Echoes of Danger. Lenora Worth

her way through this, to save her sanity. What more could the woman want?

      What if the woman didn’t stop until she had Stephen?

      “I can’t let that happen,” Dana said out loud.

      Luckily Tony was making such a ruckus with Stephen, neither of them heard. They didn’t hear the doorbell, either.

      “I’ll get it,” Dana said. “Probably the pizza man.”

      “There’s a twenty on the counter,” Tony said, his eyes never leaving the blur of speeding cars on the television screen.

      Dana opened the door and absently took the warm pizza box, her mind preoccupied with other things. Then she handed the delivery boy his money, her eyes touching on his briefly. He looked familiar—

      “Thank you,” the boy said, a serene smile plastered across his skinny face. He left so quickly, Dana didn’t connect on why he looked familiar. Shutting the door, she said, “This is one large pizza, and heavily loaded from the weight of it.”

      “Set it on the coffee table,” Tony said over his shoulder. “We’ll be there as soon as I finish winning this race.”

      “Right.” Looking for a fairly level spot on all the magazines and papers on the long, beat-up table, Dana dropped the pizza box on top. That’s when the lid popped open just enough for her to see the gadget inside.

      “Tony,” she said, her heart jumping right along with whatever was in the box. “Tony, come here a minute.”

      “Hold on.”

      “Now, Tony.”

      Something in the panicked tone of her voice got Tony’s attention. “Pause it, Stevie,” he said as he pushed up off the floor. “What’s the matter—no jalapeños?”

      Dana pulled him close. “No, something we didn’t order. Listen.”

      He did, his eyes widening as they locked with hers. “Get Stevie,” he said, “and go, go as fast as you can. Get out of the building. It might be nothing, just a joke. Just go and I’ll come down and get you after I check it out.”

      “I can’t leave you,” she said, her hands clutching his arm. “Come with us.”

      “No way. I can’t let anything happen to my equipment.”

      “Forget the computers. Come on, Tony!”

      He leaned toward the box. “Go on. I know a little bit about detonating bombs. I learned it on the Internet. Go! I’ll call 911, I promise.”

      Afraid to leave, but even more afraid to stay, Dana lifted Stephen up. “Listen, sport, I want you to come with me for a few minutes.”

      Stephen looked confused. “Hey, what about my pizza? I want pizza.”

      “We’ll eat when we get back,” she explained. “Right now I want to try out your new runners. We haven’t really had a chance to go for a good run since we got them.”

      “Dana, now?” He rolled his eyes. “I’m hungry and I want to finish this game.” He placed his arms over his chest in a defiant stance.

      The box ticked away.

      “Now, Stephen. Don’t ask questions, just come on.”

      “But I don’t want to run. It’s getting dark out there and we don’t know our way around. You told me, never run in the dark.”

      “We’ll be okay. Now, don’t argue with me, Stephen.”

      Throwing his controller down in a fit of anger, Stephen glared at his sister. “I don’t want to go.”

      “But you are, sport.” Eyeing Tony, who stood staring at the ticking pizza box, she heaved Stephen by the collar, praying he wouldn’t have a tantrum. “We’ll just go around the corner.”

      She reached the door, grabbed her purse and took one last look at Tony. “Be careful,” she said. “Call a bomb squad or something—call somebody, Tony!”

      “I’ll be fine,” he said, his grin fixed and unsure. “Go, and Dana, you be careful, too.”

      “Okay.” She felt the tears pressing at the back of her eyes. “Ready, Stevie?”

      “No, no. Don’t want to go.”

      “You don’t get to decide,” Dana replied. “We have to leave now, Stephen.”

      They made it to the small lobby, where a security guard nodded indifferently at them.

      Dana called to the man, “I think we’ve got a bomb threat in apartment 201.”

      The guard snapped to attention, automatically reaching for the nearest phone. “Hey, wait a minute!” he shouted to Dana.

      She didn’t stop. She pulled Stephen along at a brisk trot, mindless of his complaints. The city was dark and misty. It had been raining. Car lights flashed in her face, but Dana didn’t notice. She looked down the nearly deserted street.

      She turned back to get a grip on her exact location, taking one last look at the apartment building. Then the earth shook and in a matter of seconds, part of the building blew up and out into the sky. The blast sent glass flying and bricks falling. Somewhere someone screamed and a baby began to cry.

      Frozen in horror at first, Dana sprang to life. “Tony!” she cried as she ran back toward the building. “Tony!”

      Stephen screamed, too, then began to cry. “Dana? What happened? Where’s Tony?” His screams turned into a high-pitched wail that would only get worse if she didn’t calm him down.

      People began to run out into the streets, pushing and shoving, questioning. Dana held Stephen close, watching as the remainder of the building settled back into itself, hissing and burning. What used to be Tony’s apartment was now a hollowed-out hull with charred, tangled computer equipment strewn across its blank face. The air was heavy with smoke and falling cinders, the acrid smell cutting off her frightened breath. Closing her eyes, she bit back the tears wailing inside her. A silent scream roared through her pounding head. This scene was too familiar. This was too soon, too quick, too much.

      Tony was dead, and it was her fault. All her fault.

      “I have to find him,” she said out loud, grabbing Stephen to pull him back toward the building.

      Sirens blared all around her; paramedics arrived in ambulances, pushing the sightseers and shocked neighbors aside.

      “Tony,” she said, trying to tell someone, anyone, where he was. “Tony is in there.”

      “Step aside, ma’am,” a young fireman said. “We’ll find your friend, but you can’t go in there.”

      Shocked, Dana could only nod. She gripped Stephen so hard, he cried out again. Easing up a little, she held him close, her eyes searching the crowd. Maybe Tony had gotten out, too.

      Please, God, let him be okay.

      Then she spotted the pizza delivery boy in the crowd. He raked a hand through his bob of a haircut, then leaned back nonchalantly on the fender of her parked truck. He gave her the same serene grin she remembered from—

      “From Emma’s store,” she said in a shaky whisper. The other customer. The one who’d run out when the storm had hit.

      One of Caryn Roark’s boys.

      A chill careened down Dana’s back. They not only knew where she was; they had planted a bomb just for her.

      “I’m sorry, Tony,” she whispered to the horrid scene in front of her. “I’m so sorry.”

      With that she waited, watching the grinning boy as she talked quietly to Stephen. “Listen, sport. We’re going to have to get away from here, because, well, some bad people are after us and we’ve got to find a safe place.”

      “Mean