The Target

“You’ll be fine,” the doctor interrupted smoothly. “But you might be fine while having a different career.” He reached across the bed and tapped Quinn’s leg. “Your injuries were very severe. Your recovery, complete or otherwise, is not going to happen overnight. I don’t want to see you in here again because you’ve hurt yourself trying to do something you can’t.”

“Can’t means won’t, Doc.” Quinn paused. “I will return to my team.”

The doctor sighed then nodded, picking up the clipboard to make a final note. “I guess you can tell your lady friend you’ll be all hers after next week.” He shook his head and walked to the door. “Qué mala suerte! May God be with her…”

Quinn chuckled at the suave doctor’s drama, but when the door closed and he thought about what was ahead, his laughter died. He had to come back to the team. His plans did not include staying at home and letting Hannah support him. Quinn didn’t care what the doctor said—there was no other option.

His daily routine of meds and therapy began shortly after that, and he didn’t return to his room until after lunch. Hannah’s chair was still empty.

At six that evening she still hadn’t arrived. He was trying to decide if he should call her when the door to his room opened. Assuming it was her, he smiled in anticipation.

Mark Baker and two more techs stepped inside instead.

“Hey, guys…” Quinn struggled to get up, but they all waved him down, each coming closer to shake his hand and say hello. Since his hearing had returned, the whole team had been in at one time or another, but surprisingly, Baker had been his most frequent visitor. They’d developed an uneasy friendship, partially, Quinn surmised, because he was now off the team, at least temporarily. His expertise and experience no longer posed a threat to the young tech.

Quinn watched the men situate themselves around the room, then he noticed they all looked tired and dirty. They’d obviously been on a call, but the usual, boisterous aftermath that followed a situation was missing.

“You guys been out?”

Mark sat down in the nearest chair and answered Quinn’s question with a nod. “Yeah—some kids over on Toulouse got their school computers cranked up and learned how to build pipe bombs. They planted five of them in and around the mailboxes in their neighborhood and Metro called us. We went crazy trying to retrieve the damn things before somebody found one and blew off their freaking hand.”

Quinn shook his head in commiseration as the other techs added their comments about what had happened. He listened, but all Quinn could really think about was Hannah. Where was she? Did her absence have anything to do with the men’s subdued attitudes?

When the conversation lulled, he spoke casually. “Hannah go out on this?”

They took too long to answer. A warning bell sounded inside Quinn’s head.

“She was there.” Mark shot a look toward one of the other men and a silent communication took place. Quinn had sent enough signals like that himself to know something was up.

“What happened?” he asked. “Is she hurt?”

“She’s fine,” Mark said quickly. “Just fine. But we had a little problem….”

“What kind of little problem?”

Mark glanced again at the others.

“Just tell me what happened, dammit.” Still in his bed, Quinn managed to make the younger man jump.

“She dropped one of the pipe bombs,” Mark blurted out. “But she’s okay—she’s okay, I swear.”

Quinn’s heart stopped for a single moment, then it restarted, the rhythm faster than it should have been.

“I take it she wasn’t holding it at the time?”

Mark shook his head. “No, no… The Andros had it.”

The men looked at each other uneasily. They were a team, and teams had rules, one of which stated you supported the other members, regardless. But this was different. Quinn had to know more, whether they wanted to tell him or not. He swung his legs to the edge of the bed, but as he stood, a quick knock on the door startled them all. It opened and Bobby was poised on the threshold, his expression grim, his demeanor unhappy. The men took one look and started edging past their boss, their muted goodbyes ignored by Quinn and Bobby both.

With the room empty except for them, Quinn stared at the other man, his mouth suddenly dry. Obviously there was more to the story than Mark had revealed. “What is it?” he asked without preamble.

“Sit down,” Bobby said, pointing to the bed. “We gotta talk.”

HANNAH SAT IN THE DESERTED bullpen, her head on her desk, her eyes closed. She was completely alone and the lights were off because everyone else had gone home to hug their kids and make love to their spouses.

