Fireworks: A Bucky Barnes Romance

Chapter 2

He took the other phone from the deputy. "Barnes here."

"Yeah, this is Agent Jimmy Woo, FBI. Your call got passed up the chain to me."

Bucky caught him up on the details while still checking the van. While Woo asked a question about his and Sam's latest mission, Bucky dropped down on hands and knees to look under the car.

"We haven't made any recent enemies," Bucky said. "Extracted a criminal wanted by Interpol, but he's in custody." There were a couple wires looking a little loose under the cab. Maybe nothing, but...

Bucky put his hand up under the fender to scoot himself forward, and a red dot appeared on the back of his hand. A red LED lit up further back. Blinking rapidly. He'd tripped a laser sensor.

Bucky rolled himself backwards. "Get back. Bomb! Get back!"

He barely made it to his feet, metal arm tucked over his head, when the thing blew.

Unlike in an action movie, it didn't blow him off his feet, but it was damn loud and gave a flashburn to the exposed skin on his arm, neck, and face. He also felt the sharp sting of shrapnel in his shoulder, and the clang of a larger piece bouncing off his arm.

He staggered away from the heat before turning to look back. The van burned sullenly behind him. A column of greasy black smoke rose in the air. The cops had mostly moved away, though one had a bad gash on her face, and one looked a little singed. But they'd all got far enough away.

They were calling it in, but it took a second for Bucky to realize that Agent Woo was shouting questions from the phone still in his hands.

When Sarah had been jerked backward off her feet and into a van, she'd only gotten a few good kicks in before a dishtowel had been shoved in her mouth. Then she felt the prick of an injection in her right thigh.

Why didn't I scream while I could? She thought angrily. Then that was it.

When she came to, she was strapped into a chair, which rumbled and occasionally bucked with turbulence. She must be in the air.

She didn't open her eyes and tried to let her head keep lolling as it had been doing.

She couldn't help being very aware of her body. The back of her neck itched and her left sock was uncomfortably scrunched up inside her tennis shoe. Her braids had come loose and brushed either side of her face. Two straps came from shoulder height and met near her waist.

"Smoke," one man said. "The van went."

"Keep a lookout for Falcon," another guy said. "Sandhurst says he took off from top of the hotel in Houston."

Yes. Sarah thought. You should be worried. You made a big, damn mistake taking me.

"He couldn't make it this fast," another said. "It takes a 787 an hour, maybe hour and a half to make it to Nola from there."

"Not taking any chances. Not till we get to the hangar."

"When does she get another dose?"

"That one should last until we get there."

Sarah suppressed a snort. Her body burned through sedatives and anesthetics quickly, as two pregnancies and rough deliveries had made abundantly clear to her.

She continued to listen as the helicopter flew onward and soon the direction of the sun shifted over her eyelids.

It's not that Sarah wasn't scared. She felt vaguely ill from the drugs and from the anxiety, but she just couldn't see this ending well for these guys. Did they know her brother? Or Bucky, for that matter?