Major Nanny

“Damn, I left my lipstick in my other purse.”

Atta girl, Stacy thought. That’s the woman who’s going to be the next President of the United States.

Carefully, she carved a twisting path for herself through the debris, keeping a mental map in her head. Forward about four yards, then left another three. That should put her in reach of the large chunk of tangled metal pinning Lila in position. If she could clear enough of that mess to free the governor to move around, she could get her out to safety.

“I need a little more line,” she called to the EMT holding the safety rope biting into her waist. The line slackened and she moved gingerly forward. Finally, she spotted the governor’s wavy blond hair, now ashy from the dust and debris caused by the bomb’s destruction.

“I see you, Governor.”

“I’m a mess, aren’t I?”

Stacy chuckled. “Never.” She edged around a pole that leaned at a precarious angle, barely holding up a large piece of the stage that could crash down on top of them at any moment. She cleared the hazard and took a sharp left as planned.

Then she froze.

Strapped to the large chunk of steel that formed the obstacle between her and the governor, an electronic device blinked ominously, its smooth facade attached by colorful wires to what looked like pumpkin-colored bricks.

“Governor, don’t move. Not one inch.”

“What is it?” Lila asked.

Stacy spotted movement outside the fallen dais, jeans-clad legs moving toward the governor’s position. Harlan McClain’s rugged face came into view as he hunkered down to get a better look at what was happening. His dark eyes met hers. “Is something wrong?”

Stacy licked her lips. By now, she knew, there must be scores of reporters outside. Whatever she said next could create chaos if she let her rising panic show.

Lowering her voice, keeping the tone as calm as possible, she said, “I think there’s a second explosive device. And it looks big. You need to start clearing the area. Now. But try not to start a panic.”

Harlan moved quickly, disappearing from her sight. A few seconds later, she saw a rush of movement outside the steel-and-lumber cocoon as the EMTs and bystanders responded to whatever Harlan had told them.

“You need to get out of here,” Lila urged, her voice low and serious. “Zachary needs you a hell of a lot more than I do.”

“I can’t go, Governor,” Stacy answered, wishing it weren’t true. Lila was right. Zachary needed her, even more than most kids his age. She was his biggest advocate and his most devoted fan. But what she wanted didn’t change the facts on the ground. “The bomb squad is going to need me.”

“Now you’re an explosives expert?” Lila retorted tartly. “Any other hidden talents I should know about?”

“That’s not what I mean,” Stacy answered bleakly. “There’s a support beam between here and there that’s about thirty degrees shy of falling over and bringing this whole pile of junk raining down on us. I was barely able to get around it without jarring it out of place.”

“What are you saying?” It was Harlan McClain’s voice, not Lila’s, that answered her. Stacy looked up and found him staring at her with wide, worried eyes.

“I’m saying that maybe the governor and I are small enough to crawl out of here without bringing this pile of junk down, but I don’t think a man could make it through safely—certainly not wearing a bomb-resistant suit.” She tamped down the panic rising in her throat. “I don’t think there’s going to be any way to disarm this bomb without me.”

Chapter Two

Stacy Giordano was right about one thing, Harlan decided, peering up at the slab of wood and steel propped up precariously by the tilting support beam Stacy had described. There was no way anyone bigger than a medium-size woman would ever get through the narrow gap between the beam and another pile of teetering debris without bringing everything crashing down on top of the whole pile.

She appeared in the space ahead of him, considerably grimier than she’d looked when she entered. As she reached him, she held out her cell phone. There was a photo called up on the phone’s small display window. “This is the device.”

He took care not to touch the teetering support pole as he took the phone from her and looked at the image on the display window. He tried not to react as he saw the orange bricklike cakes of material attached to the bomb. “Semtex,” he said aloud. “Industrial grade—not that it makes much difference.”

“That’s bad, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Bomb squad’s on the way. They’ll have some ideas about what to do.”

Her dark eyes met his. “Get out of here, Mr. McClain. The last thing the rescue team needs is one more person to have to dig out of here.”

“You need to get out of there, too.”

She shook her head. “If there’s any way to defuse the bomb, they’ll need me to do it. And the more we move around in here, the more likely we are to dislodge something that’ll bring everything crashing down around us. Just go back outside and make sure Mr. Bellows is okay.”

“Bart’s fine. One of our guys is here—Parker Mc Kenna—you know him?”

She nodded. “He and Bailey just got engaged.”

Poor fool, Harlan added silently. Marriage was a sucker’s game. “He got Bart and Bailey out of here.” Bailey Lockhart hadn’t wanted to leave her mother, but Parker had convinced her that the governor would be a lot less stressed out if she knew her daughter was safe.

“Good. Now you get out of here, too,” Stacy said.

“Mister, you need to clear out of here and let us do what needs doing,” a man barked from somewhere behind Harlan. He turned and saw a uniformed police officer peering through the maze stretching out a few yards behind him.

“You can’t go past this spot,” Harlan called back to the officer, tersely explaining the problem. “I think anything you try to do to shore it up will just bring it down.”

“Who are you?” the officer asked.

“Harlan McClain. I’m with the governor’s party.” It was close enough to the truth; he was with Bart, who was part of the governor’s entourage. “I work with a company who provides the governor with security,” he added, figuring a little more embellishment couldn’t hurt. For reasons he couldn’t quite define, he was reluctant to leave Stacy on her own in this hazardous maze.

He turned around to look at her, but she was already crawling back toward the governor’s position. He sighed, frustrated and worried.

“I’m still going to need to get in there, even if I can’t move past that support beam,” the officer behind him called out in a reasonable tone. “I need to get closer to the bomb if I’m going to help your friend disarm it.”

He was right. Harlan was just in the way at this point. He started crawling back out of the hole, emerging on the outside a few seconds later to find himself surrounded by bomb squad members. They were already assessing the debris pile to see if there was a better way to the bomb site.

“There’s a whole lot of junk in there ready to fall down on top of you,” Harlan warned the one who seemed to be in charge. He showed the man the cell phone photo from Stacy. “Here’s a picture of the bomb.”

The bomb tech frowned. “Semtex. Radio controlled, if I had to guess.”

“Which may mean he’s around here somewhere, waiting to send a signal,” Harlan said. At the bomb tech’s odd look, he added, “Three stints in Iraq.”

“Ah.” The bomb tech nodded. “It’s probably not going to blow if someone touches it—there don’t appear to be any trip wires. I think what we have to do is send in a blast blanket to the aide—”

“Stacy Giordano,” Harlan supplied.

“Ms. Giordano can detach the bomb—looks like it’s just taped to the post—and cover it with the blast blanket. We’ve got one that has a radio frequency jammer built in. It ought to block any remote signal he tries to send.”

“If he’s watching, he might send the signal as soon as he spots the blanket.”

“We can hide the blanket in something else so he doesn’t know we’re taking it in,” the bomb tech suggested. “We could send in a protective suit and shield the blanket with that.”

“I’ll take it in,” Harlan suggested. “Whoever’s watching will be less suspicious of me than of you guys. Plus, I know how the blast blanket works, so I can talk her through it.”