“It’s true,” Katie said after a pregnant pause. “I saw some records at Fordham’s office that proved what I’d suspected, once and for all. I wouldn’t have been able to pull it all together if I hadn’t been asked by Monty and my new job with the county to help Joe Jones file a tax return. He insisted on showing me his daughter Amber’s financial records as well. On our first visit to Joe’s trailer, Monty had alluded to the fact that Amber had been taking her share of Joe’s money from the sale of his land. So when Joe offered Amber’s records the second time, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try to figure out what was happening to all Joe’s money. Anyway, that was where I first saw for a fact that Amber Jones was being paid by Miles Fordham to spend time with certain men. Amber kept pretty good records of all the men she slept with, including all her paid checks from Miles. I believe, given what I saw at Miles’s offices, that there are two other ladies besides Amber Jones that Miles has been paying to entertain his customers. I would imagine he plans something on a much larger scale when he opens the new casino, though.”
Katie appealed to George Harlan. “Maybe I don’t know everything about your line of business, Mr. Harlan, but I assume it would make a difference, in the state’s final decision, to know that Miles Fordham has been involved in prostitution? It was my understanding that gaming commissions tended to steer clear of folks dabbling in the sex trade.”
Monty gave her a small, sly smile in the distance, but George Harlan just looked confused.
“Well, of course . . . of course if something like that could be proved by legal means, that would be one thing—the gaming commission is highly cautious about screening applicants for past crimes—most especially for prostitution—but—”
“Oh, it can be proven. Trust me,” Katie interrupted Harlan before he dug them all a deeper grave by not playing along with her scheme.
“How?” Stash asked.
“I made copies of the records,” Katie lied. She met Stash’s beady-eyed stare, forcing herself not to blink. It was imperative that he believe her. “I don’t like that sleazebag Fordham any more than you do.”
Stash resumed his agitated pacing. Katie swallowed through an achy throat and jerked one hand out of the rope.
Bingo.
“I think she’s on to something, Stash,” Monty said, his voice lending a calm, sure note to the proceedings. “Maybe you ought to end this thing before someone gets hurt. We can stop Fordham through legal means.”
Katie was busy getting her other wrist free, her gaze fixed on Stash to make sure he didn’t notice her shoulders twitching around, when movement occurred at the corner of her vision.
She gasped so loudly that everyone in the room stared at her.
“Ouch!” she wailed, jerking her gaze to her lap. “Leg cramp.”
She glanced up covertly from under a lowered brow and saw Stash resume his pacing.
“It’ll never work. Fordham and all his fancy lawyers—he’ll slime his way right through the courts,” Stash mumbled.
“Not necessarily,” George Harlan said nervously. Katie had the impression Monty had just elbowed him hard, trying to knock some sense into the government official. As Harlan began to elucidate how a claim and subsequent proof that Fordham had been involved in prostitution would damage his bid for a gambling license irreparably, Katie glanced toward the pantry cautiously.
She really hadn’t been hallucinating.
Rill stood in the opening of the entrance to the pantry, the partially closed door blocking him from Stash’s view. She saw another person standing behind him and recognized the auburn color of Sherona’s hair.
Rill held his finger up to his lips. She couldn’t believe she was staring at Rill . . . in a pantry . . . in a back room . . . in Vulture’s Canyon . . .
. . . when she’d suspected he wasn’t ever going to return.
He did something that looked too realistic to be a dream. He pointed in Stash’s direction through the door. Then he held his hand up and mimicked holding a switch down, and then jerking his thumb upward.
Katie nodded her head, understanding what he meant.
Maybe they were just a couple idiots from Hollywood, but both of them had been well educated from movie plots about a “dead man’s switch.” Stash wasn’t going to detonate the dynamite if somebody clobbered him and he released a button in his unconscious state, blowing them all to oblivion. He wasn’t carrying the radio-operated switch. It needed to be activated or deactivated manually.
She couldn’t take her eyes off Rill, and was glad Stash seemed so intent on listening to George Harlan. For some odd reason, Rill’s right cheek and forehead were smudged with black cinder. Was it a disguise?
Katie glanced nervously to a pacing Stash and back to Rill, letting him know with her eyes where Stash was in the room. But she needn’t have worried because Stash started talking, giving away his location.
“You can’t guarantee me, or anyone in Vulture’s Canyon, that Fordham wouldn’t wiggle his way past the legal obstacles, Harlan. You don’t know Fordham. He’s the devil.”
Katie’s eyes went wide and her heart lodged in her throat when Rill reached out of the pantry—quick as a snake at the strike—and snagged one of Errol’s crutches. It suddenly struck her what Rill was going to do.
Terror sliced t
hrough her when she thought of Stash’s gun . . . the dynamite. All Stash had to do was run eight feet, pick up that switch, flip it, and POW.
All of them were dead. It somehow seemed a thousand times worse when she considered that Rill would die in the explosion with them.