The Prey Bites Back: A Jesse Watson Mystery Book #8 (16 page)

“Then go get `em.”

“All right, but
I’m not going to light it. I don’t want my saliva on that cigarette. You know
those crime scene guys can find a flake of skin floating in the air. They don’t
miss anything.”

“Just trust me
on this one, Jesse, and go get your cigarettes.”

“By myself?”

Then I thought
about how silly I must’ve sounded. The girly part of me was coming out, but being
a sissy wasn’t going to cut it with these guys. My stomach quivered.

When I first
met Billy, I was basically a pencil-pushing secretary. That was a while ago. Life
changes. Now I was in the middle of a cover-up that could come back and bite us
all in the butt if I didn’t get it together. I wasn’t going to be the weak
link.

“No problem,” I
said. “I’ll be right back.”

I turned, ran
down the stairs, and then looked at Gavin Preston’s plastic covered body as I
passed it, heading to the back exit. I grabbed the doorknob, yanked opened the
door, and came face to face with Dakota Stone. She was holding a trigger device
in one hand, the kind used to set off a bomb, and a gun in the other.

“No!” I yelled
as I lunged at her, trying to grab the little black gadget or the gun…
whichever came first.

But she was too
fast. She jumped backwards just enough to keep me from getting to her, and when
I finally did manage to inch my way closer, she stuck the gun under my chin. I
stopped and froze.

“You’ll never
get away with it,” I said with a sinking feeling in my gut and a pang in my
heart. If that truly was a trigger device for a bomb and it went off … I didn’t
want to think about the outcome.

Oh, she would
get away with it and I knew it. She’d kill us and then make her getaway. She’d
be free to continue her murderous rampage, and the cops would blame us for
Gavin Preston’s death. They’d say we tried to blow up the place to cover our
tracks, but failed and were killed by our own hands. I could just see the
headline in the paper—
Murder Cover-up Gone Bad. Five Bodies Recovered
.

Dakota laughed as
she lowered the gun and started backing up. “Fools, all of you! I had you guys
pegged right from the start. I knew Gavin was coming to warn you, so I decided
to let him. That is, if he didn’t die first… which he didn’t, so here you are,
dumping his body and trying to pin it on me. Well, girlfriend, it’s not going
to work.”

“Don’t do it,”
I pleaded, inching closer. “We can work out something.”

I was stalling
for time. I was hoping the guys would start worrying and come looking for me,
but they were nowhere in sight.

“Oh, yeah, and
what do you have in mind? You gonna just pretend this never happened and let me
go on my merry way? I don’t think so. Why couldn’t you just mind your own
business and leave me alone? All I ever wanted to do was run my business and
help other women feel good about themselves, but no, you were jealous and
couldn’t stand my success.”

“Jealous? What
are you talking about? I’d never heard of you until I tried to return that
bottle of shampoo. All you had to do was refund the money, and I would’ve left
without incident.”

“Liar. You’ll
say anything to save your pals. Unfortunately, that’s out of your control.”

“I’m not lying.
If you’d done the right thing, it wouldn’t have led to this. Don’t you know
anything about trying to keep the customers happy? A refund would’ve done the
trick. That’s all it would’ve taken.”

I guess my
talent for lying wasn’t up to par, because Dakota wasn’t buying any of it.

“You’re a
terrible liar, Jesse. Why would I give someone a refund for something I didn’t
charge them for? You know all that stuff came free with their membership. Tsk…
tsk, Jesse. I knew everything about you right down to the size of your
underwear before you showed up at my shop that day. I’m sure you were told that
I do a background check on every new client. I don’t let just anybody join my
club. I’m very selective.”

“Yeah, I know
that now. You only want customers who need a hit man. That’s what it’s all
about, isn’t it? What happened to you that made you want to rid the world of
all men? Why do you hate them so much? Let me guess. Your daddy abused you as a
child.”

