Free Explosive by Beth Kery Page A

them.
    “Hey!” Fisk called out, his voice cutting through the distance that separated them and the roar of the flames.
    “Thomas! Get in your car and follow me. Now .”
    He blinked and stared down at her. The moment couldn’t have lasted much longer than a second, but it stretched surreally long. The authority in Sophie’s voice had amazed him. She’d sounded a little bit like Colonel Harvost at that moment—his former commanding officer. Her face was cast in flickering shadow and bloodred light from the fire. Fisk’s feet tapping on the pavement sounded abnormally loud despite the agent’s distance.
    He didn’t think Fisk could have made out their identities. They were still far enough from the fire to be shrouded almost completely in darkness.
    Had Fisk just arrived or had the FBI been staking out the Mannero warehouse?
    He’d be nuts to flee the scene of a crime, but the last thing he wanted to do at that moment was confront Fisk or Larue . . . or face what the exploding warehouse really meant to him and his family.
    And . . . Jesus. He was an expert on bombs, given his military experience. He could assemble one just as easily as disarm it. What if the feds tried to pin the torching of the warehouse on him ?
    Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to try to escape without detection.
    He glanced from Sophie’s rigid features to the burning building. The explosions seemed to have ceased, but the warehouse had become a flaming torch.
    “Yeah. Okay. Cover your head on the way to your car and take the rear exit,” he commanded tersely as she moved fleetly away from him.
    He got in his car and gunned the engine, watching as Sophie slid into the driver’s seat of her own vehicle. She put the car into drive, her wheels scattering gravel in a three-foot arc as she whipped around and shot toward the back entry of the parking lot like she thought her life depended on it.
    Maybe it did?
    He followed just as rapidly, leaving his headlights off, not wanting to illuminate Sophie’s license plates or the make and color of her car for the eyes of the rushing Agent Fisk. He heard Fisk’s distant shout as he turned into the narrow alley that ran the length of the block. The sound of his squealing tires prevented him from making out what it was that he actually yelled.
    Thomas’s concern that Fisk had made out their faces or their license plates in the darkness faded the farther he and Sophie traveled down I-57 South. They’d passed two state troopers on the three-hour trip, but no flashing lights and wailing sirens had followed them.
    They reached Haven Lake at around 12:30 A.M. after stopping only once at a gas station an hour outside of Chicago. Their conversation there had been brief and charged. Thomas had immediately recognized the signs of shock on Sophie’s face when she’d exited her car. He’d become far too familiar with the signs—the rigid facial features, the glassy appearance of the eyes, the flattened mouth. He’d seen it in combat. He’d witnessed it on his mother’s, father’s, and sister-in-law’s faces far too often lately not to recognize it in an instant.
    He’d seen it a time or two when he looked in his own reflection, as well. Maybe that’s why he’d been avoiding mirrors ever since he’d learned of Rick’s death.
    When he’d seen Sophie’s shock he’d suggested they stop somewhere for longer—a restaurant or even a hotel—not liking the idea of her driving in that condition. But she’d just shaken her head, her solemn expression and big eyes causing a squeezing sensation in his chest cavity.
    Another two hours alone in the car had caused him to reevaluate his strange, strong feelings for Sophie Gable, however. It slowly dawned on him as he stared at the back of Sophie’s BMW sedan that her behavior tonight had been odd. More than odd.
    Suspect, even?
    Why had she showed up in that parking lot, intent on preventing him from entering the building? It’d almost been like she’d