by Sandra Brown
“Ten, nine, eight.”
She gave one final tug.
“Seven. Six.”
“I’m coming.” She used her last five seconds to calm her breathing, then stood up and started toward him. “I feel much better, thank you. It was wonderful, truly. Who knew that a sponge bath could be—”
“What have you got behind your back?”
“Nothing. I’m just tucking in my top—”
She didn’t even get the last word out before he was on her, turning her around and seizing her wrist. He pried open her fist. In it lay the bar of soap.
“I wanted to keep it,” she said meekly. “You may have fewer of these than bandanas.”
Her heart didn’t stop thudding until he finally released her from an incisive stare. “I’m gonna eat,” he said. “You can or not.”
He let go of her hand and moved away. She trailed him, but her mind was on the weapon she’d had to leave wedged between the planks in the wall. In order to relocate it in the darkness, all she had to do was look for the empty water bottle she’d left at eye level on the makeshift ledge.
Her problem was going to be getting to it at all.
Jordie was up to something.
If Shaw hadn’t discerned that the second she came toward him with that chipper smile and babbling monologue, the way she was wolfing down the beanie wienies would have been a dead giveaway. Her conversation was still lively.
“My skin was gritty with dried sweat. Didn’t washing off make you feel better?”
“Nothing like cleanliness.”
“And now this fine cuisine.” She shot him a smile that was almost flirtatious.
Yeah, something was behind her change in mood and batting eyelashes.
She emptied the small can and licked the bowl of her spoon clean. “Want something else?” he asked.
“No thank you.”
He took the can from her, tossing it and his own empty into the trunk before lowering the lid. When he did, the light went out, and so did Jordie’s fake smile.
She looked around with worry. “What happens when we lose all daylight?”
“It’ll get dark.”
“But…we…we can open a car door so we’ll have the dome light. Or keep the trunk open.”
He shook his head. “Too much drain on the battery.”
“I saw one of those big square flashlights in the trunk.”
“For emergency use only.”
“You could—”
“A light can be seen for miles, Jordie.”
“From as far away as the main road? How far is it from here?”
“No light.”
“So we’ll just sit here in the dark all night?”
“You scared of the dark?” When she didn’t answer, he said, “It’s always dark when your eyes are closed.”
“I slept too long today. I won’t be sleepy for hours.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to think up something we can do in the dark. For hours.” He walked to where she sat on the upended crate. “Oh, sorry. Did that sound like another lewd innuendo? Didn’t mean for it to.”
She shot him a sour look.
“Actually, I was thinking we could call Panella back,” he said. “That would kill some time.”
Watching her watch him, he replaced the battery in Mickey’s phone and clicked it on. As the phone booted up, he studied her face in the minimal light of the screen. “What were you doing back there?” Using his chin, he motioned toward the back of the building.
“Taking a sponge bath.”
“What else?”
“I was avoiding the mouse droppings.”
“That’s all?”
“What else could I have been doing?”
“I don’t know, but I don’t like surprises.”
“So you’ve said.”
She was looking straight into his eyes, challenging him. He got to the call memory and pressed his thumb against the screen, then put the phone on speaker.
Panella answered after the first ring. “All right, asshole,” he said in his garbled voice. “Two million.”
Jordie drew in a startled breath. Her lips remained parted. Her eyes seemed to dilate.
Panella was saying, “I’ve already notified an offshore bank that I’ll be making a wire transfer in that amount. After I get indisputable confirmation of the kill, of course.”
“I’ll text you a photograph.”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so,” Shaw said. “So how do I confirm to you she’s dead?”
“I’m making arrangements for that.”
“Um-huh. I’ll bet you are. Like the arrangement for me that you and Mickey had planned.” When Panella didn’t respond, Shaw said, “Not that I mistrust you, Panella, but I’m gonna require a show of your good faith.”
“What would show my good faith?”
“Half up front.”
“Forget it.”
“Half up front, or I take one of those options I outlined to you earlier.”
“Know what would show your good faith? If you’d stop screwing around and get the job done. Now. Before her double-crossing brother gets himself recaptured. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I just want Josh Bennett to know she’s dead. Soon.”
Shaw waited several beats, then said a brusque “I’ll get back to you” and clicked off.
For the entirety of the conversation, he hadn’t broken eye contact with Jordie. After he hung up, ponderous moments passed with neither of them moving, then she took off like a sprinter. He barely managed to grab her shirttail and hold on as he pulled her back. She came around swinging, her fist landing hard on his cheekbone.
“Goddammit!” The pain brought sudden tears to his eyes. He lost his grip on her top, and she got several yards away from him before he lunged after her. He caught her from behind in a bear hug and pinned her arms to her sides.
“Stop it! Listen! You don’t have to die!”
She kept struggling, until she realized the futility of her struggle and what he was saying sank in. Her ponytail swept across his face as she whipped her head around and looked at him over her shoulder. “What?”
