“I’ll go get all of us a cup,” Ginger offered. “Anything else y’all want? I’ve got peanut butter, apples, and pickles in the bag over there.” She pointed toward the small vanity between the two closets.

“A candy bar for each of us.” Kate handed her several dollar bills. “Coffee is free in the lobby, and there’s a little gift store right there where you can get candy bars for a lot less than the vending machine charges.”

Ginger shook her head. “I’ve got a debit card now, so I’ll get them.” She hurried past Sloan and started down the hallway. As he leaned to watch her go, he noticed a suspicious-looking man carrying a duffel bag down the hall. The guy turned his head away from every camera in the hallway. He wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, even though he was in the building.

Terrorist! Sloan thought and then scolded himself for even thinking such a thing. But he trailed the guy all the same—just to be sure.

Every nerve ending in Sloan’s body was on full alert. The last time he’d felt like that was when he’d gone into a burned-out building to disarm a bomb. Fear, anxiety, and nerves all balled up together inside him, and when he had that feeling, something was terribly wrong.

Then the guy tucked the duffel bag inside a janitor’s closet and took off running toward the other end of the hall. Sloan eased the door open and carefully unzipped the bag to find a bomb inside it. He shut the door behind him and then started jogging down the hallway to report it to the nearest nurse, doctor, or even janitor.

The few times that he had left the room earlier, the nurses seemed to be pretty calm and collected. Now they were hurrying down the long hall, stopping at each room just long enough in each to say a few words and then closing the door. He was trying to track a nurse down when he noticed one talking to Ginger.

“Get back to whatever room you were in,” she said.

“Why?” Ginger asked.

“For your own protection,” she said and kept going.

“Did someone already report something?” he asked the nurse.

“Someone called in a threat,” she answered with a nod.

“It’s more than a threat. I just now found a bag in the janitor’s closet right down there.” He turned to Ginger. “We’ve got to get you out of this hall and into Betsy’s room. They’re going to have to evacuate the hospital, and it’s easier room by room.”

“Why?” she asked again. “And what’s in the closet?”

“A bomb,” he whispered.

“Did you check the bag?” she asked.

“There’s a bomb in it. Not big enough to level the hospital, but it could do some serious damage to this floor and especially to the rooms on either side of that closet,” he said.

“Go dismantle it,” she said.

“That’s not my job.” He guided her toward Betsy’s room.

A man in a three-piece suit passed them, and Ginger grabbed his arm. “Do you work at this hospital?” she asked.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m Warren, and I’m the head of security. You two need to be out of this hallway.”

“Did someone call in a bomb threat?” she asked.

“How did you know that, and who are you?” Warren narrowed his eyes at her.

“Because this man is my . . . my . . . ,” she stammered.

“I’m former military and I saw a man put a bag in the closet down at the end of this hallway. I checked it and there is definitely a bomb in there, sir,” Sloan said.

“He defused bombs in the military. He can help you if you’ll trust him. How long will it take to get a bomb squad in here?” she asked.

“They’re in San Antonio right now, so maybe thirty to forty-five minutes,” he answered and looked right at Sloan. “You really qualified to do that?”

“Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . but I’ll be glad to look at it closer.” Sloan wasn’t sure that he could control his shaking hands enough to disarm even the simplest bomb. He hadn’t even looked at one since the day before he’d lost his buddies.

“Okay, son, let’s go take a look at it,” he said. “I don’t know why they’d call in the threat if they really wanted to harm anyone.”

“Maybe it’s someone that knows what’s going on and why, and can’t live with their conscience if they let it happen.” Sloan led the way down the hall to the closet. He opened the door and dropped to his knees. “It’s enough to take out three or four rooms of this place, and it’s on a timer. If your people can’t get here in about”—Sloan looked at the bomb’s timer—“fifteen minutes, it will explode. Who’s in those two rooms on either side of the closet?”

“A judge who’s scheduled for surgery later today is in one, and the room on the other side is empty,” Warren told him.

“Then I’d guess this isn’t terrorism, but someone who’s got a beef with the judge. You probably need to move him to another room or out.”

Ginger laced her fingers in Sloan’s and looked up at Warren’s worried face. “Listen to him. He spent time in Kuwait taking care of situations worse than this.” Then she turned to focus on him. “You can do this. I have faith in you,” she whispered.

“All right,” Warren said. “I may have the legal department down on me later today, but I’m going to believe you and your wife. What do you need from me?”

Ginger opened her mouth to say that they weren’t married, but she clamped it shut without saying a word.

“Nothing but permission.” Sloan wiped his clammy hands on the legs of his jeans and then took out his pocketknife. “And your promise that you won’t tell anyone that I did this. When it’s over, just let everyone think it was a drill. I’ll be glad to give the police a description of the guy, but . . .”

“No notoriety. I get it,” Warren said.

Sloan nodded and looked up at Ginger, who was standing right beside him. “Go on back to Betsy’s room. Wait for me, and in case I’m wrong, do me a favor.”

“You won’t be wrong, and I’m not going anywhere,” she told him.

No pressure now. He didn’t have time to argue with her, and he’d never live with the guilt if she was hurt in the blast.

“If . . .” He stopped. “Just promise me that if I’m killed doing this, you will put my name on the birth certificate as the baby’s father. You can’t put Lucas on it because his parents could find out later and cause trouble. A little girl doesn’t need to look at her birth certificate and see ‘unknown’ in the space for a father’s name.”

“I’m not talking about this right now, because we’re going to walk away from this—together.” Ginger sure had more confidence in him than he had in himself. “Let’s get to it and not waste any more time.”

“Betsy will kill me if anything happens to you,” he whispered as he started following the colored wires back to the detonator.

“Then don’t let it,” Ginger told him.

“Whoever built this thing is an amateur, but he’s got plenty of explosives wired to the timer.”

“Is that a pipe bomb?” she whispered.

“No, darlin’. It’s more sophisticated than that, but still not professional grade like a terrorist would use. But it’s plenty good enough to take out the judge.”

You can do this, Tex. Chris Jones’s voice was so real in his head that he almost believed his old teammate was right there beside him. Sloan had been all jittery inside since he first realized there was a bomb in the bag, but just hearing Chris in his head calmed him. Suddenly, he felt like he was in Kuwait and all his team was right there with him and had taken positions to protect him as he did his job. His hands steadied, and he could concentrate wholly on what was in front of him without glancing at the timer every second.

The person who made this particular bomb might not be professional, but he’d sure put together a confusing piece of art. Every single wire was the same shade of gray, making it hard to keep track of which ones he’d already traced and which ones he hadn’t. He’d seen something like this once before. He closed his eyes for ten seconds to recall exactly what that one had looked like. He could hear Bobby Joe chuckling behind him. “I’ll buy you a drink if you’ll hurry up. I’ve got a date tonight with a cute little filly over in the ladies’ barracks.”

Sloan opened his eyes, found the right gray wire, and cut it. The timer stopped at three minutes and five seconds remaining.

“We did it, Ginger,” he whispered as he stood up, and the two of them stepped out of the closet.

“You did it. You just saved a lot of lives,” she told him.

He wrapped his arms around her, hugged her tightly, and felt the baby kick against his belly. He took a step back, grinned, and said, “She just said ‘thank you’ by kicking me.”

“I believe she did.” Ginger locked eyes with him.

He leaned in just as she moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, but before he could kiss her Warren turned the corner in the hallway and was right in front of them. “How much time do we have?” he asked.

“All the time in the world,” Ginger answered.