“I knew you
were going to be trouble.” She held out the hand holding the bomb trigger and
pressed it.

I turned and
looked at the building. My first instinct was to run inside, but I knew better.
All I could do was wait for the explosion… and hope my guys would make it out
alive before that happened. I had images of firemen sifting through the ashes,
picking up their body parts. 

Nothing happened.
The bomb didn’t go off.

I was so
relieved, the only thing I could do was laugh out loud at Dakota. She wasn’t so
smart after all. She couldn’t even blow up her own building. I turned around to
tell her so, but she was gone, vanished into the darkness. In her haste to
flee, she had dropped the detonator. I stared down at it, but refused to pick
it up as if it would explode in my hands. Leave it there for the cops to find,
I told myself.

I looked
around. I didn’t know what to do next. I was afraid to go back into the
building and afraid not to, so I just stood there, my imagination running wild.

Seconds later,
Billy and Jonathan came running out with Shark between them. He was limping and
they were holding him up.

“Run!” Billy
yelled.

So… I did. I
ran straight for the Hummer, jumped in and turned the key. The SUV fired up and
as soon as I heard the doors slam and knew everyone was inside, I took off.

“Is Shark all
right?” I asked, looking over at Billy in the front seat and then glancing in
the back. “Why is he limping like that?”

“Floor it!”
Jonathan demanded. “And keep your eyes on the road. Shark’s fine. His leg’s
bothering him a little, but he’s tough.”

“I thought you
said it was a flesh wound. There’s a big difference…”

“I lied a
little.”

“Oh, God…” I
murmured. “He isn’t going to die, is he?”

“We’re all
going to die if you don’t get us out of here!”

“What…”

The explosion wasn’t
what I had expected. I thought it would’ve shaken the ground and lit up the sky
like a massive fireball, but it didn’t. It made a terrible racket, and you
could tell there had been an explosion, but the sound was nothing louder than a
couple of transformers going off. No windows blew out because there wasn’t any
in the brick building, except for the ones in the front, and they couldn’t be
seen from where we were. I hated to think what it was like inside. It scared me
half to death. I gripped the steering wheel harder.

“Pretty good
driving there, Jesse,” Shark said. “I was afraid you might lose it, what with
you being so shaky and all. Good thing that wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been.”

“What just
happened back there?” I asked looking out the rearview mirror. “And here I
thought Dakota’s bomb making ability was a bust. She pressed the button, but
nothing happened.”

“You mean she
was here?” Billy asked. “When? Where’d she go?”

“Just before
the explosion. As soon as I came out the door, she was standing there waiting.
She pressed the detonator, I turned to look at the building, and when I turned
around she’d vanished. I don’t know where she went. I didn’t see a car, so I
don’t know how she got away. I was too busy wondering if you guys were dead.”

“That means she’s
still in town,” Billy said. “She hasn’t fled yet, so we might still be able to
find her before she hightails it out of here.”

“Why didn’t the
place go up in flames when she pressed the button?”

“The detonator
activated a timer,” Shark said. “That way she had plenty of time to escape
before the bomb went off.”

“How did y’all
know there was a bomb in the building?” I asked.

“We didn’t,”
Jonathan said. “Shark had a bad feeling and said we should get out. When he
gets those feelings, I listen to him.”

“I guess you
don’t need my cigarettes anymore,” I said, smiling and still driving at a high
rate of speed. “Sending me out to get cigarettes was a ruse, wasn’t it? Y’all
wanted me out of the building. I mean, it could’ve taken forever for a
cigarette to get a good fire going. I should’ve known better. Next time just
tell me the truth. If you thought there was something strange or dangerous
going on, you should’ve told me. I’m not a baby.”

Jonathan
chuckled. “You didn’t even want to go outside by yourself.”

Yep, I knew
that one was going to come back and haunt me, so I rebounded with, “Actually, I
didn’t want to leave y’all alone. I was afraid something bad would happen to
you… and it almost did.”

