“Don’t do it!” Menundez shouted.
Drex turned his head and stared straight into the bore of the detective’s pistol. “Shoot me then, just get to Talia’s house.” Rudkowski’s screaming was acting like a power drill against his skull. “Hang up on that idiot and listen to me!”
Locke didn’t move. Menundez didn’t lower his pistol. Drex, his voice cracking, said, “I beg you. He set it up to kill her, and he will.”
The two detectives looked at each other. Menundez continued to hold the pistol on him, but he tilted it down. Locke said into his phone, “We have an emergency,” then clicked off, leaving Rudkowski raving. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
Locke, hearing Drex’s conviction behind the single word, motioned for Menundez to get them underway. The younger man wasted no time. He popped a magnetic beacon on the roof of the car and, motioning frantically for other cars to move aside, cleaved a route through the logjam. At his first opening, he stamped on the accelerator.
“All right,” Locke said, “you’ve got what you wanted. You had better have a damn good explanation for it.”
“First, call Mike.” The detective did so without argument. They all listened with mounting anxiety as Mike’s phone rang several times without being answered.
Through clenched teeth, Drex said, “Please no, no.”
“He’s all right,” Locke said. “He texted pictures. The envelope is there, right where the tailor said it would be.”
“It may be there, but it wasn’t a tailor who left it. Call Talia’s phone.”
Locke did. “Goes straight to voice mail.”
“I told her to turn it off,” Drex said in anguish. “Menundez, kick it up!”
Locke ordered Drex to calm down. “Why do you think Jasper is at their house?”
“He would never have left those buttons with a tailor. He wouldn’t have left them with anybody. It was Jasper who called Talia and made her, all of us, believe in the fortuitous kindness of Mr. Singh.”
Menundez swore.
Still skeptical, Locke said, “You thought you were right about the courthouse.”
“A mistake I’ll have to live with. Die with.”
“We’ve skipped out on the court, on the prosecutor, Rudkowski. We’re screwed and so are you if this turns out to be a bust. You had better pray to God you’re right.”
Heart in his throat, Drex said, “I pray to God I’m wrong.”
Chapter 40
The man standing in the open bedroom doorway was barely recognizable to Talia as the groom with whom she had exchanged marriage vows. He had shaved his head and beard. Unlike the natty dresser he’d been, he had put the blazer on over a pair of dark cargo pants and a golf shirt, both of which were ill-fitting and sloppy.
But of course the blazer was only for effect, she realized now.
How had he gotten in without Mike intercepting him? Likely, he had already been inside the house when they’d arrived. He had let himself in, turned off the alarm, and reset it.
It sent shivers up her spine to think of him lying in wait, in anticipation of springing this perfectly laid trap.
Her heart was pounding, but she tried to appear unafraid. With as much composure as she could muster, she said, “Hello, Jasper. Since we parted ways at the airport, you’ve been awfully busy.”
“I could say the same for you, sweetheart.”
“Stop talking like that,” she snapped. “You sound ridiculous.”
“I agree wholeheartedly. But it worked to fool you.”
His smile was backed by a condescension that was all too familiar. She wondered that it hadn’t made her skin crawl all those months that she had spent with him, as it did now.