“Not for today, at least,” Oshiro confirmed, still scrolling through the sped-up footage of the hallway.
“Go back through the entire week,” Liz ordered, but Jenna heard the sigh in her voice. Going into their fourth day of the manhunt—which no doubt meant four days without sleep, proper food, or any hopeful answers, it had to be exhausting.
“In the meantime, we should come at this from another direction. Any word on the girl?” Liz called the question to one of the other cops in the front of the RV.
“Morgan?” Jenna asked. “She’s not in custody?”
“Didn’t have a chance to tell you,” Andre answered, the blur of security footage grainy as it sped past his monitor. “She ran.”
“After we got word of the explosion you were involved in,” Liz added.
“I’d hardly call it an explosion. A few firecrackers, that’s all.” Last thing Jenna needed was the fugitive task force to think she was stupid or careless enough to set off an IED.
“Still,” Liz said, “after Oshiro and Lester called it in, the girl left. No one’s seen her since. We’re not even sure exactly how she got past us.”
“Get used to it,” Jenna said, glad she wasn’t the only one who found Morgan’s propensity to vanish in plain sight irritating. “Morgan does what Morgan wants. She probably got bored and ran off to meet up with her new boyfriend.”
Morgan thought she was being so sly and secretive about Micah—except for the part where she’d asked Andre for advice, and of course, Andre had then told Jenna. Silly man, he’d thought it a sign that Morgan could change, that she had a trace of human feelings.
Andre glanced up at that. “Not a bad idea. We should call Micah. He might know something.”
“You call him.” Jenna had met the kid after Morgan had saved his life and had been barely able to coax two words from him. “He’ll talk to you.”
Andre looked to Liz, who nodded her approval. Leaving the video console in Oshiro’s hands, he stepped to the front of the RV where it was quieter and sat down in the driver’s seat with his phone. He was only gone a few moments when all of the law enforcement comms filled with the tense voices of excited cops. Footsteps pounded past the RV, and men shouted in the distance. Liz turned the monitor feed back to the live action.
The robot had reached the bomb and X-rayed it with its portable unit. The X-ray filled the screen with wires and circuitry that Jenna couldn’t interpret. But there was no mistaking the dismay that filled Oshiro’s face—the fact that he was showing any emotion told her just how bad it was.
Only the bomb tech stayed calm, his voice slow and steady. He seemed a bit impressed by the challenge before him. “Folks, hope you’re seeing this,” he said, not quite whistling in appreciation. “Because this baby is a beauty.”
When she’d worked with the Postal Service, Jenna had dealt with enough cases of mail bombs to know that when a bomb tech was in awe of a bomb maker’s creation it was most definitely not a good thing.
She had the sudden urge to volunteer her and Andre’s services to go on a food run. Anything to get far, far away from the evil contraption whose innards were displayed on the screen.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked, nodding to the chemical composition supplied by the electronic sniffer.
“HMTD,” Oshiro said in a low voice as if worried he might set it off with sound alone. “Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. One of the most unstable chemical explosives on the planet. Especially in the hands of an amateur. Heat fluctuation, friction, the slightest spark could blow the whole thing.”
“Which means they can’t move it,” Jenna interpreted. “They’re going to have to either defuse it or blow it on site.”
“Any way you put it,” Oshiro added, “if your truant schoolboy built more of these babies for Caine, then we’re in a heap load of trouble.”
Chapter 20
THE FIRST THING Morgan noticed was the stench. Fresh vomit. Probably hers. She tried to blink, but all she managed was to peel her eyelids back far enough to trigger a wave of vertigo. She quickly closed them again.
How long had she been out? Probably not too long—Clint’s formulas hit fast but didn’t usually last longer than an hour or so; they always ended with a wicked hangover. When she was growing up, she’d been his guinea pig, forced to try each variation, but she had forgotten just how awful the aftereffects were. Nothing to do but ride it out.