"Harper, stay. It's rigged. Don't come in." Lucy commands, carefully turning at the waist to face the open door and confused detective. They were here following up on one of Nyla Harper's cases when things turned south quickly.
"Where's Bosk?" Harper asks.
Lucy turns the other way and stretches to see him. He's fiddling with some wires attached to a device on top of two giant blue buckets. "In the back room. He's arming a giant bomb. You gotta get clear of the house, radio the Bomb Squad, clear the neighborhood, and get an RA started. He's gonna need it." She tries to keep her voice steady but she's freaking out inside and trying not to move a muscle, on top of having felt off all day.
"Copy," Harper says. She reaches for her radio and walks away.
"So, Bosk," Lucy cautiously starts, "How long has this place been booby-trapped?"
"About a decade," Ernie Bosk casually replies from the other room. Lucy shifts her body again to see inside but the movement terrifies her. "I've been waiting for the cops to show up ever since. Surprised it took you this long."
A decade, she thinks. She slowly lowers her weight to the ground and looks around with her flashlight. A number of the floor panels are scuffed and more used than the others. She gulps, shifts her weight, and reaches forward with one foot. With the lightest touch, she puts her foot on the ground and waits. Nothing. She transfers her weight to that foot slowly, careful to stay quiet and low to the ground. When nothing happens, she holds her weight on that foot and silently shifts the other foot to the next scuffed panel.
Her mind screams against her as she slowly walks through the bomb-rigged house. Nausea rises in her body but she pushes it back and wills herself to take another step. Once she reaches the door to where Bosque is standing. She takes the last steps quicker, more confident in her ability to glide across the floor and that he didn't rig the room he was standing in. She stands behind him and raises her gun to hold it to his head.
"Don't move," she says. "Slowly raise your hands away from the bomb."
He lets go of the tool he's holding and raises his hands to the side of his head. "Don't you want me to turn off the bomb?"
"My guess is you'd enter a code to set it all off, which is why we're going out the window." Lucy cuffs Bosk and braces the two of them for impact. Holding tight to Bosk with one hand, she shields her head and face with the other as she jumps and pushes her shoulder into the window. She and the bomber smash the window and land on the ground in a pile of rocks and glass. She winces as she feels all the little cuts on her body.
Harper approaches the house when she hears the smash from behind the house. She pulls her gun and slowly walks around the side of the house to the sound. She sees Chen, covered in small cuts, leading Bosk, also covered in cuts, towards her in handcuffs. Harper puts her gun away and hurries forward to take him.
"House is still rigged but he didn't finish rigging the fertilizer bomb," Lucy swallows, trying to push back the burning feeling of bile in her throat. She keeps walking towards Harper and hands the guy off to him. "You got him?"
"Yeah," replies Harper as she walks away.
"Okay." Lucy stumbles a few steps towards the fence and leans one hand against it, the other at her mouth. She swallows, willing herself not to be sick.
Harper pauses after a few steps and turns to face Lucy. "You gonna puke?"
"No, no, no," Lucy grimaces, but she doesn't believe herself and neither does Harper. "Maybe," she admits, and she knows she's right. She drops to her knees and grabs the curved bricks from a dead garden bed. She gags and lurches forward, puking into the dirt. The acid burns her throat and she fights back tears. Harper takes the suspect and walks him away from the house. Lucy gags again and more vomit lands on the ground.
