GAMBLING ON LOVE (Travis Series) (34 page)

Rosie
was visibly upset. It wasn’t like Beth to be so abrupt, but she couldn’t afford to have her orders questioned.
Shouting at Rosie when she reached beside the console to switch the phones to voicemail probably didn’t help matters, but it was imperative that the woman follow Beth’s instructions to the letter.

“
Nothing
gets shut down, Rosie, do you understand?
Nothing!
”
 

“Miss Sweeney,
” Rosie’s voice wobbled, “
did we get a bomb threat?”

Beth nodded slowly
.
“I think so, Rosie
.
I’m not sure, but I’m not taking any chances
.
Just tell everyone as quickly as you can
and
then get out of here yourself.”

“What about you, Miss Sweeney?”

“Believe me," she smiled thinly, "I’ll be right behind you
.
Now go, Rosie.”
 

Within ten minutes
,
the last of her employees had cleared the parking lot
.
Beth stood at the door to make sure they’d all gone before twisting the deadbolt on the door
.
She
would
make a quick sweep of the building to see if she could spot anything obvious
and
then call Detective Holt
to
let him know what she suspected
.

She
wasn’t about to risk the lives of her employees and was determined not to let her company go up in a fiery blaze like her house
.
Beth sat at Vic’s desk
.
The first thing she needed to do was make back-up disks from the mainframe
.
If the building did go up, at least they could rebuild from what was contained in the computer data banks.
 

The disks usually backed up at night and Vic moved them
off
-
site
in the morning
.
But he hadn’t been here for a few days so there would be a considerable amount of information they
wouldn’t
be able to reconstruct if she didn’t do a more recent back-up
.
Beth opened the program and entered the password to get the back-up process started
.
With that done, s
he
began to search the office for anything Stephen may have left behind
.
She glanced at the clock
.
It was just after four o’clock
—
plenty of time to search before Sam arrived around five.
 

She started with her office first
; it seemed
the most
logical
place to set an explosion
if he wanted to
make sure her office was annihilated
.
After a careful search, she concluded that nothing looked out of place or
tampered with in any
way
.
She checked around the receptionist area
and
then went to look in the bathrooms
.

Beth was too far away to hear the strange
whir
that Vic’s computer was making as the back-up program kicked in.

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                        *
**

Detective Holt dialed Sweeney Enterprises
.
They’d been interrogating Stephen DeBay since early this morning and what he’d just
discovered
had the acid churning in his
stomach
.
The phone rang several times but no one picked up
.
Not a good sign
.
Swearing under his breath,
he scrounged
around his desk for the notepad that
he’d scribbled
Beth Sweeney’s cell phone number
on
, acutely aware that the two minutes it took him to locate it could very well mean the difference between life and death
.

He dialed her number, glancing at the clock as he silently counted each ring.
It was four fifteen
.
He still had an hour and fifteen minutes,
Holt
told himself
.
If DeBay
was
telling the truth,
there
should be
ample
time to
prevent
a disaster from happening.
After several rings,
Beth’s cell phone
went to voice mail. Holt left a brief message, warning her to evacuate the building and advising her that a bomb squad was being dispatched to
Sweeney Enterprises
.

He called it in
and
got the bomb squad moving
.
A
police cruiser would be there
in less than ten minutes
and have the building cleared out by the time his squad arrived
.
If everything went smooth and pretty, they would
have a good forty minutes to disconnect the mechanism set to blow
Sweeney
Enterprises into the next county
.

The fact that no one had picked up at Sweeney, not even the voicemail, made him uneasy
.
As he grabbed his jacket and headed out, he
decided
it might be a good idea to call Sam Travis
.
Detective Holt flipped through his notepad and found Sam’s cell phone number.

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                   *
**

“I’m
only a few minutes away
,” Sam
replied
when Detective Holt asked how long it would take to meet him there
.
“What’s going on,
Detective
?”

