One of the men runs over, throws a bomb vest over me and fastens on a helmet.

“This way, Jessica!” he commands.

I let him pull me to my feet.

All three of them rush me out of the building and into an armored personnel carrier sitting in front of the warehouse. They slam the door shut and the driver takes off out of the junkyard, swerving around the wrecks of planes and cars.

Two of the men stare at monitors keeping a careful watch on the building. We pass through the entrance and another bomb tech shuts the gate then hops onto the running board of the carrier.

We head down to the end of the block and take a side street. In the distance I can see police cars and fire trucks. There’s a cloud of black smoke in the sky.

Our driver pulls us into the open doors of a recycling plant and they slam shut after us. Finally, one of my rescuers speaks into his radio. “We got her.”

I step out of the vehicle into a command center they’d set up in the last few hours. Danielle comes running up and gives me a hug.

“Thank God! Thank God!”

“The bomb?” I ask.

“We know. We checked the swabs Shannon collected and realized what we’d left you sitting on.”

I point to the armored carrier. “He knows we were there now.”

Danielle shakes her head. “No. He doesn’t. We staged an accident.”

“The helicopter?”

“The sheriff’s department pilot is a former Navy SEAL pilot. He offered to do a controlled crash.”

“Oh my God!” My hand flies to my mouth.

“He’s fine. Bruised, but fine. We had to have an excuse to clear the area, so we staged a high-speed chase. It was live on the news along with the crash next to a chemical supply company. We’ve cleared everyone for a half mile. We cut the power and Ailes took over the Warlock’s system.”

It was all an elaborate scheme to evacuate the area without the Warlock realizing what we were doing. Did it work? There hasn’t been an explosion yet, if that’s any indication.

“We’re going to send in techs to take out the bomb,” continues Danielle. “We should have done that the first time. If we’d paid more attention to the thermal imaging we would have noticed something was out of place.”

“That’s my fault,” says Shannon. He’d been standing over a table looking at a map. “I should have known he would try something like that.”

I shake my head. “It’s not your fault. We’re just beginning to understand how the man thinks. If you hadn’t gotten those swabs of the explosives, I’d still be sitting back there next to the bomb.”

A bomb tech walks over to Shannon. “We’re ready to go try to dismantle the thing.”

“He’s devious. Don’t take anything for granted,” I reply, the scent of explosive fuel still fresh in my mind.

“Trust me. We’re going to take things real slow, Agent.”