Explosive Attraction - By Lena Diaz Page 0,2

out the watch, she realized it didn’t have a wristband connected to it. Rafe’s eyes widened and he let out a vicious curse. He grasped the watch in one hand and yanked his cell phone out of his jeans pocket with the other.

“What’s wrong?” Darby hated the alarm in her voice, but what had seemed like a harmless prank a few minutes ago now seemed like something far more sinister.

Rafe issued rapid-fire instructions into the phone to someone named Buresh. In answer to Darby’s earlier question, he held the watch down where she could see it.

A stark, digital readout flashed against the white background, displaying 00:00:15. The last number was decreasing—fourteen...thirteen...twelve. Rafe wasn’t holding a watch. He was holding a timer.

And it was counting down.

He ended the call and looked at the timer. The corners of his eyes tightened and his gaze shot to hers. “Time’s up.”

Boom.

Darby ducked at the loud sound, which seemed to have come from right outside.

Rafe dropped the timer on top of the photograph and rushed to the window to look through the blinds. He turned and headed to the door, but paused in the opening. “Don’t touch the evidence. And stay put. Don’t go anywhere until I get back.”

With his words of warning hanging in the air, he ran out of the office. Too curious to sit and wait, Darby hurried to the window. Normally, she could see the glint of the bright Florida sun sparkling off the Intracoastal Waterway behind the office buildings across the street. But instead she saw a small, dark cloud of smoke rising from one of the warehouses.

Her stomach clenched and her fingers curled around the windowsill. Sirens sounded from a short distance away, getting louder and louder. Images flashed through Darby’s mind—the word boom on the back of the photograph, that horrible sound. It couldn’t be a coincidence that there was smoke rising from the warehouse across the street. Could it?

Rafe had ordered her to stay put, but the bomb, if that’s what she had heard, had already gone off. And there was a small crowd gathering outside. As she watched, a police car pulled up. A uniformed officer and a man in a business suit got out and ran toward the warehouse. Rafe met them at the doorway and they went inside.

Several more minutes passed and more police cars arrived. A white van with the words St. Augustine Police Department printed on the side pulled up. A man in what Darby believed was a bomb suit was helped out of the back. He hurried through the same doorway where Rafe had gone earlier.

The smoke was clearing, and the only visible damage to the outside of the building was a few broken windows. The police weren’t evacuating the area. The growing crowd was still on the street watching. And when the man in the bomb suit came back outside and pulled off his protective gear, Darby knew it must be safe.

Her stomach twisted into knots at the idea that a man she’d spoken to just yesterday might have been hurt—or worse. She couldn’t stand here, waiting. She had to know if he was okay.

And whether, somehow, this was her fault.

She headed out her office door. Mindy was staring out the window in the empty reception area since they’d already seen all their clients for the day. She looked up in question when Darby marched past her.

“Dr. Steele... Darby, wait. Detective Morgan said to—”

“Stay put. Yes, I know. You do that,” Darby said, still miffed that Mindy had abandoned her with Rafe earlier. “I’ll be right back.” She opened the door and headed outside.

* * *

RAFE USED HIS TWEEZERS to pick up a small bomb fragment and drop it into an evidence collection envelope. Fellow detective and bomb tech, Jake Young, was also on his hands and knees a few feet away in the small warehouse, doing the same thing—picking up pieces of the bomb so the two of them could reassemble it at the police station.

Judging by the shrapnel and bits of threaded pipe they’d already found, there was little doubt this had been a pipe bomb. But to figure out the bomber’s identity, Rafe needed to know exactly how the bomb had been constructed. Bomb makers tended to settle on a favorite design and stick with it. The bomb’s design was like fingerprints, or DNA.

“Nice of you to dress up for work today.”

Rafe glanced up at the sound of his boss’s voice. Captain Buresh was just stepping inside