“Blake, are you okay?” Astra’s voice comes through my earpiece.

I don’t answer for a moment, unable to say or do a thing as I stare at the body on the ground beneath me.

“Blake,” Astra snaps.

Giving myself a shake, I key my comm. “I’m fine,” I tell her. “Townsend’s dead.”

“Not the biggest problem we have right now,” she says.

“What is it?”

“Get down here, Blake. Hurry.”

“On my way.”

Chemier Furniture Warehouse, Building 3A, Fauquier County; Catlett, VA

“Jesus, you look like hell,” Mo says. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You should see the other guy,” Astra cracks.

I roll my eyes. “Really?”

“What? Too soon?”

“Paige, I need you to call the locals and have them get emergency services out here. After that, I need you to call DD Church and loop her in on what’s going on out here,” I say. “And please go stay with the body until they get here. I’m only assuming he’s dead.”

“I saw the mess out there,” Astra says. “Seems like a fairly reasonable assumption.”

“Copy you, Chief,” Paige says.

She pulls out her phone and rushes out of the warehouse, leaving us standing inside, looking at the next problem we’re facing. Just as I’d suspected, there are four large metal shipping containers on the floor of the warehouse. Each of them has a narrow window built into the doors, allowing us to see each of the kids strapped to the tables inside.

“My God,” I whisper.

I stare through the window of the container that holds Ashley Barlow, and she’s lying motionless on the table, staring up at the ceiling, her face slack, and looking almost catatonic. At some point, I suppose the fear of facing your doom gets to be overwhelming, and you just burn out. It paralyzes you. Next to the table, I see the machine Townsend built to administer the poison he concocted for them. I fixate on the silver spigot hovering over the girl for a moment, then see the timer set onto the machine and watch the timer count down for a moment. The time is in plain view of the kids, letting them see just how much life they have left. It’s an extra layer of psychological torture for these kids that, if they survive, is going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. I feel that ripple of destruction spreading out even farther.

“We’ve got just over three hours before that machine starts pumping out whatever Townsend cooked up and those kids die,” I say.

The more immediate problem, though, is that the door of each container has been rigged with a bomb. I’m not an expert, but my best guess is the bricks of Semtex rigged to the device are going to detonate if we try to cut the lock and enter. It seems like the sort of planning we’ve come to expect from Townsend. We mess with the bomb locks, the kids—and us—all die. We do nothing, the kids die, but we survive. There are no good choices here.

“What are we going to do?” Mo asks.

“I don’t suppose either of you has any experience defusing bombs?”

“Uh, no,” Astra says.

“It’ll take hours for a bomb tech team to get out here,” Mo says.

“These kids don’t have that kind of time,” I state.

“What in the hell are we going to do?” Astra asks.

My stomach roiling and my head spinning, I come to a decision. “Okay, you two get out of here. Take Paige and get far away from this building.”

“What?” Astra asks. “Hell no. What do you think you’re going to do?”

“I’m going to try to disarm the bombs.”

“You don’t know the first thing about disarming bombs.”

“If we do nothing, those kids are dead anyway,” I reply. “At least if I try to disarm the bombs, they have a chance.”

“Yeah, about the same chance a snowball has in hell, Blake.”

“Astra, get out of here. Now. That is an order.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says. “I’m not going to let you blow yourself up.”

“So, what? You’re going to blow up with me?”

“If I have to. Or we can try to defuse this together,” she argues.

“Mo, take her and get to Paige, then get out of here.”

“Mo, you lay a hand on me, and I promise I will knock you out,” Astra hisses.

Mo looks at me with exasperation on her face. She knows Astra will take her apart if she tries to do as I ask, but ever the good soldier, looks like she wants to follow my orders anyway.

“Mo, you go. Take Paige and get to a safe distance,” I tell her.

“You sure?”

“Actually, wait,” I say. “Run to the vehicles and get me the box of tools in the back of the SUV. I have a feeling we’re going to need them.”

“Copy you.”

Mo turns and sprints outside, leaving Astra and me staring at the bomb attached to the lock of Ashley’s container. I search the face of the device and see there are four screws holding it in place and the glowing red letters on the display screen simply say “armed.” As if we need the reminder. I look at the keypad, lamenting the fact that the only guy who could give us the right code to disarm the device is splattered all over the pavement outside.

“We could try punching in random numbers and hope we get lucky and hit on the right combination to disarm the bombs,” Astra offers.

“Unless Townsend put a limit on the number of guesses we can make before it sets the whole thing off,” I say.