She nods. “About as well as I can be dealing with a bomb ready to blow up in my face.”

A sly grin curls the corners of my mouth. “Kind of wishing you’d gone outside like I repeatedly asked you to do?”

“Is this really the time to be mocking me?”

“I might not get another chance.”

“Not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

I fish a pair of tweezers from the toolkit and insert them behind the housing. The yellow wire looks like it’s been soldered into an adaptor of some kind, and that adaptor is then plugged into the board. I get the idea that if the wire is yanked and comes out of the adaptor, it’s game over. But if I’m able to remove the adaptor from the board, we’re still in the game.

I gently grasp the adaptor with the tweezers as a bead of sweat rolls down my face and hangs on the edge of my brow, quivering wildly just before it falls. Swallowing hard, I try to control the shaking in my hand as I grip the adaptor and start to pull. The tweezers slip, and I suck in a hard breath as the metal ends press hard against the yellow wire; I say a silent word of thanks to whomever might be listening when it doesn’t disconnect from the adaptor.

“That was close,” I whisper, half-afraid if I speak too loudly, it’ll finish the job.

“You can do this, Chief Wilder,” Lieb says on the phone.

“Yeah. What he said,” Astra says, her voice as low and shaky as mine.

Moving slowly and deliberately, I grab the base of the adaptor with the tweezers again and hold my breath as I wiggle it, feeling it loosen in the socket. Blowing out a breath, then drawing in another, I tighten my grip, then pull a little harder; and when the adaptor comes out of the socket with a soft clicking sound, I let the tweezers fall. They hit the concrete with a high-pitched ping and bounce away as I double over, hands on my knees, and try to catch my breath.

“Excellent work, Chief Wilder,” Lieb says.

“Yeah,” Astra says breathlessly. “What he said.”

“Agent Russo, you can now safely remove the facing,” Lieb instructs.

With a triumphant whoop, Astra tosses the faceplate and we watch it hit the floor with a sharp clang. We both take a moment to gather ourselves before I pick up the phone again, and I’m glad to see my hand isn’t shaking quite as hard.

“Okay, what’s next?” I ask Lieb.

“Let me see the device,” he says.

I turn the phone around and let him study it, changing the angles when he asks me to. After a couple of minutes, he says he’s ready to walk me through disarming it.

“The good news is that the man who built this is not an expert at bomb-making,” Lieb says. “His design is very rudimentary. Likely something he read in a book or on the Internet.”

“Thank God. Finally, something he’s not good at,” Astra says dryly.

It takes about ten minutes, but Lieb is able to walk me through it, and when I snip the final wire and the bomb is disarmed, Astra and I throw our arms around one another and let out cries that are equal parts relief and joy. The moment passes, though, as my gaze falls on the other steel shipping containers.

“Okay,” I say. “Now we just need to do that three more times.”

“You’re such a killjoy,” Astra responds.

I laugh softly. “Let’s get to work. We’ve got three more kids to save.”

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

With Lieb guiding us through the process, we were able to disarm the remaining devices over the next forty-five minutes. As we worked, Mo and Paige cut the locks on the containers, got the kids to safety, and shut down Townsend’s death machines. By the time we were done and had all the kids out of the warehouse, the cavalry had arrived.

The strobing red and blue lights of the emergency vehicles that filled the one-time parking area of the furniture company cuts through the dim, dusky hues of the oncoming night. The area teems with an army of first responders. A bomb tech crew had finally arrived and swept the entire campus for explosive devices. Thankfully, it was clean. There are techs still in the warehouse, dismantling Townsend’s machines and his chemical formula. They’re no doubt going to be taken back to Quantico for further analysis.

EMTs have checked out all the kids, and other than some bumps and bruises, they all seem to be all right. Physically, at least. I’m sure all of them will need to do some serious work with a therapist to try to process what they’ve gone through. They’ll need to learn some tools for coping with the nightmares and lasting trauma that will surely follow. While they’ve been given a preliminary clean bill of health, they’ll be going to the hospital for further evaluation. For the moment, though, they’re being debriefed in a closed area.

After the EMTs patched me up, they wanted to transport me to the hospital. I told them I was sticking around for the mop-up and I would go after. The gunshot wound is a through-and-through and didn’t hit anything vital, so there’s no reason I need to go to the hospital right now, despite their objections. I’m not done here yet. I’m not going anywhere until I have some questions answered and these kids are somewhere safe.

My arm heavily bandaged and in a sling, I walk over to where the kids are all huddled together, clinging to one another like they’re adrift at sea and the others are life preservers. They’re all marked by trauma and are part of the same dark fraternity. It’s an unfortunate bond they’ll carry forever. Hopefully, they’ll learn to make something good from their pain. Ashley turns, giving me a broad smile when she sees me coming. She rushes over and throws her arms around me. I wince and hiss as the sudden contact jars me with a bright flash of pain.

“Oh God, I’m sorry,” Ashley says and takes a step back. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I say, laughing softly through gritted teeth.

“Thank you,” she says for about the thousandth time. “Thank you, Agent Wilder. You saved my life. You saved all our lives.”

“My team wasn’t going to stop until we found you guys,” I say.

Fresh tears leak from the corners of her eyes and race down her cheeks. She quickly wipes them away with a trembling hand as a thousand emotions scroll across her face.

“I thought I was going to die,” she says quietly.

“We weren’t going to let that happen.”

She smiles at me through her tears. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You don’t have to. Knowing you all are okay is thanks enough.”

Her smile falls away, and she looks down at the ground, her expression suddenly troubled. I imagine this constant tug of war inside of her is going to be a staple of Ashley’s life from now on, and she’s going to need a lot of help to learn how to deal with it. She’s got a heavy burden to bear for the rest of her life. All these kids do.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

She raises her gaze to me. “That man… the man who took us,” she begins. “He said he was doing this because my father and the parents of the others he took… he told us they killed his son. Is that true, Chief Wilder?”

It was a question I should have seen coming… should have been prepared for. But in all the chaos of the situation as it unfolded, I simply forgot that Townsend had mentioned that he’d told all the kids his reasons for doing what he was doing. The burden these kids will have to shoulder after all of this just got heavier, and that ripple of destruction is spreading even faster. To be honest, Ashley caught me flat-footed. I have no idea how to answer that question simply because it’s not my story to tell.

“Ashley, I think you and your father need to—”

“My father is a politician,” she says. “I know if I ask him, I’m not going to get a straight answer from him, and all I want is the truth. Please.”

The pleading look in her eyes is breaking my heart. She wants the truth. After what she endured, she deserves the truth. But I know it’s not my place to deliver that truth to her. And yet, there’s a part of me that believes giving her the truth, or at least a version of it, will help ease the burden she’s carrying. Perhaps it will slow the devastating effect of the ripple of chaos and destruction Townsend set off in her life. In all their lives. If only a little while.

“It was a long time ago, Ashley. Long before you were born,” I say. “And it was a tragic accident. Your father and the others didn’t set out to kill anybody that night. It was a poor decision that led to catastrophic series of events.”