Free Short Fuse: Elite Operators, Book 2 by Rebecca Crowley Page A

traits for someone who spent his days wiring explosives.
    Suddenly he stopped short, and in her reverie she nearly ran into his back. He put up a hand to stop her moving forward, and when he spoke his voice was low and even.
    “Nicola,” he said with such eerie calm that her heart rate immediately began to race with panic. “Back up and get down from the ledge. Go outside and move everyone away from here.”
    Instead of following his perfectly reasonable instructions, she froze, paralyzed by shock and confusion. He knelt slowly, and as he did so he reached into one of the utility pockets on his boiler suit and retrieved what looked like a miniature version of the flat canvas cases that chefs used to carry knives in. As he laid it out on the floor in front of him, she saw that it contained a small set of pliers, wire cutters and other tools.
    As she watched, he gently moved aside a rusted carburetor to reveal what looked like a digital clock from which protruded a messy array of wires. A pile of bright orange, plastic-coated cylinders was stacked behind it.
    “Those are rock-blasting sticks,” she whispered, as though they might go off if she talked too loudly. “One of those can level a whole—”
    “It’s okay,” he murmured soothingly, without turning around. “I can disable this, but I want you to move everyone to safety, just in case.”
    “Just in case?” she echoed, wincing at the grating hysteria that edged her voice.
    “There are only ten minutes left on the timer.” His tone was firmer as he slid one of the tools from its cloth casing. “Go now.”
    Her rational mind chose that moment to abandon her. Any appreciation she’d had for Warren’s professionalism, his high-caliber education or the risks he faced every day in his job was overwhelmed by her terror at the sight of the live bomb, and his proximity to it.
    “Don’t you have a little robot who does this kind of thing? This is the twenty-first century—no one actually defuses bombs by hand .”
    “A robot,” he repeated as if that was an endearingly fanciful idea. “No, I don’t have a robot. This is Africa, not The Hurt Locker . I promise it won’t come down to the decision as to whether to cut the red wire or the blue.”
    “Warren, come outside with me,” she pleaded desperately, suddenly on the verge of tears. “Nothing in here is that important. We can buy new machinery. Please don’t risk your life over construction equipment.”
    “Go,” he repeated with so much authority she took a few reluctant steps backward. He looked over his shoulder, and when he spoke again his voice was gentler, though still brooked no argument. “I’ll be fine.”
    She stood a moment longer, conflicted, and stared uselessly as he studied the mechanism. The digital face abruptly changed from ten minutes to nine, and adrenaline began to pump through her veins. She scrambled back down the tires, bracing herself against the sob of fear and despair that clawed at the back of her throat. When she hit the packed-dirt floor she took one last look up at the shelf. In a thin beam of sunlight she could just make out Warren’s broad shoulders, his dark head bent to his task.
    She set her jaw and jogged to the door, pulling her cell phone from her jacket pocket on the way.
    She tried to invest her tone with as much urgency as she could without sounding frantic. “Cedric, there’s a bomb in shed number five. Warren is working on it now, but we need to get everyone away from the area as quickly as possible.”
    Cedric replied with a string of what she assumed were Latadi profanities, and within seconds she heard the fire alarm ringing out from the canteen. As she emerged into the indifferent sunlight she saw a stream of workers heading toward the muster point for fire emergencies, which was a solid five hundred meters away. She allowed herself a tiny sigh of relief, sprinting in that direction.
    Belatedly she realized she should’ve asked Warren how much of a