Page 108 of Kiss Marry Kill
“This way. Hurry,” he said, shuffling the three down to the service entrances.
“Where’s Jax?” she yelled, but Ben continued moving quickly down the hall.
“Ben!” she yelled again, and then grabbed his forearm. “Where is Jax?”
“Not sure but it doesn’t matter, you need to come with me.”
She listened and followed him quickly as they wound down a corridor, suddenly flanked by Jason. “Wait here.” Ben spoke first, just before they got to the door that led outside. Nelly and Taylor were right behind her, huddled close.
Ben exited the building, gun drawn, and her heart beat faster. The noise from the fire alarm was making her insane and she was nervous for her fans and the chaos that was surely ensuing upstairs. “Are people in danger?” she asked Jason, who was looking around, his gun out.
“Not sure. But priority number one is you, Nell, and Taylor.”
“Ben! All those people!”
“Honey, if it makes you feel better, the psycho bitch just wants to kill you, not everyone else, otherwise who’d come to her concert once she offed you and she took over TNT?” Taylor’s words were matter-of-fact, but her wide eyes gave away the fact she was scared.
“Thanks. That does not make me feel any better.”
The door opened and Ben came through. “Okay, looks good, let’s go. We’re enacting the evacuation protocol. Straight to the limos. They’re pulling in.”
“I’m not leaving Jax.” Megan refused to move.
“You are,” Jason said, physically hustling them outside. Megan looked to her right where all the buses were lined up. As she was going to look away she caught movement through a window of her tour bus. A shadow of a man, a Jax-shaped man, passed by the window. Jason and Ben were busy shuffling everyone in and she squinted again. Definitely movement.
She took off running into the night.
* * *
Jax could see Megan feet away from the tour bus with Jason and Ben in fast pursuit. In a split-second decision, he shoved Tamara down the steps into Jason’s waiting grip.
“Stay with them, Megan. For God’s sake, listen to me this once.” Then he turned to Ben and the rest of the arena’s security that was nearby. “Try to clear this area. There’s a bomb on the bus,” he said, running back into the bus and locking the door.
Megan pounded against the doors. “What?! No! Get out of there, Jackson!”
The parking lot of the arena was mayhem. The police wouldn’t get here in time, and he couldn’t stop the bomb. His mind made up, he slid into the driver’s seat. He looked one last time out the window to see a confused Megan pounding on the door. Behind her Tamara was kicking and screaming as Ben and Jason subdued her. Jax looked into Megan’s eyes, mouthed, “I love you,” and pounded his fist against his heart as he turned on the bus and drove off, needing to get away from the crowd.
There were nine minutes remaining, according to the cell phone device attached to the bomb. He pulled out his phone and set it on speaker as he called Joey, quickly explaining everything.
“Fuck man, get out of that bus!” Joey yelled back.
“I need to get it as far away from everyone as possible. Even then, it may not work, how the fuck do I stop it?”
“I can’t figure that out without looking at it. I mean, what kind of bomb, the phone, is it the detonator or just a clock. You need off that bus, brother. Now! There’s no place you can go with only five minutes. Not with all that traffic and the people in the area. You’re fucked. Just get out.”
“I need you to tell me how to stop it,” he repeated as he drove west trying to get away from Madison Square Garden. The problem was the fucking arena was in the middle of the city. The traffic was unbearable and he was about to make shit a lot worse by driving a bus with a bomb into the middle of Manhattan instead of away from it. Joey was right, there was no place to go.
“I have an idea,” he said, stopping the bus. “I need you to do your IT hacking magic and make sure any train running under the Garden stops.”
“What are you going to do, man?”
“Just fucking do it. Five minutes!” he said, looking at the clock.
Abandoning the bus, Jax jumped out with the ticking bomb in his hand and ran inside, pushing pedestrians out of the way. “It’s a cement dungeon. Lowest number of casualties will be down here. So long as there’s no train—I don’t know how powerful this homemade shit will be.”
“Oh my god, you’re fucking crazy,” Joey yelled.
“What the hell else am I supposed to do?”
