Page 73 of The Scenic Route
“Already done,” Rory called out as she ended her call. “ETA twenty-five minutes.”
“Twenty-five?” Felicity blinked at her.
Rory lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “It’s a big county.”
Still, that seemed…not ideal. In Langston, the average police response time was six minutes. “Don’t a lot of people…you know, die?”
“Yes,” Rory said. “That’s why I have all this.” She gestured toward the back room, indicating the cameras and extensive security system that Felicity was sure she had, but her answeringnod was a little uneasy. It was hard to wrap her head around such a do-it-yourself emergency-response system, like the Wild West still existed.
“This feels almost anticlimactic,” Ellie said. “Is it always this easy?”
Easy?Felicity thought back to their eventful chase to Vegas and the consequences of that trip that they hadn’t even started talking about yet, much less dealing with. “This was actually one of the tougher ones. A lot of bail jumpers just aren’t that smart.”
Everyone’s eyes turned to Dino, who scowled at the room.
“Don’t be talking about things being too easy, El,” Lou scolded teasingly. “That’s a good way to jinx us.”
Ellie’s hand slapped over her mouth as if to hold back words that’d already escaped, and her eyes rounded with remorse.
Felicity laughed along with everyone else, opening her mouth to comment when she glanced out the still-open door at the gathering dusk. A flicker of orange caught her attention. It looked almost like a tiny flame, like from a match, and her first thought was that someone was lighting a cigarette, but it was too close to the ground for that. Then the flame stretched into a line, and she knew that wasn’t a cigarette.
“Down!” was all she had time to yell before she yanked Dino to the floor and covered his head with one of her arms. A huge, heavy weight landed on her back, and it only took a fraction of a second for her to recognize the comforting bulk of her new husband. This time, the knowledge that he was stretched over her didn’t lead to a safe, content feeling, since he was vulnerable in his current position, and she hated that.
Felicity wrapped her free arm around Bennett’s head, pulling him down until his face pressed into her neck. It wasn’t much protection, but at least she felt like she was doingsomething.
A terrible, too-bright flash whited out her vision, followed by aboomthat shook the floor underneath them. The tremors hadn’t even stopped before Bennett and then Felicity were on their feet. Blinking the residual sparkles from her vision, she hauled Dino up with her, grimly determined he wouldn’t escape in the chaos after the explosion.
“Felicity! You okay?” Bennett shouted, but his words were still muffled.
“I’m good. You?” She ran her eyes over him, overwhelmingly relieved to see him in one piece without any obvious blood.
“Fine. I’m going after them.” Without waiting for a response, he turned toward the door.
“B!” she shouted, her voice echoing strangely in her head and raspy from the layer of smoke spreading through the store. Bennett was almost out the door, but he turned at her call. “Handcuffs?”
He pulled them from one of his many pants pockets and tossed them to her. Her eyes watered from the smoke, blurring her vision, but she managed to catch the cuffs in one hand.
“Thanks!” she called out before coughing. Rubbing her face against her upper arm, she wiped new tears out of her eyes and shoved down on Dino’s shoulder. “Sit!” she ordered, feeling very uncharitable about him at the moment. When she’d nabbed a skip, he should have the courtesy to stay nabbed rather than have his friends try to steal him back, which was what she assumed was happening.
Dino resisted, trying to peer through the smoke, so she twisted his thumb and applied downward pressure.
“I’m sitting! I’m sitting!” he yelped, his knees sagging obediently.
“Hurry up!” she yelled, completely out of patience with him now. “I’ve got things to do, and I can’t be hauling you around with me.” First off, she had to check all of the murder club members, and then she needed to help Bennett chase down whoever thought they could blow up—literally—her successful mission.
Once Dino’s recalcitrant butt was—finally—on the floor, she handcuffed his right wrist to the counter support, which looked to be a steel post set in concrete.
“Stay,” she told him rather redundantly, since he shouldn’t be able to go anywhere locked to the post like that. Still, it’d been a day, and she wasn’t about to take anything for granted from this point on.
She turned to see that everyone in the murder club was on their feet and looked generally intact, and Rory and Lou were already heading for the back room. The room was filled with dust and haze, but except for the two-foot hole in the front wall and a few toppled display cases, the shop didn’t appear too damaged.
“Everyone okay?” Felicity yelled and got verbal confirmation that they’d all escaped any major injuries.
Bennett was outside and already out of sight, but she had a feeling she’d be running into him soon. It was impossible to see anything through the hole in the wall beyond a few feet, since it was almost fully dark outside now. Running for the door, shedid a quick scan of her surroundings before darting into the gravel parking lot.
No one was in sight, although the evidence of the militia members’ visit was in plain view. The brick front of the store had taken the worst of the hit, a pile of blackened and smoldering rubble beneath the gaping hole in the wall. She felt a pang of guilt for being the cause of the damage to Rory’s store, but she pushed it aside, figuring she’d make up for it later. She could bake Rory cookies or reload ammo for her or pay her insurance deductible or something.
Her phone buzzed in her hand, and she glanced down automatically at the text from Rory.
