Page 13 of Dominion

Why did Ashley want him dead? Or better yet, who had put her up to it? Was she a professional? No, she’d blundered the whole thing terribly. She definitely wasn’t a pro. He wondered how much she’d been offered to commit murder.

Bitterness swelled in his chest. Betrayal coated his tongue, clung to his clothing and skin. He had trusted her, brought her into his inner circle of one. He should have known better. No one could be trusted.

He sat and stared at the laptop for a long time, wondering what to do with it. Calling the police did not even enter his list of possibilities. Shifters did not involve law enforcement. If anything, they tended to work on the fringe, outside of the normal boundaries of the law. He considered whether anyone in his brother’s pack might help. Stanley, the new alpha, might know what you do when a bomb is left on your desktop. But he’d purposely kept his distance from the pack since Leon’s death. He just needed to get the bomb someplace out in the open, where it wouldn’t kill anyone when it went off. But what if it detonated before he disposed of it? His fingers tightened on his desk.

What was Ashley’s plan? He should be trailing her. Damn, he needed help. Sighing, he picked up his cell phone and dialed Stanley.

“Ben,” Stanley answered, sounding surprised. He’d been friendly enough, trying to get Ben into their fold although there had been subtle threats about the pack not liking lone wolves. As Ben was the largest and most ferocious wolf, Stanley had come out and said he would stand back if Ben wanted to be alpha—no challenge necessary. When Ben refused, Stanley had told him he expected his presence at their meetings, but he’d ignored the directive.

“Got anyone who can talk me through disabling a bomb?”

Stanley was silent a moment. “Mark Ruhl. He’s our insider in law enforcement. He works for the DEA. You need help right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Give me just a minute.”

“Thanks.”

He hung up. When the phone rang, he picked it up, even though he didn’t recognize the number.

“This is Mark Ruhl. I hear you need some help?”

He exhaled. “Yeah. I believe there is an explosive in my laptop.”

3

Ashley picked up her satchel with Ben Stone’s laptop and stepped into the elevator. Her limbs dragged, weak from being so wound up for past twenty-four hours.

It’s almost over. Then Melissa will be safe and you can go to the police and tell Mr. Stone what you’ve done.

She took the elevator to the third floor of the parking garage and got off. Clutching the satchel to her chest, she walked forward, toward the northwest corner. She had parked her car there that morning just to familiarize herself with the area. The cement walls echoed with her footsteps, the smell of exhaust and gasoline oppressive. The lot seemed empty—no other cars, no people, nothing. She stood and waited. Had she heard the time or place wrong? No, the words were still echoing in her mind.Third floor, northwest corner of the lot.She opened her car door and sat down on the seat with the door standing open. Sweat trickled down her ribs. She thought she heard a door close, but when she looked around, she only saw the stairwell door, and no one was near it.

Time ticked by. Five minutes, then ten.

God, she hoped Melissa was okay.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of a car coming up the ramp. She stood up and took the laptop out of the satchel, her hands clumsy. The satchel dropped to the ground and she left it, craning her neck to get a look at the car.

A dark blue sedan approached. It was old and junky. She didn’t know what she’d expected, but it had definitely been something more impressive. A Humvee or something. She took a few steps forward to show herself.

The car stopped and three men got out. She tried to see in the darkened windows for another person. Where was Melissa? The men walked toward her. They were young men—scruffy-looking, with tattooed arms and piercings. They wore t-shirts and jeans and they palmed guns.

“Where’s Melissa?” she called out.

“You got the laptop?” one of them asked as they drew closer.

“Maybe,” she said, clutching it to her chest and backing toward her car. As if she had any chance of not giving it to them when they were armed and it was three against one. “Where’s Melissa?”

“She’s in the car. Give us the laptop and you can see her.” They had backed her up to her car now, surrounding her.

“I want to see her first.”

One of them cocked his gun and held it up to her temple, pushing hard against her skull. “Hand it over,” he said as his friend grabbed it and tried to pry it from her chest.

“No,” she said struggling.

The guy with the gun smacked her head with it and she fell back against the car. She lost her grip on the laptop and one of them snatched it away.

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