Death of a Blue Movie Star (Rune 2)

"I don't know what that means!"

"Listen carefully. Look at the bomb. There'll be a little box near the battery."

"It's gray. I see it."

"With two metal posts on it."

"Right."

Healy said, "You have to run a piece of wire that's very narrow gauge--"

"What's gauge?" She was crying.

"Sorry ... I mean, it's got to be real thin. Run a piece from one lead of that box to the main terminal connecting the battery to the cable. See what I'm saying?"

"Right."

/> "Then you cut the wires to the timer."

Three minutes, thirty.

"Okay," she said.

"Find a piece of wire, strip the insulation off, and wrap one strand--not all of them, just one strand--around the terminal of the gray box and then the other around the terminal on the timer. Then cut the other wires from the timer."

"Okay, I'll do it." She stared at the plastic components. Picturing it.

Healy said, "Remember, you can't override the rocker switch. So don't move the bomb itself."

Through her tears she said, "They're called IEDs, Sam. Not bombs."

"The helicopter's on its way. There'll be county police meeting the ferry in Bay Shore. And we'll send one out to Fair Harbor."

"Oh, Sam. Should I just hide under the mattress?"

He paused. The static rose up like a storm between them. Then he said, "'Believe in what isn't as if it were until it becomes.'"

Two minutes.

"I'll see you soon, Sam." Rune yanked the wires from the phone. Then, with her teeth, stripped the insulation off one of them--the white wire--and wound one strand around the two terminals, the way Healy had told her.

Ninety seconds.

Now cut through the battery cables. She bent to the bomb, smelled the oily scent of the explosive, just inches from her face, and took one of the black wires in her teeth. She began chewing. Tears fell on the plastic.

It was thicker than she thought.

Fifty seconds.

A tooth chipped and she felt an electric jolt of pain and surprise. Her breath hissed inward.

Forty.

Thirty...

The wire snapped.

No time for the other one. Had he said to do both of them? She thought he had. Shit. She backed away from the bomb, pulled the mattress and springs off the bed and lay down on the floor in the corner the way Hathaway had told her. Blind and deaf ...