“You didn’t cry foul when this stranger started rubbing your ass.”
“I didn’t want to make a scene.”
“You made a scene when you walked into that place.”
“I told him to take his hand off me or else. I didn’t know he was slipping something into my pocket.”
“Convenient, that he had the number already written down. Like he knew you’d be there and planned on sneaking it to you.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Next you’ll be telling me that you’re a regular customer, that you go there every night for your glass of white wine.” When she didn’t immediately respond, he tilted his head. “Well? Had you ever darkened the door of that place before tonight? Had you ever even driven past it?”
She said nothing.
“Thought so.” He closed his hand around her elbow and nudged her forward. “But you went there tonight and let that jackass fondle you.”
“Exactly. He was a jackass. Why would I want his phone number?”
He drew up short and faced her. “I never said it was his.”
Her breath caught. They stared at each other for a ponderous few moments, then she blinked several times and said, “Who else’s would it be?”
He leaned in and whispered, “You tell me, Jordie.”
She held his gaze but wasn’t quailed by it. In fact, her eyes narrowed. “How did you and your partner know I would be in that bar tonight?”
Shaw eased himself back. “We didn’t. Truth is, it shocked the hell out of us when you came in. I had my heart set on a triple-X pay-per-view in the motel followed by a good night’s sleep. Then there you were. Scrub plan A. We need a plan B.
“So I mosey over to assess the situation. In the meantime, Mickey makes a phone call, and comes back with, ‘Get her done.’ ‘Here? Now?’ I ask. ‘Here, now,’ he says. I had no choice except to go along. To a point.”
He let all that sink in. “But don’t mistakenly think that by putting a bullet through his fat brain that I was saving your skin. I was saving mine. Because as Mickey and I were closing in on you, it occurred to me that when he left that parking lot, there were going to be two bodies on the ground, and that one of them was going to be mine.”
He shuffled forward a few inches, crowding in on her again. “So, Jordie, you see why it’s important for me to know what you were doing in that place tonight, at that particular time, because to me it looks like a setup.”
Her lips parted, but whatever she’d intended to say remained unspoken. Finally she said, “I wasn’t part of any setup involving you. I don’t even know your name.”
“Shaw Kinnard. Pleased to meet you. Why were you in that bar?”
“Impulse.”
“Bullshit.”
“I stopped in to have a drink.”
“At a place where you wouldn’t ordinarily be caught dead. No pun intended. Who sent you there?”
“No one.”
“Someone.”
She took a deep breath and shook back her hair. “Okay, I’ll play along. What were you being set up for?”
“To take the fall for killing you. Mickey even told me to grab your purse, make it look like a robbery gone south so the hit couldn’t be linked to anybody else.”
“That would have required some elaborate staging. He couldn’t have—”
“He could. He has. He was a pro, well known to cops but never prosecuted. One of his means of consistently getting off clean was to blame the dead dude.”