“On the count of three,” Eve said, reached for the doorknob and, on three, flung it open and spun low into the garage.
Time seemed to slow down. The smell of gasoline was intense. In the next second, she saw that the fertilizer pallet was drenched, several open gasoline cans and propane tanks were in front of it, and a trail of liquid led to the far end of the warehouse. She also smelled the rotten-egg odor of leaking propane gas. Just as she registered the meaning of all that, she saw the flash of a road flare arcing through the air and landing in the trail of gasoline, lighting it like a fuse . . .
. . . to ignite the fertilizer, packed with ammonium nitrate, the easy-to-find explosive of choice for terrorists everywhere.
“Run,” Eve yelled as she spun around, pushing Duncan toward the front door. The four of them ran out of the building, Eve’s feet hitting the asphalt of the parking lot just as the building exploded.
The concussive force sent Eve flying, and probably saved her life. She smacked down on the asphalt as jagged, flaming sheets of corrugated metal peeled off the building and whirled through the air like spinning helicopter blades. Tongues of flame licked out over them as bits of glass and wood and plaster rained down all around.
Eve lifted her scratched face from the ground, hearing only the ringing in her ears, and through the smoke saw Mumford darting across the street, heading west. She scrambled to her feet and chased after him, nearly toppling with dizziness on her first step.
She willed herself not to fall and kept running, half wobbling as the ground seemed to shift like rolling surf under her feet. Of course, she knew it wasn’t the ground—it was her inner ear, her balance shot by the blast.
Is Duncan okay? What about the others?
She couldn’t look back or think about that now.
Focus.
Don’t stop running. Don’t let Mumford get away.
Her face stung all over, blood or sweat trickled down her cheeks, and each breath she took as she ran brought a sharp pain in her chest.
Have I broken my sternum again?
Mumford was fifty yards ahead of her, running across the storage unit parking lot. He scaled a low cyclone fence in the back and dashed through the vacant dirt lot beyond, disappearing down a slope.
Eve reached the fence, tried to scale it fast, and her blouse got caught on a sharp barb. There was no time to free it. She threw herself to the dirt, using her body weight to free herself, the wire ripping the side of her blouse and cutting her flesh. But at least she was free of the damn fence.
She ran across the lot, stumbling over gopher holes and mounds of dirt, slowing as she got to the rise. Below her, the pet cemetery spread out in front of her, a wide-open expanse of lawn, spotted with mature trees and mostly flat tombstones decorated with paper bouquets and spinning, colorful whirligigs at some plots. A creek lined with steep four-foot-tall slabs of vertical concrete bisected the park, east to west. The culvert was crossed at various points with arched wooden footbridges and narrow roads, the trickle of brackish water flowing through a large pipe underneath them. To her left, in the center of the park, was a vehicle roundabout, a flower bed in the center with a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi in the middle, arms out in greeting to cemetery guests, a carved bird resting on his shoulder.
There was no sign of Mumford, but she knew he was down there somewhere, likely waiting for her to come out in the open so he could shoot her down and then make his run for it. There was no one else in the cemetery, either. The park closed at five and the gates were locked. That also meant no backup vehicles would be able to get in right away.
She realized at that moment that she’d lost her gun, that it must have fallen out of her grip in the explosion. Luckily, she still had the backup weapon in her bra holster. She’d been carrying it since Green’s arrest.
Eve moved down the hillside, staying low and using trees for cover, until she got to the edge of the culvert, which reminded her of a World War 1 trench. That gave her an idea. She’d use the creek for cover, as a way to traverse the park without making herself an open target. She got down on her knees and carefully dropped into the culvert, slipping the instant she landed, falling on her side onto the slick concrete bed.
She sat up, pulled her small Glock from under her soaked, torn shirt, and moved along the trench, peering up now and then, looking for any sign of movement.
Behind her, the ground was rocked by another explosion from Green’s Greenery. She lost her footing and something whizzed past her head, shattering the carved bird off Saint Francis’ shoulder.
A bullet.
She hadn’t heard a thing, the blast and her ringing ears combining to muffle the sound of the gunshot. But she knew the trajectory.