He may have looked like a cowboy but he wasn't the silent type.

Detective Sam Healy was thirty-eight. Nearly half of his fellow Bomb Squad detectives had gotten into demolition in the military but he'd gone a different route. First a portable — a foot patrolman — then working an RMP.

“Remote motor patrol. It means police car.”

“Initials, I remember.”

Healy smiled. “You're talking to an MOS.”

“Moss?”

“Member of Service.”

After a few years of that Healy'd gone into Emergency Services: New York's SWAT team. Then he'd signed up for the Bomb Squad. He'd taken the month-long course at the FBI's Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Alabama, and then was assigned to the Squad. Healy had majored in electrical engineering in college and was studying criminal justice at John Jay.

He talked with excitement about his workshop at home, inventions he'd made as a kid, his twenty-year, uninterrupted subscription to Scientific American. Once he had come up with a formula for a chemical solution to neutralize a particular high explosive and had almost gotten a patent. But a big military supplier beat him to it.

He'd never fired his gun, except on the range, and had only made four arrests. He carried a Brooklyn gun shop's business card, on the back of which was printed the Miranda recitation; he knew he'd never remember the words in a real arrest. He'd been called on the carpet several times for failing to wear his service revolver.

When the conversation turned personal he became quieter, though Rune sensed he wanted to talk. His wife had left him eight months before and she had informal custody of their son. “I want to fight it but I can't bring myself to. I don't want to put Adam through that. Anyway, what judge is going to award me custody of a ten-year-old kid? I deal with explosive devices all day.”

“Is that why she left you?”

Healy pointed across the field. Rune heard the staticky warning again. Another huge flash, followed by a tower of smoke fifty feet high. Rune felt a concussion wave slap her face like a sudden summer wind. The cops watching lifted their fingers to their mouths and whistled. Rune jumped to her feet and applauded.

“Nitramon cratering charge,” Healy said, studying the smoke.

“Fantastic!”

Healy was nodding, looking at her. She caught him and he looked away.

“The job, you mean?” he asked.

Rune had forgotten her question. Then she recalled. “The reason your wife left?”