“I’ll buy that.
How about you, Billy?”

“Works for me.”

“It was all too
neat,” Shark said. “I knew something wasn’t right the minute I walked into the
place. I could smell it.”

“Smell what?”

“Death
approaching.”

“Hmm… that’s
scary… or maybe it’s a good thing.”

“You might want
to slow down, Jesse,” Billy said. “We’re safe now.”

I pulled up to
the stop light at Rt. 29 and waited, my hands still shaking from our near death
experience. “That was close. We could’ve been killed back there.” I hesitated
and then added, “No one tells my mother how close we came to being dog meat.”

Fire trucks
raced down Rt. 29, passing us at we sat at the light.

“I’ll feel
better as soon as we get home,” Jonathan said. “Then we’ll be in the clear.
There’s no way the cops can tie us to this one. We’ll go home and act as if
nothing happened.”

By the time we
got back to Jonathan’s house, the explosion was all over the news, and Mom was
freaking out.

“I thought
y’all were dead!” Mom cried as we climbed out of the SUV. “It’s all over the
news. Channel 29 said they found a body stuffed in a dryer. Please tell me you
didn’t put
Preston
’s body in the dryer. That’s just too
harsh even for you guys.”

We almost did a
double-take upon hearing Mom’s news.

“A body in the
dryer?” I asked. “Are you sure?” I scanned the faces of Billy, Jonathan, and
Shark.

“Don’t look at
us.” Billy said, and then looked over at Jonathan and Shark for confirmation.
“We left
Preston
on the floor right where we dropped him
when we got there. If they found a body in the dryer, it isn’t Gavin Preston.”

“Then who is
it?”

“I don’t know.”
Billy replied. “But I’d sure like to.”

Mom looked over
at Shark who was now leaning against the Hummer.

“Shark, you
don’t look so good,” she said. “Is your leg bothering you? You should go lie
down. You’ve been shot, for Pete’s sake. You should be in bed.”

“I’m fine,
Minnie,” he assured her. “It’s nothing more than a pin prick. All I need is a
stiff drink. It’s been a hectic day to say the least.”

“Here,” she
took him by the arm and said, “I can help you there. Come with me and I’ll fix
you a tall one.”

The two of them
started walking down the hallway, Shark pretending to need Mom’s help all the
while. She stopped for a second and looked back at us. “Y’all can come, too. No
need to hang out in the garage. I mean, after all that hard work, I’m sure a
drink is in order for everyone. Blowing up buildings and stuffing bodies in
dryers can wear a person down. Y’all must be all dried out.” She chuckled to
herself as she turned back to Shark.

They continued
their walk down the corridor as Mom continued with her praise for a man who
could kill a person with his pinky finger. “Eddie’s doing so much better thanks
to you, Shark. You saved my husband’s life, and for that, I’ll be forever
grateful. You’re such a good man. How did you ever get into the business of
killing people? Were you abused? I bet you were bullied in school, weren’t
you?” She didn’t give him time to say anything. “Well… you don’t have to worry
about that anymore. You have us now.”

The three of us
tagged along behind them, scratching our heads, trying to figure out who the
other body was. We didn’t kill Gavin Preston and we surely didn’t put a dead
person in the dryer.

“Dakota did
this,” Billy said. “She’s cleaning up after herself. She’s gonna run, but she
had to get rid of anyone who could be a witness. I’m willing to bet the body in
the dryer is her cohort, Olivia Swales.”

“But why kill Olivia?”

“Maybe she
turned on Dakota, just like
Preston
did. Maybe Olivia wasn’t party to
Dakota’s madness after all.”

“You just don’t
know who you can trust these days.” Jonathan laughed.

Changing the
subject, I said, “Is it me, or has anyone else noticed how weird my mom’s been
acting? I looked at Billy and then Jonathan. “Y’all know her. She’s taking this
rather calmly, don’t you think?”