LOVE ON THE RUN - Sample Chapters

Chapter 2

A FEW HOURS EARLIER... 

While Delaney kept an eye out, Zinio finished setting the timer on the bomb stuck to the front door.  

With the last of the wires in place, there was just the matter of deciding on the timeframe. He checked a cable trailing under the door, then studied his watch's display. 

Delaney's attention shifted to the unshaven guy in the upstairs window across the street. He was rubbing his pot belly under a greasy teal tank top two sizes too small as if to confirm his due date. His eyes landing on her and Zinio, his mouth went wide and the Havana hanging off his bottom lip fell, igniting the cloth canopy over the bookshop one floor below as if it had been doused in gasoline. The fire quickly burned through to the racks of books beneath. The store was well on its way to setting the entire block ablaze. 

With a push of a button, the digital red L.E.D. readout on the explosive was set to ten seconds. The loud beeps made it easier to coordinate the rest of their movements, but weren't exactly the incognito solution to middle-of-the-business day bank robberies. "We should probably have thought of some diversion."  

"Not a problem," she said, eying the conflagration in progress across the street. She stepped to the side, moving in sync with him. 

"What makes you think we can't make this relationship work?" 

They both slipped on their airport-grade ear protection. 

The door blew-all the way into the street. 

As they removed the headsets, Delaney eyed the holocaust they had just caused. "If I had to hazard a guess-I'd say you lack subtlety." 

They stormed the building. 

In fluid, rehearsed motions, they made their way through the chaos and confusion. She grabbed the elderly guard by the entrance who was going into cardiac arrest from all the excitement, sat him down, found the pillbox he was reaching for, and slipped a couple nitrate tabs under his tongue. She pulled his gun, emptied the bullets, and tossed the pistol into the street, under the car parked just out front. 

Zinio employed the same wire cutters he used on the bomb to sever the central line connecting the panic buttons. 

Delaney exploited her echo location to maneuver through the smoke to find the source of the beached whale sounds. The woman doing the gasping was closer in size to a beached walrus, as it turned out. She had her back pressed against the room divider separating her from the new account representatives. Delaney found the inhaler in her purse that had dropped at her feet, and got a couple of squirts into her lungs to settle her down. 

When the other security guard came to his senses enough to unclip his gun, Zinio reached it faster, pulling the weapon, dismantling it on the fly, and sending the pieces flying to the far corners of the floor. It would take a CSI team a week to find every piece under all the debris. When the tall forty-some black security attendant started shadow boxing, still unclear as to the whereabouts of his opponent in the soot and smoke, Zinio grabbed his hands and secured him to a marble pillar near the entrance using the guard's own handcuffs lifted off his belt.  

The dust finally settling, the roof started to give. Zinio glanced up at the beam coming loose overhead, then at the single customer waiting in front of each teller. "If you could all just please step away from the counter, please," he said, gesturing with the gun. "That's it. One more small step. Perfect." The overhead beam crashed right behind the customers on top of where they had been standing just seconds ago. 

"Christ, we blew the door, not the building," Delaney said, surveying the wreckage. 

"It's an old building." Zinio took her by the arm, and steered her to the other bank of tellers to the other side of him, some of whom also had a customer they were serving. "You have all these unrealistic notions about relationships."