Sting

“Okay.”

“That same afternoon around three thirty, Josh shipped Jordie a cell phone.”

He turned to stare hard at Wiley, but Wiley got the impression that Shaw wasn’t seeing him at all, but rather a puzzle with one vital piece missing.

Suddenly Shaw said, “Those devices are easily obtainable off the Internet.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what you said. Earlier today.” He whipped his gaze back to the house, then his long strides started eating up the distance back to it. By the time Wiley caught up to him, he was pushing through the back door.

“What are you thinking?” Wiley asked as he followed him through the kitchen and into the dining room.

“Josh wasn’t hedging his bet when he mailed that phone. He knew Jordie was alive. An hour and a half earlier, he’d heard her shout through the speaker of the phone.”

By now they’d reached the porch. Shaw drew up short and, in the instant that Wiley saw the empty driver’s seat, Shaw said, “Oh, fuck me.” He drew his pistol. “Search the house,” he shouted as he leaped over the steps, landed hard on the ground below, and took off running.

Wiley spun around and ran back into the house. The first thing he noticed was the opening in the corner of the dining room. He ran toward it, saw the staircase and bolted up it.

Nearly gagging on the smell, he topped the stairs and saw the open body bag on the attic floor.

Inside was a badly decomposed corpse. The eyelids were held open with toothpicks. The skeletal right hand was holding a pistol. On the left, a diamond ring glittered from the pinkie.

It was Billy Panella.

Chapter 40

Josh had clouted her over the head with the butt of his pistol. Close to losing consciousness, she’d been unable to protect herself when he pulled her hands together in front of her and secured them with flexcuffs. She’d barely swallowed the nausea rising in her throat before he stuffed a handkerchief into her mouth to prevent her from shouting for Shaw and Wiley.

He had dragged her down the staircase with such haste she’d almost stumbled over him. She wished she had. Of course, he might have shot her right then, ending her life before Shaw even knew she was in trouble.

Shaw.

The blow had left her dazed, her vision blurred. When they reached the bottom of the staircase, Josh grasped her bound hands, pulled her through the living room, down the steps, and across the clearing in front of the house. He then plunged into the thicket.

They’d been thrashing through it for several minutes now. Dizzy and disoriented, Jordie had glanced over her shoulder as she lurched along behind her brother, but already her view of the house was blocked. It was as though the hostile terrain had swallowed them. Shaw had warned her of the swamp’s hazards the night he’d taken her.

Shaw.

It was as though she wasn’t gagged and had spoken his name out loud, because Josh said, “That numbskull Mickey Bolden sure could choose his sidekicks, couldn’t he? He picked a cop? Or is this Shaw Kinnard character FBI? Treasury?”

When and how had Josh discovered that Shaw wasn’t a hit man and kidnapper?

“Doesn’t matter what kind of cop he is,” he continued. “He ruined everything on Friday night. What really hacks me, I never got my advance back from big fat Bolden.”

Her mind was beginning to clear, but nothing Josh was saying made sense.

“Hurry, Jordie.” He picked up his pace, roughly tugging her behind him. “No time to waste. Soon, he and Wiley will discover Panella’s rotten corpse. Won’t that be a surprise? Sure as hell came as a shock to you, didn’t it?”

He stopped and turned suddenly. “Using an electrolarnyx was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself.” He removed it from his rear pocket and held it up to his throat as he said, “Even Mickey Bolden was fooled into thinking I was Panella, and you know what bosom buddies they were.”

Jordie recoiled.

“What’s the matter? Don’t like the sound of it?” Laughing, he replaced the instrument in his pocket. ?

??I’ll keep it as a souvenir of my stint playing Panella. It wasn’t easy, you know, keeping the cell phones straight, which to answer as Panella, which to use when I was myself. Talk crude and tough like Panella would. ‘Kill her, already!’ Then ’fraidy cat Josh.” He changed his voice into a falsetto. “‘I’m so scared. Is Jordie okay? Please save my sister.’”

The last of the fog was lifting from her brain, and things were becoming horrifyingly clear. Josh, not Panella, had plotted her death. He was the one who’d bargained with Shaw to end her life.