Miller nodded. "Worth a try. Good thinking. Go get them."
Hursey hurried upstairs. He couldn't help smiling. They'd beat this sucker yet. And Miller had paid him a compliment. Must be the stress. Miller never complimented anybody.
He fairly ran to the closet, grabbed the hangers—had to be twenty or so—and rushed back to the first floor. They devised a quick and easy method. If they pulled down on the middle of the horizontal section, they could stretch the triangle of the hanger into a narrow diamond shape with a hook on one end.
They had nineteen. At a foot and a half or so apiece, hooked end to end in a daisy chain, the hangers gave them a thirty-foot head start.
To keep the locker door from opening prematurely they gingerly rested the back of a chair against it. Then they looped the hook of the last hanger into the handle and retreated to the chain's opposite end.
Miller shook his head. "Not as long as I'd like."
Hursey had been thinking the same thing. The best place to be was behind what was left of the monitoring console. Not a great place, but pretty much the only game in town. Problem was, it was still ten feet away.
"Well," Miller said through a sigh. "Gotta do what you've gotta do. When I pull, run like hell."
And then, with no further warning, not even a countdown, he yanked the goddamn chain.
Hursey saw the chair start to topple as the door swung open. He saw no more because he spun and dashed to the console, fell as he slid to a stop, and scrabbled behind it. He covered his ears—didn't want to lose any more hearing—and waited.
And waited.
After nearly a minute he lowered his hands and looked at Miller.
Miller shrugged. "Let's not get fooled. Could have a long delay to suck us in. We'll just sit here and wait."
So they waited.
After a good twenty minutes Miller reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter.
"Could be a misfire. Someone's got to check."
Hursey had a bad feeling about who that someone would be.
"Let's wait a little longer."
"Uh-uh. We need that screwdriver. Heads or tails? Call it in the air."
Miller flipped the coin but Hursey found his voice locked. He couldn't utter a sound.
Miller gave him a shove. "Come on, dammit. You wanna flip?"
He nodded. Miller handed him the coin. His hands shook but he managed to toss it into the air.
Miller said, "Heads."
The coin landed, rolled, came to a stop with George Washington's head showing.
"Looks like it's you. Get moving."
Hursey let out a shuddering breath. "I don't want to end up like Jolliff."
"Don't be a baby. Look, it'll be okay. I'll walk you halfway there."
"If it's so okay, why not walk me all the way?"
Miller's lips turned up at the corners. "Well, if I'm wrong, one of us has to escape this dump and get to the hospital to finish the job."
Hursey took a breath. Now or never.
"Okay. Let's go."
He rose and started walking toward the bunk area. True to his word, Miller came along. But he stopped at the doorway.
"Look," he said, pointing to the screwdriver that had fallen out of the now open locker onto the floor. "It's right there. All you've got to do is hustle over, pick it up, and bring it back. After that, we'll be out of here in twenty minutes, tops."
Hursey stared at the screwdriver. Seemed easy enough.
He swallowed. "Okay, here goes."
He dashed toward the locker, stooped, and grabbed the screwdriver. But before making the return trip, he couldn't resist a peek inside. And there in the locker he saw a timer sitting atop a bulging backpack. Numbers flashed on its LED readout.
…6…5…4…
"Bomb!" he screamed.
He turned and ran with everything he had; his feet slipped on the floor as he fought for traction. When he reached the doorway, he saw Miller hightailing it for the console. Not enough time for that. Neither of them would make it.
One thing Hursey knew he had to do was get clear of the doorway. The blast would funnel through it. He cleared the door and dove to his left, flattening himself on the floor and wrapping his arms over his head.
But just before he closed his eyes he saw the handwriting on the floor.
Hursey screamed.
The blast caught Miller from behind, slamming him against the ruined console. He felt ribs crack. As he bounced off, his knees buckled and he dropped to the floor. He landed prone. He lay there and rode the spinning floor. Finally it slowed, then stopped.
He opened his eyes and found himself facing the bunk area. A gaping hole had been blasted through the bottom half of one of the walls. What was left of Hursey—a charred, smoking lump of flesh—had been blown ten feet away.
The explosion… what triggered it? Not opening the locker—they'd waited too long after that. And the bomber couldn't have known that Hursey would wind up in that spot.
Or maybe he could have.
Miller remembered the signs on the floor to the right and left of the door. BAD MOVE. And it sure as hell had been a bad move for Hursey to wind up on one of them. But how had the bomber known he'd end up there?
Unless he'd put something in the locker to make Hursey think a bomb was going to go off any second. Then yeah, the only thing to do was get to the other side of the wall and dive for cover.
And the rat bastard had counted on that. The signs on the floor were his way of flipping them the bird.
But what if Hursey had turned left instead of right? Miller could understand if the walls on both sides of the door had exploded, covering either contingency, but only Hursey's side had blown. Which meant there was some sort of detector—
—or the guy was watching.
Miller pounded his fist on the floor. That had to be it.
Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up. Christ, he hurt everywhere. The best he could do was roll over, and that started the building spinning again. Must have a concussion too.
He waited until things steadied, then looked around, concentrating on the ceiling.
And there he found it, in the right upper corner of the room: a little black box with a lens in the middle.
The fucker had been watching the whole time. He could pick and choose which side of the wall to trigger, and when.
Miller repressed an urge to pound his fists and kick his feet like some spoiled brat in a tantrum. He was furious with himself. This guy had played them like a tin flute. And he'd allowed it.
He calmed himself. Anger was no good here. Had to be cool—at least as cool as the guy playing him. Cooler even.
Because this guy was a pro. Got the drop on them in their own car, sent them on a wild goose chase by palming his tracer off on a taxi, slipped by them at the bar. And now this.
Had to admit he had style. Could have blown the whole building as soon as they'd stepped inside. Instead he'd done surgery, taking them out one at a time. His style said he was a thinker, a planner. And a guy who knew people. He'd known someone would not be able to resist tuning the radio. And he'd known someone would eventually turn on the monitoring console. And he'd known they'd be suspicious of a single closed locker door. Could have closed them all, but no. He'd known they'd be suspicious about just one.
But all that aside, the most important question facing Miller now was what to do.
At the most basic level, he had two options: get up or stay put.
In his present condition, if he got up now he'd be staggering around and might blunder into another bomb.
But if he stayed put…
If he just lay here and played dead or badly wounded, maybe he could suck the guy in. And maybe not. Maybe the guy would figure he'd done his day's work and run off to whatever rat hole he called home.