Page 50 of Stay in Your Lane!

She did, though I doubted she liked me pointing my headlamp at her every twelve seconds.

“Sorry, lady. Nothing personal.”

She stayed put.

Back and neck aching, I continued my task. I was probably going to have to get someone from the plant to open up the machine; equipment like that was way too expensive for me to fuck around with, and I suspected there was more mess on the inside.

I grimaced at the thought of what must’ve happened to the man who’d died. I just hoped that, whatever it was, it had happened fast. That was the thing with industrial accidents—sometimes they happened so fast, the person didn’t know what hit them. Other times, not so much.

I was lost in those thoughts, digging away at dried blood and viscera while I felt sorry for the man who’d died, when everything around me started to rumble and vibrate.

I froze as panic shot through me.

For a split second, my mind was full of possible scenarios. Earthquake? Large vehicle outside? A train?

But then I locked on to the reality, and my blood turned cold.

The machine wason.

The instant that realization hit me, I started backing out the way I’d come, scrambling toward safety because fuck this shit.

What the fuck? What the actual fuck? The machine couldn’t just spontaneously come on by itself, was locked out to hell and back so no one could activate it—accidentally or otherwise—but fuck me, it was on, and I needed to get as far away from this equipment as I could. Especially before the parts that had killed the operator started moving. I was surrounded by and covered in the evidence of how much damage that thing could do tothe human body, and fight-or-flight had me panicking so hard I almost got stuck.

Somehow, I collected myself enough to carefully—but hella quickly—back out of the space I’d crawled into, all the while aware of all the parts that could start moving at any moment. I didn’t even care about the black widow anymore; she was theleastof my problems right now.

I was almost clear of everything—only my upper back, shoulders, and head still inside—when something came down hard in the middle of my back, pinning me in place.

I grunted with pain and surprise, and again, my mind exploded with possibilities. Had something fallen on me? Was the machine starting to move?

And again, after about a split second, I caught up—that wasn’t the machine. It was a foot.

“What the fuck?” I shouted over the rumbling. “What are you doing?” I twisted and flailed as much as I could, and I caught sight of the other foot.

My blood ran even colder than it had when the machine had started up.

A black Air Force 1.

Oh. Shiiiit.

“Kyle Bowman?” a male voice shouted over the noise.

“Let me out!” I shouted back. “What the fuck are?—”

“No, no. I think you can stay right there.” The foot pressed down even harder, making it tough to breathe. “You Kyle Bowman?”

I grunted as I squirmed under the weight. What could I do? He had me pinned under a machine that could make mincemeat of me if he flipped a switch or two. “Yes! I am! What do you want?”

The shoe got impossibly heavier, the voice closer and colder. “You need to let sleeping dogs lie, Bowman. Keep your nose out of places it doesn’t belong.”

I stared at the tight space in front me, my headlamp helpfully picking out the smears and chunks I hadn’t yet cleaned, as if to remind me what this guy could do to me. “Okay? Okay! I—Tell me what you want me to do!”

“Leave the Leighton case alone,” he shouted, the whirring and rumbling around us adding a menacing quality to his voice. “Am I clear?”

What the fuck was I going to do? Argue with him?

“Yeah! Yeah, you’re clear!” I sounded about as hysterical as I was. “Just let me go! Jesus Christ!”

“You going to take me seriously?”

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