“Are you gonna listen? Or act like a madwoman until you force me to shoot you just to get rid of you?” She didn’t say anything but ceased straining to break his hold. Not completely trusting her capitulation, he relaxed the bear hug, but took her arm and pulled her back to the crate. “Sit down.”
She backed onto it, but looked ready to spring off it at any second, and he noticed the furtive glances she kept casting toward the back of the building.
He touched his throbbing cheekbone with the heel of his hand. The skin hadn’t split, but it was swelling. “That hurt like bloody hell.”
“Don’t expect an apology.”
He removed the battery from Mickey’s phone, but as he slid the two components into one pocket, he withdrew another phone from his other pocket. Recognizing the Extravaganza logo on the case, she sat up at attention.
“That’s mine.”
“That’s right.”
“You told me you’d hidden it.”
“I retrieved it this afternoon while you were asleep.”
He opened the back of her phone and inserted the battery. “By powering it up, I’m taking a chance that the signal will be triangulated and bring the law right to us. But I want you to see something. Your fate really is up to you.” He clicked the phone on. When he got to her call log, he turned the screen toward her.
“Last night, nine twenty-three, incoming call. No ID, no number. But you called it back three minutes later, and again at nine forty-seven. I’m guessing that call was made while you were driving, because your house is several miles from that bar out in the boonies. At roughly ten o’clock you walked in and took a bar stool, looking as out of place as a frosted cupcake atop a pile of cowshit.
“Only one person would get you to a honky tonk like that in record time. Now…” He bent over her, bringing his nose to withi
n inches of hers. “Where is brother Josh?”
She wilted. “That’s my saving grace?”
“That’s it.”
“Then I’m dead.”
“That’s entirely up to you. You die or you live. I either take Panella’s measly two million, or you direct me to Josh and his thirty.”
“I can’t! I’ve told you a hundred times that I don’t know where he is!”
“You also told me that nobody called you to that bar,” he shouted, shaking the cell phone near her face. “You lied about that, you’re lying now.”
She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. He noticed the red marks and bruises on her wrists left by the cuffs, and that gave him a pang of regret, but he didn’t let it stop him.
“Josh put in a distress call, didn’t he, Jordie? An SOS. He asked you to come pick him up at that out-of-the-way bar.”
“No.”
“And drive him to a hiding place?”
“No.”
“Or maybe he didn’t have a hiding place yet and needed your trusted input. Were you going to have a brother-sister confab and discuss options?”
“No.”
“Was he going to leave a message for you at the bar, let you know where he was headed?”
When she didn’t reply to that, he tilted his head. “Was that it?”
“No.”
“Where was he going?”
“I don’t know! Stop with the questions. You’re only wasting your breath. I haven’t talked to Josh. He didn’t call me last night.”
“You’re lying.”
She gave her head a firm shake.
“Then if it wasn’t Josh, who did you talk to on the phone?”
“Nobody,” she said, but the turbulence in her eyes evidenced how fast the wheels of her mind were spinning.
He pressed, but asked softly, “Who did you talk to?”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
“Because you know what will happen if you don’t.”
“I know what will happen if I do!”
“We’ll go to Josh—”
“You’ll kill both of us.”
“And pass on the thirty million? I don’t think so.”
“Josh hasn’t got the—”
“Who called you?”
“—money.”
“Who did you talk to?”
“No one!”
“Tell me now, or by God, I’m taking Panella’s deal.”
She sucked in a breath, wet her lips, and said huskily, “I didn’t talk to anybody.”
“Jesus, Jordie, don’t—”
“But I—”
“—be stupid.”
“But I did get a call.”
Chapter 17
A rumble of thunder interrupted the sudden and taut silence between them. Shaw didn’t seem to notice. Her admission had cemented his attention on her.
She asked, “May I have some water, please?”
He straightened up and walked over to the car. Leaning into the driver’s seat, he reached beneath the dashboard for the trunk release. The lid popped open, the light inside came on, and Jordie was grateful for it and the dome light. With only the slate-gray remnants of daylight eking through the cracks in the walls, it had grown almost completely dark inside the building.
The back half of it was especially dark.
He returned to her with a bottle of water. She thanked him and drank deeply. When she’d had all she wanted, he took the bottle from her. “We’re running low.” He drank the rest, threw the empty bottle into the trunk, then came back to her.
“Male or female?”
“What?”
“The person who called you.”
“Male.”
“But it wasn’t Josh?”
“I don’t think so. It might have been, but I don’t think so. His voice was muffled.”
“Panella and his silly machine?”
“No. Nothing like that. Just—”
“—muffled.”
“Yes.”
“What did this muffled voice that might or might not have been Josh say?”
She ignored his patent skepticism. “He said, ‘If you want information about your brother, come now.’ He emphasized the now and told me where the bar was located. He didn’t give me a chance to ask or say anything before disconnecting.”
