The End Game (A Brit in the FBI 3)

Vanessa was crouched down, staring into the night, her muscles tense and cramping in the night chill. It was her first job with Matthew, her first bomb built especially for him. It would work, she knew it would, but deep down she had doubts, and hated it. She shook her head, knowing she’d produce a lovely explosion for him as she watched for Ian and his boys. The Firth of Forth was to her left, salt and brine mingling with the sharp scent of unrefined oil.

The darkness was broken only by the lights of the refinery, always running, even after the sun went down. The lighted metal poles mingled with security lamps and boom lights to halo the bobbing headlamps on the workers’ helmets. The whole scene looked fantastical, a stage setting in an artificial gloom.

Vanessa looked at her watch. Five minutes to go. Ian was placing the bomb, and at his signal she should be the one to detonate it, but not this time. Matthew told her he was going to be the one to blow up the night sky.

Well, let him, if it gave him a kick. Or was it this particular refinery? Even though it was her job, she smiled at him as she handed over the trigger. It didn’t matter, she knew her baby would work just fine.

Vanessa didn’t yet understand him, but it was early days. She recognized his genius, his facility with ideas and each step they had to consider before moving ahead with his selected target. She also knew his amazing bomb wasn’t yet perfected. If it was, surely he’d want to test it.

She looked at her watch again, said aloud to Matthew, “Where is Ian? He should be out by now. The security guard will circle back around in thirty seconds. He’s cutting it too close.”

Matthew Spenser, the Bishop, a moniker he’d been given by Ian a long time before, because, as Ian had explained to her, he’d learned that Matthew existed in a master’s chess realm that was always ten moves ahead of everyone else, and so didn’t he deserve the na

me? Why not King? she wondered, but didn’t say anything. Matthew was tall, lean, and hyper, sharp as a poised knife, he liked to think. She felt the excitement coming off him in waves. He was about to score another win.

He said to Vanessa, “Ian’s never failed me. He’ll be along. He knows what he’s doing.”

Three minutes now. They couldn’t use comms; radio frequencies could set off the bomb.

She saw movement by the perimeter, and her adrenaline spiked. No, it wasn’t Ian. Where was he? She felt gut-wrenching fear that something had gone wrong, that he’d been caught. Or, almost as bad, that she’d messed up and the bomb was somehow defective. Or, at the very worst, she’d been found out. No, she had to calm herself. Her beautiful, powerful Semtex bomb would work and Ian was a master at this; he’d get it set in place and get himself and their guys out of the plant. All would go well.

She let out her breath. Since her prints were all over the bomb and Ian always wore gloves, the message would be clear and received. Her bosses would know it was her group who’d blown up Grangemouth.

Two minutes.

Matthew squeezed her arm, gave her a quick smile. “Your first bomb for me.” She could only nod. He felt to her like he was ready to jump out of his skin, or his brain, maybe both, but she felt it, too, this manic brew of emotions that roared through both of them. She wondered if in the aftermath of the explosion he would try to get her into bed, to celebrate scoring this victory by scoring her. She’d hold him off, waiting, waiting, trying to judge if she would have to go the sex route to find out what she needed to know.

She took one last look at her watch. “We’re out of time.”

“Vanessa, look there.”

Ian was running across the field toward them, his now-empty backpack flying like wings behind him, a crazy smile stretched across his face, three of their men behind him.

She put in her earplugs.

Matthew was watching her as he stuffed in his own earplugs. Then, without a word, he grinned down at her and handed her back the trigger with a flourish. “Have at it, Vanessa, have at it.”

Why had he changed his mind? What did it prove? Had he planned to see if she’d lose her nerve, not be able to detonate the bomb? Well, it hardly mattered.

Vanessa looked up at him as she depressed the trigger, a button on her cell phone.

A fraction of a second later, she felt the explosion. It started in the soles of her feet, pounded up her legs as the ground began to shake and an earsplitting roar tore through the silence. The night sky became day.

The concussion knocked both of them backward. They landed hard, their breath knocked out of them. When Vanessa managed to pull air into her lungs, she scrambled to her hands and knees, facing the heat of the blaze raging in the refinery. It looked like a bonfire on steroids, much stronger than she’d expected. She saw Ian and his men crouched down behind distant refinery trucks, did a quick head count. Everyone was accounted for.

So fast, all of it, so fast. The bomb had done its job, and she’d been its builder. She’d proven herself, established herself once and for all. Now she would be in with Matthew Spenser; now he had to accept her into his inner circle. After all, she was the one who’d engineered this marvel for him, and he would know there were more marvels to come. He had to trust her now.

He was screaming something at her, his voice wild, filled with alarm.

She couldn’t hear him, pulled out her earplugs, but it didn’t help much. The bomb’s concussion had deafened her.

Then he leaped on her, rolling on top of her, slapping at her head.

“Your hair is on fire!”

Her hair was on fire? She knew she should be panicked, she should freak out, but she didn’t move, and let him worry about it. Matthew jerked off his shirt and smothered her head in it.

When he pulled his shirt off her head, he stared down at her. “It’s only the ends of your hair. Are you all right?”