As it came closer to the time for the wedding to start, Shy sat back and rubbed her stomach. “You know, I’m just gonna go ahead and go to the ladies’ room now and get it over with,” Shy said, because she always had to go and began to get up.
When Black stood up, Shy made eye contact with Wanda. They’d been exchanging looks, since Wanda sat down next to her. Shy had questions that she needed answers to about the no longer secret James that Wanda had been seeing for the past two years.
Wanda had seen the way Shy had been looking at her and since she had to go too, she stood up. “I’ll go with you,” She said as Black held Shy’s hand. “Would you excuse me, James?”
On the way to the ladies’ room, Shy asked and Wanda answered questions about James and why she’d felt the need to keep him a secret. When they finished in the ladies’ room, both stood in the mirror, touching up hair and makeup.
“You ready?” Wanda asked as she touched up the edges of her hair.
“Yes,” Shy said and reached for her purse, but she accidentally knocked it off the counter and the contents spilled out onto the floor. “Oh, no.”
“I’ll get that,” Wanda said.
“Would you please. It would take me a while to get down there and getting back up is always fun.”
Wanda stooped down and began putting Shy’s things back in her purse and that was when she saw it.
“Oh shit.”
“What?”
Wanda stood up quickly and stepped back. “There’s a bomb under there.”
“What?” Shy may have asked, but whether she heard correctly or not, she stepped back quickly.
“There’s a bomb under there,” Wanda repeated.
“I’ll get Michael,” Shy said and started to leave.
“No,” Wanda said quickly and followed Shy out of the ladies room. “It’ll be faster if I go get Mike. You stay outside and make sure that nobody goes in there.”
“Right,” Shy said as Wanda went to get Black.
When Wanda came back with Black, he had Monika and Carla with him. Monika got on her knees and looked up under the counter.
Black looked at Shy and Wanda. He was very protective of the two of them, so he knew that this was no place for them. “Do we need to get everybody out of here?” he demanded to know as Rain came into the ladies’ room.
“What’s going on?” Rain asked. She saw Wanda whispering in Black’s ear, then he went to get Monika and Carla and then the three of them headed for the bathroom. Seeing that, Rain knew that this was exactly where she was supposed to be.
“There’s a bomb under there,” Black informed.
“The timer is set to go off at ten minutes after two. And it looks like it’s got a failsafe remote detonator too,” Monika said.
“Just in case it can still be detonated,” Rain said, noting that planting a bomb was a big step up in tech for a couple of corner boys trying to come up. To her, this seemed more like something that El Decreto de Guerra would do.
“Carla,” Monika said, “Get the cell signal dampener from my bag and engage it.”
Carla shook her head and got Monika’s bag. “Girl, the stuff you carry around with you,” she said as she found the device and engaged it.
“Whatever … just get down here and have a look at this device,” Monika barked.
Carla shook her head. “In this dress,” she said, got her tablet from her bag and got down on the floor on her back next to Monika.
“Do we need to get everybody out of here?” Black asked the two women that were laying on the floor in evening gowns.
“Not yet. Carla just dampened the cell signal in the building, so it can’t be detonated remotely. I can defuse the bomb,” Monika assured. “Take a look at that panel, Carla.”
“Way ahead of you. That’s a Novation MK2 MKII keypad. You need to enter the correct keys in the correct order on the keypad. Only one column has all four of these symbols.” She showed Monika the diagram. “You have to press the four buttons in the order their symbols appear from top to bottom within that column,” Carla said.