She knew that’s what they were doing because that’s what she wanted to do. Almost getting blown up tended to bring out that need in a person.

She’d made a very stupid mistake tonight, and if things had ended even slightly differently, someone would now be knocking on her mother’s door to tell her that her daughter was dead.

Hannah lifted her head and slowly banged it against the scarred and pitted wood. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have been so blind? In her time as a tech, she’d never come so close to making such a major blunder.

After the first bomb had detonated, she’d looked at the pieces and assumed the devices were all identical. X-raying the homemade disaster, she’d seen the same thing she’d seen in the initial bomb, which confirmed—or so she’d thought—her assessment. She’d explained the setup to the other techs, then sent in the Andros to pick up the sawed-off aluminum baseball bat, lying next to the mailbox.

Unfortunately two different kids had made the bombs, and the second teenager had been smarter than the first. He hadn’t inserted an ordinary fuse; he’d used negative pressure instead.

She’d misread the X ray. And then she’d mishandled the robot, her hand shaking from exhaustion. The machine had dropped the device. If the bomb had been a fused one, as she’d thought, it probably wouldn’t have mattered. But it wasn’t—the fuse was a decoy. The metal cylinder had landed on its edge and the plastic cap had flown off. The bomb had been aimed away from them, but by then it had hardly mattered.

It wasn’t the kind of mistake someone with her level of expertise should make. It wasn’t even the kind of mistake a rookie should make. One of the first things even a kid just out of bomb school knew was that each device had its own render-safe procedure. If he wanted to, Bobby could fire her and she wouldn’t blame him, either. She couldn’t believe it. What a mess…

She was too tired. Too worried. Too crazy. She’d been lucky as hell not to have injured herself or someone else on the team. She’d lost her focus.

She could have blamed tonight on the fact that she was grieving for the kids, but she would only be partially right. She was grieving—but not just for them. Tonight’s emotions—and the sorrow she’d been feeling since the funeral—were also for herself and Quinn. Their relationship was over, and the day she’d fled the cemetery she’d known that. She’d only been staying with him because she couldn’t leave. Not while he was still in the hospital. Distracted by that reality and full of sadness because of it, she’d nearly gotten in serious trouble tonight.

Dropping her head back down on the desk, Hannah closed her eyes and cursed.

“I DON’T WANT TO SIT DOWN,” Quinn said. “I want to know what’s wrong.”

“Hannah screwed up tonight,” Bobby said bluntly, falling into the chair beside the bed. “She hasn’t got her mind on her job and she damn near blew us all to kingdom come.”

Quinn sat down.

“Metro called us because the bombs were all inside or close to mailboxes. It seemed like a simple enough problem and we went straight out.” Bobby shook his head. “Hannah was on her way here but she insisted on going with us first. The other guys have been trying to take up the slack, but with you gone, too, it’s been hard.”

Quinn nodded. “Go on.”

“I intend to, but let’s get one thing straight before I do.” He waited until Quinn nodded again. “What I have to tell you never leaves this room. And I mean any of it. This is just between you and me, and if you ever tell anyone we had this discussion, I’ll call you a liar.”

“Fine, fine,” Quinn said impatiently. “Just go on—”

“Give me your word.”

“You have it, okay? I swear I’ll never tell anyone. Now, what in the hell happened?”

Bobby gave him the details the men had left out, his face etched with anger and worry. “It shouldn’t have gone down like that, Quinn.” He shook his head. “She botched it, man. Big time.”

Quinn defended her automatically. “Working the robot isn’t Hannah’s usual thing, Bobby.”

“I know that, but Sid’s out this week, too. His wife’s in the hospital with kidney stones and he’s stuck with his kids. Grandma’s on the way, but in the meantime, we had five pipe bombs to deal with. I needed all the extra hands I could use, so when Hannah said she’d help, I said fine. But she aimed that Andros right at us, man.”