They sat in silence, listening, but there were no sounds. If the men were talking, they were doing it so quietly that they couldn’t be heard.
After what seemed like an eternity, David and R.J. came back into the room and took the chairs at the ends of the couches. Both of them looked older than they had an hour ago.
“He’s dead,” R.J. said. “Shot through the head.”
“It couldn’t have been us,” Sara said. “The whole town saw us at dinner.”
“And they saw him,” R.J. said. “He was in the bar when we left so that means he was killed while we were walking back. Alone. Just the four of us. No outside witnesses.”
“He was killed then carried up the stairs of that woman’s house,” Ariel said, sitting up. “She knows he’s here and she’s downstairs waiting for our screams.”
They looked at her, blinking at the venom in her voice.
“There aren’t going to be any screams,” R.J. said calmly. “There will be no screams and no hysterics. We’re going to treat this like it was a business deal.” He looked at them as though they might protest, but Sara knew that if there was one thing R.J. was good at, it was business.
“How do we do that?” Ariel asked softly.
“For one thing, we don’t let the enemy know what’s in our heads. And we don’t do what they expect us to. Right now it’s my guess that there are people hiding in the bushes outside, waiting for us to do something dramatic.”
“Such as?” David asked. He was trying to sound cool and calm, but Sara could tell that he was as scared as the rest of them. Except R.J., that is. He didn’t seem afraid at all. He seemed angry.
Chapter Ten
“DON’T FADE OUT ON ME NOW, JOHNson,” R.J. said softly.
He and Sara were in the bathroom, looking down at the body of John Fenwick Nezbit. They weren’t touching him, just looking, as though they couldn’t really believe what they were seeing.
“I’m—” Sara began.
“Scared out of your mind?”
She nodded.
“I am too.”
“You?”
“That surprises you?” R.J. asked.
“Shocks me,” she said. “You go into deals that terrify other people, but you’re always calm.”
He shrugged. “Money. What does it matter? You win, good; you lose, okay. But this …” He nodded toward Nezbit’s body. “This was planted here with the intention of our taking the rap, and the rap leads to prison, even to execution.”
She was getting more scared now. “We couldn’t just tell someone, could we?”
“What do you think?”
“Not an option,” she surmised.
He sat down on the closed toilet and motioned for her to close the door. “Look,” he said softly, “I figure that it’s you and me in this. Those two …”
Ariel and David were in the sitting room, close to each other on the sofa, neither of them saying anything. R.J. had called Sara into the bathroom with him—and “Fenny.”
“She’s in on it,” Sara said, motioning toward the door and meaning Phyllis Vancurren. “I know you and David think she’s beautiful, but I wish you could see her clearly.”
“Give me a break. You’ve seen the women I date. Do you think I’d fall for some overused hag like Phyllis Vancurren? I knew she was up to something the minute I saw her.”
“Ariel says there are some very expensive things in this house.”