“DeBay finally caved,” Holt said as he made his way to his car
.
“He
planted
a bomb at Sweeney Enterprises but we
should have
plenty of time to
disconnect the timer before it goes off
.”

Sam’s chest tightened
.
“How do you know for sure?”

“
According to
DeBay
, he
wasn’t trying to kill Vic
. The timer was supposed to have a three minute delay so Vic
sh
ould have been well away from the car when it blew. DeBay
also
said
he
wasn’t planning to hurt anyone at
Sweeney
Enterprises
.
He
only
wanted to destroy
the things that were important to Miss Sweeney
; her home, her business, the close relationship she has with Vic
…and with you
.
”

“What about the one in the office
?”
Sam growled
impatiently
.
He didn’t give a damn about anything right now
except
making sure Anne was safe.
 

“He set the timing mechanism to go off thirty minutes after the computer back-up program starts
.
He said the program
kicks on
at five o’clock each night when the office closes, which should give us until five
thirty to get it disconnected
.
I’ve already got a
cruiser
en
route to clear the building and my bomb squad should be there in fifteen minutes
.
It won’t take me ten minutes to get there myself.”

Sam pulled into the parking lot of Sweeney Enterprises, fear clawing at his insides a
s his eyes moved across the vacant lot
.
“Holt, you’d better hurry
.
I’m at Sweeney and the parking lot is completely clear of cars
.
Anne must have figured it out somehow and had her employees leave.”

“That’s good news then
.
Everyone is out of
the
building now so we just need to get the bomb squad out there.”

Sam was finding it difficult to breath
e
.
He knew Anne, knew exactly what she would do
if she was in danger of losing
her company
.
“
We’re not out of the woods yet
, Holt
.
I think Anne
is still in the building and,
if she sent her employees away, there’s a good shot she’s already set that back-up program in motion.”

“
Damn
,” Detective Holt
swore
and hit the siren on his car.

“I’ll be there in five minutes
.
Whatever you do,
Sam
, do
not
go into that building.”

“Like hell,” he muttered, tossing the phone on the seat
.
Sam leapt from his truck and hit the ground running.
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                                             *
**

Beth hadn’t found a thing so far and was beginning to think she’d let her imagination run away with her
.
It was twenty after four and Sam would be here soon
. B
ecause
she still had time to spare, she decided to
retrace her steps and make a more thorough sweep of the
back offices
.
She’d
barely
started t
he
search
of
Gina’s office
, which was located
in the
far
corner of
the building
,
when she heard the thunderous crash of glass being shattered
.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach.
Someone had just broken through the front door
and she
had the
sickening feeling
it wasn’t to steal computer equipment.
Stephen
must have made bail just as they’d feared, and now he was out for blood. Beth
glanced around, frantically searching for a place to hide or at least a weapon
to protect
herself
with
.

Gina was a die-hard Dodgers fan and Beth almost cried when she saw the wooden bat in the corner with a Dodgers cap dangling over it
.
She grabbed the makeshift weapon and scurried out of Gina’s office to secure a hiding place to spring from
.
When Stephen crossed her path, she wouldn’t hesitate to crack the bat across his skull for all the pain he’d caused her.

 
 
 
 
 
 
                                                     *
**

It only took one hard kick to shatter the glass in the front door
.
Pulling
off his jacket
,
Sam
wound it around his fist
and
punched out enough glass to slip through
.
He
checked
Anne’s office
first
and
then raced back out when he didn’t find her
.
He
hesitated beside Vic’s desk for a moment
, listening for any tell tale sounds that might tell him where she was. That’s when
he
noticed
the strange
low-
pitch
ed whir
emanating from
Vic’s computer
.

It didn’t take him half a second to
figure out
what it meant
, or
to realize he may only have a few minutes to find Anne and get her out of the building before it blew
.
Sam bolted to the right,
shouting
Anne’s name, his head moving from side to side as he ran
.
She was here somewhere
—
he knew it,
felt it
—
and he wasn’t leaving until he had her safe in his arms.