Disco Bomb

Chapter 2

May 10th, 2017. 11:25 PM.

The first time I went to the hospital, my mom was taking me and Danielle to take my dad home after surgery. I was very young and in awe at the time, and my mom was teaching us how to properly behave in these situations. Now I was too familiar with the concept of waiting in the hospital, too familiar for a thirty-four-year-old woman in real-estate. I sat on a bench in the lobby with anxious parents and bored kids and crying babies, watching people in scrubs and coats rush back and forth, some carrying carts. Eventually a nurse would call my name and say I could talk to the patient. Normally, the nurse would add that I shouldn't talk about the accident in case it would cause stress, or that whoever I was seeing was "okay but exhausted".

I was mildly surprised when an hour had passed and no status update had come. Mildly, because I hadn't heard anything about Daniel and Danielle for quite a while after they'd been burned trying to escape a crashed hot-air balloon in January. Surprised, because Ross hadn't looked as bad as they had. My sister had burns and scrapes and scars all over, mostly from crawling out of the basket, but Ross only had burns on his face and a few on his arms, from what I could see. Maybe it was because he was a kid. Maybe his lungs were too small and couldn't take the pressure. Maybe he'd been standing too close.

Maybe I was the most irresponsible human being on Earth.

A nurse finally came. "Ms. Scott? You can come in now. I'm sorry you had to wait so long, but there was a policeman in there asking questions."

I decided right then and there I was going to kill Jack Lane.

But when I got to Ross's hospital room, it wasn't Jack. It was Brandon Landesky, an officer I didn't know too well but who had helped rescue me from the White Tie in February. "Are you done?"

He nodded. "This guy yours?"

"My nephew. He's staying with me for a few days."

"No, he's staying in the hospital. The doctors say he'll be in here a while, three to four days. Uh..."

"'Uh,' what?" I folded my arms and blocked off the doorway. "Is it "um, we'll open a full investigation" or is it "um, I'm sitting on my butt and not doing anything"?"

Landesky frowned. "It's uh, the other guys assigned to this case think you're the number one suspect."

My jaw dropped. "Excuse me?"

"I don't believe it either but--"

"You better not! I put Ross to bed ten minutes before I fell asleep. Then this loud explosion wakes me up, and I looked out my window to see him lying on the ground, covered in debris, not breathing, and now they think I did it?!"

"Can I remind you again that that is not what I believe--"
"Then who said it? Who the hell are you working with, and where is Jack?"

Landesky huffed a sigh. "Jack hasn't been here and I don't know where he is."

"That's bullshit. You're his best friend." I took out my phone. "Fine. I'm calling him."

"No don't--"

"Then where?"

Another sigh. "Out. He has a lot of business elsewhere. Now, I have questions to ask you." Brandon took out his phone and pulled up a picture of a black bag. "Have you seen this before?"

I looked. "No. Looks like any other bag."

"Did you have them around your house?"

"No."

"Does Ross have a cell phone?" A swipe of his thumb and the bag was replaced with a silver cell phone. "Something like this?"

I shook my head. "He's only 6. I didn't give him one and neither did his parents." If there was anything Danielle did right, it was not giving a six-year-old his own cell phone. Whether he was Armageddon or not.

"Do you normally let him sleep outside?"

"I put him in the guest bedroom for a reason."

Brandon put his phone away. "Then that's it. Visiting hours are almost over."

"Not my fault. Now let me talk to him in peace." After he left, I took the chair closest to Ross. "How you feeling?"

He groaned. "Tired. The doctor gave me this stuff but it tastes awful."

"Okay. Do you need some water?"

Ross nodded. I could see tears in his eyes. "I only wanted to play with it."

I sighed and got a glass of water. "I know."

"Somebody threw it over the fence. I thought they were giving it to me."

I stopped. "Threw it over the fence?"

"Yeah. I was gonna sleep, but this car zoomed by and the bag fell on my head." He sniffled. "It was heavy, so I wanted to see what was in it. There was this shiny thing and a phone, and I thought it was a robot." He coughed. "Aunt Carmen, what's C4?"

A bomb. Somebody threw a bomb over the fence and almost killed my nephew. Just drove by without a care in the goddamn world, threw a bomb and its detonator over the fence for a six-year-old child to find and almost kill himself with. What the hell had the world come to?

I sighed. "A bad thing, Ross." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "Don't tell your mommy I said this, but I'm gonna kill the bastard that did this."