He thought all that over. “What did he say when you called back?”
“I did so directly because I needed better directions on where to find the bar. His had been rushed and imprecise. But when I called, he didn’t answer.”
“Although he’d just called you?”
She raised her shoulders. “He didn’t answer.”
“Regardless, you wasted no time setting out.”
“That’s right.” She considered telling him about the car which she was almost certain had followed her, but thought it best not to volunteer anything. “As you assumed, I called him again en route when I got turned around on one of the back roads. He didn’t answer then, either. That’s the truth. That’s all I know. I swear it.”
“That’s the truth?”
“Yes.”
“All you know?”
“Yes.”
“Then why hold out on me? Why didn’t you tell me this last night when I asked—repeatedly—why you went to that bar?”
That touched a nerve. “Well, just possibly my reticence had something to do with you snuffing your partner, kidnapping me, tying me up, and marching me into a dark woods for what I feared was my execution.”
Building up a full head of steam, she continued. “I was scared out of my mind! I’d just seen you kill a man, and you were suggesting that I”—she slapped her hand against her chest—“was part of a plot to set you up as a fall guy. I was afraid if I told you about the call, you would demand to know more, and I couldn’t tell you any more, because I don’t know any more!” By now she was shouting.
Unruffled, he watched her for a moment, giving her time to simmer down, then said, “Let’s see.”
“What?”
“Call back. See if he answers this time.” He extended her the phone.
An active phone. A lifeline. He was offering it to her. But she would never be able to complete a 911 call before he stopped her, and she didn’t dare redial the unknown caller who’d summoned her to the bar. If the person on the other end was Josh…
She left the phone lying untouched in Shaw’s palm.
“No?” he said. “Then I’ll call again.”
“Again?”
He turned the phone so she could read the screen. “See? Last night. Ten fifty-two. I was approximately a half hour’s drive away from the bar when I pulled off the road to switch license plates. I took the opportunity to check your phone. Out of curiosity I called Unknown.”
She looked at him expectantly. “What did you get?”
“Rings. No answer. No voice mail. Just like the three times I’ve called it since then.” He showed her the history of his attempts, the most recent being that afternoon while she slept. “Maybe we’ll get lucky this time.” He tapped the screen and held the phone so she could hear the rings. Her heart thumped with fearful anticipation, but the call went unanswered.
After seven or eight rings, he disconnected. She didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved, but his scrutiny of her was unsettling.
“No one approached you in the bar except that idiot who slipped you the phone number.”
“He had nothing to do with anything,” she said. “It wasn’t him who called me.”
“How do you know?”
“Did he look trustworthy to you, or like someone who could carry out a dangerous mission for Josh?”
In spite of her scoffing, Shaw’s stare didn’t waver.
She added, “I think when he came over to me, he must’ve scared off the person who called. Which was the main reason I became so irritated with him.”
“He scared off the mysterious caller who was going to give
you information about Josh.”
This time she acknowledged his sarcasm. “You think I’m lying.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Your tone implied it.”
“First you complain about my innuendos, now my tone. Makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to satisfy you. Ooops.” He exaggerated a wince. “Another innuendo.”
She came straight off the crate to her feet. “I think you scared him off.”
“When I shot Mickey? Wrong. Because by then you had realized you’d been stood up and had hightailed it out of there.”
“I hightailed it because I realized how irrational it was to have gone in the first place. When I got that call, I didn’t know Josh had escaped. I thought that perhaps someone would deliver a message from him, or give me a way to reach him. Something like that.”
She could tell he wasn’t buying it. Sighing, she returned to her seat on the crate and rubbed her temple. “Honestly, I don’t know what was going through my mind. I reacted without thinking. The moment I walked into that place, I realized how stupid it was to have gone streaking off into the night.
“The longer I sat there, fending off that creep, the more likely it seemed that the call had been a hoax, someone playing a cruel joke on me. I was still thinking it was a prank until I turned around, saw you and Mickey coming toward me, and realized that Billy Panella was behind the whole thing.”
“He was behind the hit, not the phone call.”
“Oh, right. My arrival was a shock. I showed up, and you had to scrub plan A.” She gestured with helplessness. “We’re back to where we started. I don’t know who called or why he sent me to that bar.”
He didn’t react for the longest time. Eventually he shrugged and said, “Okay,” but his flippancy suggested that it wasn’t at all okay.
“You’ve got to believe me!”
“I said okay.” Methodically he removed the battery from her phone before putting both in his front pocket. Encircling her biceps with his hand, he pulled her up off the crate and drew her toward the door. “It’s starting to rain. You need to go outside while you can.”
“Please, listen, I—”
“I was listening.”
“But I don’t think you believe me. Do you?”
When they reached the door, he pushed it open, then stood there, his breathing hard, his fingers growing steadily tighter around her arm.