly pumper on
Wynn’s chest. But she had to pull her hand back. Something sharp etched her palm.
She lifted the sopping tatter of his shirt and saw the broken blade of a bread knife
the concussion had shot out of the wood block on the countertop and into his ribs.
“Heat,” he coughed out, making it almost sound like “hee.”
“Help’s coming. Hang on. Just hang on.” She found a dish towel on the floor and
made a wad to press around a gash on his forehead. The skin had been so flayed, she
could see skull. The chest wound still flowed prolifically, so she carefully fit the
bread knife blade between two fingers and applied what pressure she dared around the
metal.
“Was it…?” He coughed again.
“Don’t try to talk,” she said.
“Was it… Salena?… Did Kaye… find me?”