Page 107 of Kiss Marry Kill
“Go up front. Stick to the outer perimeter; she could lose herself in the crowd but remember she doesn’t know that we know, so she may not be sneaking.”
“Got it, boss.”
Meanwhile, Jax went farther down to the bottom where the service entrance was located. He opened the heavy door and was met with a long, winding corridor. He remembered it from the plans he had studied in preparation for this detail. Cement walls lined both sides and old lights flickered above. It was completely empty and so hidden, he couldn’t even hear the thumping music or the screaming fans from above. It must’ve been part of the original structure built in the late sixties; he was even lower than Penn Station.
Since he was alone, he pulled out his weapon and proceeded carefully, but once he hit an old furnace and another set of stairs leading back up, he felt he was off. Tamara wasn’t there, and he didn’t feel as if she’d been there either. It was too obscure, and most people wouldn’t have known it existed.
Instead, he ran back the way he’d come, in complete Marine mode, focused and determined.
At this time there would be a packed lot full of buses and a few limos. His heart raced as the adrenaline kicked in. Pressing the metal bar with his hip, he snuck out. It was dark and there was no sign of anyone around. He moved soundlessly through the buses, looking for Tamara, until he reached Megan’s bus, which had the door open.
Stealthily, as on the missions he’d done time and time again, he climbed inside, unable to see much with the darkness. His arms were stretched in front of him, and his fingers were on the trigger of his gun.
Then, bent over by the bed that he and Megan shared, he saw Tamara shuffling around. Her back to him.
“Don’t fucking move,” he barked, gun drawn. “Turn around. Slowly.” She began to turn around. “Hands up!” he demanded, and she did as he said. “What the fuck were you doing, Tamara?”
She didn’t respond.
“You have three seconds to tell me, or I’ll shoot.” Still no answer. “You better think fast because you don’t have long to decide how this will play out.” Not a single word out of her mouth. “What have you done?”
“I think you know exactly what I’ve done,” she finally said.
“So you want to kill Megan? You’re so jealous you want to kill her?”
“She’s not here, is she? If I wanted to kill her I would’ve set the bomb in her dressing room. I would’ve put poison in her makeup instead of numbing cream in her lipstick. I don’t want her dead, I want the bitch to go the fuck away. I just want to scare her,” she said, her eyes looking around, and then she grabbed her phone and pressed something.
“I said, don’t fucking move!” he said, and she held her hands out again, but he could hear the ringing of an alarm from inside the Garden. And she smirked.
She’d set off the fire alarm.
“The bitch took everything from me. Everything. That Grammy . . . that was supposed to be me. Me! Taylor and Nelly? Those are my friends, not hers. TNT? There’s no M. Even Ryan was in love with her. She’s trying to take over my life!” Her voice had escalated to the point she was now yelling.
“Let’s calm down. Take a breath.”
“Do not tell me to calm down!” she shrieked. “We both need to get off this bus.”
“No!” He yelled, uncertain as to exactly what he was going to do. “This is a parking lot, you’ll kill a bunch of people if that bomb goes off.”
“It’s your fault!” she yelled. She was talking erratically and it was obvious she was having some sort of meltdown. “I wasn’t going to set the alarm yet. I wanted the bomb to go off, then the alarm. Those two things had to send her into hiding indefinitely.” She sounded hysterical and nervous, maybe even unsure of what to do, and if there was anything he’d learned it was that there was nothing worse than a hopeless enemy, someone who thought they had nothing to lose.
Jax looked out the window and saw people running out of the building. “Fuck.”
“You’re going to kill a bunch of people, Tamara. Turn it off. Shut it down,” he yelled, pushing her aside and finding the rudimentary bomb. It was an unsophisticated explosive devise tied together with wiring and an old cell phone, but even still, he wasn’t sure where to pull or what to cut to stop it.
“I don’t know how to turn it off. Let’s just get out,” she yelled. She headed to the exit, but he grabbed her before she could leave.
* * *
Something was obviously off. Jax was never far away during her show. Normally, she would look over every once and a while and she could see him close by, reassuring her. But tonight he’d been missing almost all of the second half of the show. That wasn’t a good sign, not at all. The tension was almost palpable. So much so, the girls noticed, and Megan could see them looking around from time to time.
What the hell was happening?
As soon as the last song ended, Megan practically ran offstage. Her entire body had broken out into goose bumps and her heart was racing. “What’s happening? What’s going on?” she asked Ben, who was closest.
“Nothing, why?”
“Bullshit!” As soon as the words left her mouth the fire alarm for the entire Garden began to ring, and Taylor and Nell came rushing forward. The noise was deafening and she could barely hear Ben yelling something into the mic on his lapel.
