Sting

“Hey, cut it out,” Wiley said. “You two are worse than my kids.”

For the past fifteen minutes Hickam had been looking like he could chew nails. He chose now to vent, speaking to Wiley as though Shaw weren’t there. “That dog-and-pony show he put on back there wasn’t a legal interrogation. Nothing Linda Meeker told him can ever be used in a court of law.”

“Wasn’t illegal,” Shaw said. “Wasn’t even an interrogation. I didn’t ask her a single question. Not one. I didn’t lead the conversation, she did. All I did was listen.” He looked at Hickam in the rearview mirror and raised his eyebrows, inviting him to contradict him.

Hickam said, “Too bad that disarming tactic didn’t work on Jordie Bennett. Neither did flexcuffs and a blindfold. Thirty-six hours with her, and you got zip.”

Shaw rested his head against the back of the seat and closed his eyes. “She didn’t have anything to tell.”

“Unless you count her tropical vacation with Billy Panella.”

Shaw opened his eyes and raised his head only high enough to meet Hickam’s smug gaze in the mirror, and it made him terribly uneasy. “Wiley?” The other agent turned his head and looked at him. “What’s Quick-Draw talking about?” He listened for five straight minutes, liking none of what Wiley told him.

Wiley finished by saying, “She can’t deny being with him down there, but claims not to know anything about the money her brother deposited or Panella’s plans to return for it.”

“So you see,” Hickam said, “by relocating her, we’re not sure what we’re preventing. Another attempt on her life? Or a romantic rendezvous with Billy Panella?”

In Shaw’s mind, he was shouting, Fuck me!

But he didn’t respond to Hickam’s goading. He didn’t say a word, only returned his head to the back of the seat and closed his eyes.

Joe Wiley called Gwen Saunders from the hotel lobby to tell her that they were on their way up, so Jordie was seated on the living area sofa when Gwen unbolted the door and they filed in. Wiley was in the lead, then Hickam.

Behind him came Shaw, whom she hadn’t expected to see.

When their eyes met, the connection was electric, anger and hostility arcing hotly between them. But for all the ferocity of his gaze, Shaw looked ghoulish, his eyes alight with fever, shoulders slumped, tread unsteady.

Joe Wiley pointed him into a chair, saying, “Sit down before you fall down.” Then to Jordie and Gwen, “We’ve got some disturbing news.”

“We heard about it,” Gwen said. “Jordie was in her bedroom resting and saw the story about Royce Sherman’s murder on TV.”

“It’s dreadful,” Jordie said, “but I don’t believe it had anything to do with me.”

“We hoped it was a coincidence, too, but we rushed down to Tobias to check it out.” Wiley tipped his head toward Shaw. “He talked to the young woman who was with Sherman when he was shot.” He covered the main points of that conversation. “Then she told him something that knocked our socks off. The killer talked through an electrolarynx.”

Jordie sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly. “So, it was Panella?”

The three men had been watching her closely to gauge her reaction, and she could tell they were shocked by the resignation behind her statement.

Hickam was the first to speak. “You aren’t surprised?”

“Not all that much, no. I’ll be right back.”

She left her seat on the sofa, went into her bedroom, and retrieved the cell phone from between the mattresses where she’d hidden it until she decided what to do about it. This new information had made the decision for her.

She went back into the living room and held out the phone where the agents could see it. She explained how she’d come by it. “Josh knows I proofread all printed matter before sending it on to the client. It was safe for him to assume that the box of invitations would eventually wind up in my hands.”

“What if somebody else had answered when he called that phone?” Hickam asked.

“He’d have hung up, I suppose. Or if he never had need of it, it would have gone unused, forever a mystery as to how it got into that box. When he heard about Royce Sherman, he panicked and called me. He believes Panella killed Sherman and is afraid that he’ll be next.”

Hickam took the phone from her and turned it on.

While they waited for it to boot up, she related her conversation with Josh. Her account was interspersed with questions from either Hickam or Wiley, who asked when she was going to get around to telling them about the phone and the call.

“I admit I hadn’t decided whether to tell you at all. Josh was having a paranoid episode. I was tempted to keep that line of communication with him open.”

“Is he suicidal?” Hickam asked.