Joe Victim: A Thriller Read Free Page B

back. “I’m here with the other half of your payment,” she says.
    “You know where I live?”
    It’s a stupid question. Melissa doesn’t point it out to him. “I like to know who I’m doing business with.”
    He unwraps the towel from his waist, the entire time keeping his eyes on the cash in the briefcase. His dick sways left and right as he starts drying his hair.
    “It’s all there?” he asks, still drying his hair, his face at the moment behind the towel and his voice muffled.
    “Every dollar. Where’s the stuff?”
    “It’s here,” he says.
    She knows it’s here. She’s been following him ever since their initial meeting two days ago, where she gave him the first half of the payment. She knows he picked up the stuff only an hour ago. He went from there to here with no stops in between with a bag full of items his parole officer wouldn’t be too pleased about.
    “Where?” she asks.
    He wraps the towel back around his waist. She figures she could have just come in here and shot him and searched the house anyway, but she needs him. The stuff probably won’t be hard to find. She figures a guy who would ask You know where I live? to somebody standing in their bedroom is the kind of guy who hides things in the roof space or under the floor.
    “Show me,” he says, nodding toward the money.
    She slides the briefcase toward him on the bed. He steps forward. The twenty grand is made up in fifty- and twenty-dollar bills. They’re stacked neatly into piles with rubber bands around them. Over the last few years most of her income has been through blackmailing people or burglaries, some from the men she’s killed, but a few months ago she came into some pretty good money. Forty thousand dollars, to be precise. He thumbs through some of it and decides it must all be there.
    He moves over to the wardrobe. He drags a box of clothes out then lifts the patch of carpet and digs a screwdriver into the edge of the floor and Melissa finds herself rolling her eyes, thinking how lucky guys like Derek are that they can’t be charged for stupidity along with other crimes. He pries up the boards. He pulls out an aluminum case the length of his arm. Melissa stands up so he can lay it on the bed. He pops the lid open. There is a rifle broken into separate pieces, all of it slotting into foam cutouts.
    “AR-fifteen,” he says. “Lightweight, uses a high-velocity, small-caliber round, extremely accurate. Scope too, as requested.”
    She nods. She’s impressed. Derek may be stupid, but being stupid doesn’t mean you can’t be useful. “That’s half of it,” she says.
    He goes back to the manhole. Reaches in and pulls out a small rucksack. It’s mostly black with plenty of red trim. He sits it on the bed and opens it. “C-four,” he says. “Two blocks, two detonators, two triggers, two receivers. Enough to blow up a house. Not enough to do much more. You know how to use it?”
    “Show me.”
    He picks up one of the blocks. It’s the size of a bar of soap. “It’s safe,” he says. “You can shoot it. Drop it. Burn it. Hell, you can even microwave it. You can do this,” he says, and starts to squeeze it. “You can mold it into any shape. You take one of these,” he says, and picks up what looks like a metal pencil, only with wires coming from the end of it, “and stab it in. Attach the other end to these receivers,” he says, “then it’s just a matter of firing the trigger. You’ve got a range of a thousand feet, further if it’s line of sight.”
    “How long does the battery in the receiver last?”
    “A week. Tops.”
    “Anything else I need to know?”
    “Yeah. Don’t mix them up,” he says, and holds up one of the remotes. “See this piece of yellow tape I’ve put across it? It lines up with the piece of tape I’ve put on this detonator. So this,” he says, holding up the detonator with the tape, “goes with this,” he says, holding both the remote and detonator