Read Online Predator by Janice Gable Bashman - Free Book Online Page A

steamroller?”
    The man smiled and said to Bree, “The name’s Seamus, but ya can call me Seamus. All my friends do.” He chuckled at his joke. “Take a look around. I bet ya ain’t seen nothing like it.”
    Bree nodded. She wanted to get down to business, but Seamus obviously had something else in mind, so she strolled around to take in the tent’s other oddities. More than a dozen wax eyeballs surrounded a shrunken head with foot-long black hair. A vampire killing kit containing stakes, a gun with silver bullets, a mirror, and other items that looked hundreds of years old took up most of a table. Blood-red felt lined the inside of the wooden box.
    “Ya interested in vampires?” Seamus asked as he came up behind her.
    “No, not really.” Bree sidestepped to an animatronic dummy. The face was cartoon-like, but the eyes looked real. The dummy’s jaw dropped open, and it bellowed a noise like something out of a horror movie. Bree jumped at the sudden outburst.
    “He scares a lot of folks, especially kids,” Seamus said. “Yet they keep coming back for more.”
    “People are drawn to odd things,” Liam said. “And you’re the king of odd.”
    Seamus beamed with pride. “Always looking for something new, so if ya come across anything ya let me know.”
    Across the tent Bree spied a gravestone, a battering ram, a miniature skeleton, and a bunch of glass cages with what looked to be snakes. Most of it was probably fake, but the shrunken head she had spotted earlier looked awfully real. She had her doubts that Seamus knew anything that could help her, but she figured it couldn’t hurt to try. She really wished she could ask him about the monstrous hand, but she had promised her dad she’d keep it under wraps. Instead, she took her cell phone from her pocket and brought up a photo of the object Conor had found. “You have any idea what this is? We found it under a bog body.”
    Liam scooped up two of the wax eyeballs and rolled them in his hand like a pair of dice.
    “It looks familiar,” Seamus said.
    “Really?” Bree refrained from getting her hopes up. If Seamus recognized it that fast, how unusual or important could it be?
    “Hang on.” Seamus crossed to a table next to the glass tanks, slid out a box from underneath, and rummaged through it. “I thought it was here…” He dragged out another box and piled the contents on the floor. Once the box was empty he said, “I remember it well. It was shorter and not as thick, but just as sharp at the end. Looked almost exactly like that one. Don’t know for sure what it is, but I can tell ya it’s like nothing I ever seen. Maybe part of some prehistoric animal or something?”
    “Where’d you get it?” Liam asked.
    “It came in with a bunch of other stuff, maybe two, three years ago. Some guy cleaning out his da’s collection after he died. Couldn’t wait to get rid of the stuff. The da was some kind of digger. Always searching for buried treasures and such. If I remember right, that’s also where the shrunken head came from.”
    Although Seamus had no idea what the object was, Bree was excited. There was more out there. A world of buried things not yet discovered. Things that would further reinforce her belief about the bog body and prove she was right.
    A young couple entered the tent. “Come in. Come in,” Seamus said, waving them further inside.
    “Thanks for the help,” Liam said.
    “Ya sure there’s nothing else I can do for ya mate?”
    Liam shook his head.
    “I’ll text ya before we leave town. Maybe we can get together for a bit. It’s been a while. We’re heading out to Dublin day after tomorrow and then a half dozen cities after that. Won’t be back for weeks.”
    “That’d be great,” Liam said. “And thanks again.”
    “Any time, mate. Ya know I’m here for ya.”
    Bree and Liam left the tent and Liam said, “Come on. Let’s go have some fun. We can worry about the bog body later.”
    He pulled her by the arm, and