Shadow Of Suspicion (Margot Harris 3)

“Good to hear, but what did you do to him?”

“He tased him,” Stone said, earning another boot to the stomach.

“He’s right. The choirboy is sleeping. I’d rather I got this done before it was witnessed by a homicide cop.”

“I can’t let you do this.”

Stone started to say something, but Mal kicked him again before saying to Margot, “You don’t have a say in this one.”

Margot let him see she had her gun. “I think I do.”

“I’m doing this for you too. They said if I took him out, they might leave us both alone.”

“Might?”

“Yeah, might. It wasn’t like I was going to get a better offer.”

“Come on, Mal, you’re not a killer, not like this.”

“No, you come on, Margot. You know that I’m a killer and I’m a killer just like this.”

Margot wanted to argue with him, she wanted to believe the best of him, if only because she didn’t want to see herself having her mother’s and sister's poor judge of character when it came to the men in her life. Deep down, however, she always knew who Mal was.

Instead of trying to convince him he was something else, she said, “Stone said he could fix it for all of us. He can’t do that if you kill him.”

“He’s a lying piece of shit. He can’t fix a damn thing. I’m only going to ask you one more time and then you’re going to have to watch.”

“No, not this way. Put the gun down.”

Mal looked up at her and smiled. “Or what? Come on, Margot. We both know you aren’t going to shoot me.”

Margot started to raise her gun but Mal was quicker. He kept the gun in his right hand on Stone while he drew the Glock he took from Radcliff from behind his back. He had his pistol up, cocked, and pointed at her before she got her arm halfway up.

She froze in place as he said, “Don’t even think of pointing that thing at me. We both know you aren’t going to shoot me anyway.”

“How about me? Do you think I won’t shoot you?” they both heard Radcliff say.

“That’d be hard without your gun,” Mal said without looking away from Margot and Stone.

“Yeah, it would. I always heard that, despite everything else, you were thorough. But you didn’t notice the big pistol weighing down my coat pocket?”

“What pistol?” Mal asked as he shifted his eyes enough to get a look at Radcliff.

“The one I took from Stone.”

“Well, what are you waiting for? You’ve got the drop on me.”

“I don’t want to kill you in front of Margot.”

“Why not?”

“I feel like we’ve got a good thing going and I don’t want to ruin it.”

“So, if you two weren’t seeing each other, you’d already have shot me?”

“Yep.”

“Aw hell,” Mal said as he lowered both guns and let them drop to the ground.