Under the clock

The radio chatter in the LAPD cruiser was usually a comfort—a low-level hum of human chaos that let Sergeant Athena Grant know the city was breathing. Today, however, it felt like a funeral shroud.

Athena pulled her cruiser onto the shoulder of the I-10, just past the La Brea exit. Her tires crunched over a stray piece of glass, but something else had caught her attention a mile back. A rhythmic, metallic thunkingsound that had started the moment she hit sixty miles per hour.

“Dispatch, this is 7-Adam-19. I’m stepping out to inspect a mechanical issue,” she said, her voice steady despite the prickle of unease at the back of her neck.

“Copy, 7-Adam-19. Proceed with caution,” the dispatcher replied.

Athena stepped out into the California heat. The smell of asphalt and exhaust was thick, baking in the midday sun. She knelt by the rear driver’s side wheel. She expected a nail in the tire or perhaps a loose mud flap.

She didn’t expect the duct tape.

Her breath hitched. Taped firmly to the underside of the chassis, right behind the rear axle, was a tightly wrapped bundle of wires, a small, glowing digital display, and a canister of heavy-duty explosive. It wasn’t amateur work. It was surgically precise.

Athena froze. Her heart hammered against her ribs, but her brain went into lockdown mode, shutting down the panic to make room for survival. She leaned in closer—too close—and saw a small, spring-loaded switch connected to the suspension system.

It was a motion trigger.

If I stop the car, she realized, the blood draining from her face, it goes off. If I go under a certain speed, it goes off.

She realized with a jolt of horror that the thunking sound hadn’t been a malfunction. It was the device vibrating against the metal frame because it was coming loose.

She backed away slowly, her hands hovering in the air. She reached for her shoulder mic, her fingers trembling for the first time in twenty years of service.

“Dispatch… this is Sergeant Athena Grant,” she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy calm. “I have a Code 30. A bomb is attached to my vehicle. I am currently stationary, but I’ve realized the trigger is motion-sensitive. If I don’t maintain a constant velocity, this device is set to detonate.”

The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

“Athena?” The dispatcher’s voice cracked. “Say again?”

“I’m moving,” Athena snapped, abandoning the mic. She scrambled back into the driver’s seat. She didn’t have time for the protocol. She slammed the cruiser into drive and punched the gas, accelerating back onto the freeway before she could think about the fact that she might be driving her own coffin.

As she merged into the fast lane, reaching seventy miles per hour, her eyes scanned the rearview mirror. She was an LAPD Sergeant. She had survived everything this city had thrown at her. But as she watched the timer on the device—which she could now see reflected in the side mirror—begin to count down from sixty minutes, she knew this wasn’t just a threat.

It was a trap. And the person who set it knew exactly who she was.

“Bobby,” she whispered to the empty air of the cruiser, her grip on the steering wheel turning her knuckles white. “God, Bobby.”

She needed help. She needed the best. She reached for her personal cell phone, bypassing dispatch, and dialed the one number that meant the difference between life and death.

Three miles away, at the 118 station, Bobby Nash’s phone buzzed on the kitchen island. He looked at the caller ID, a soft smile forming on his face.

“Hey, baby, you’re off-shift early—”

“Bobby, listen to me,” Athena’s voice was ragged, desperate. “I need you. I need you right now.”