She shot him a sour look.

“Actually, I was thinking we could call Panella back,” he said. “That would kill some time.”

Watching her watch him, he replaced the battery in Mickey’s phone and clicked it on. As the phone booted up, he studied her face in the minimal light of the screen. “What were you doing back there?” Using his chin, he motioned toward the back of the building.

“Taking a sponge bath.”

“What else?”

“I was avoiding the mouse droppings.”

“That’s all?”

“What else could I have been doing?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like surprises.”

“So you’ve said.”

She was looking straight into his eyes, challenging him. He got to the call memory and pressed his thumb against the screen, then put the phone on speaker.

Panella answered after the first ring. “All right, asshole,” he said in his garbled voice. “Two million.”

Jordie drew in a startled breath. Her lips remained parted. Her eyes seemed to dilate.

Panella was saying, “I’ve already notified an offshore bank that I’ll be making a wire transfer in that amount. After I get indisputable confirmation of the kill, of course.”

“I’ll text you a photograph.”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so,” Shaw said. “So how do I confirm to you she’s dead?”

“I’m making arrangements for that.”

“Um-huh. I’ll bet you are. Like the arrangement for me that you and Mickey had planned.” When Panella didn’t respond, Shaw said, “Not that I mistrust you, Panella, but I’m gonna require a show of your good faith.”

“What would show my good faith?”

“Half up front.”

“Forget it.”

“Half up front, or I take one of those options I outlined to you earlier.”

“Know what would show your good faith? If you’d stop screwing around and get the job done. Now. Before her double-crossing brother gets himself recaptured. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I just want Josh Bennett to know she’s dead. Soon.”

Shaw waited several beats, then said a brusque “I’ll get back to you” and clicked off.

For the entirety of the conversation, he hadn’t broken eye contact with Jordie. After he hung up, ponderous moments passed with neither of them moving, then she took off like a sprinter. He barely managed to grab her shirttail and hold on as he pulled her back. She came around swinging, her fist landing hard on his cheekbone.

“Goddammit!” The pain brought sudden tears to his eyes. He lost his grip on her top, and she got several yards away from him before he lunged after her. He caught her from behind in a bear hug and pinned her arms to her sides.

“Stop it! Listen! You don’t have to die!”

She kept struggling, until she realized the futility of her struggle and what he was saying sank in. Her ponytail swept across his face as she whipped her head around and looked at him over her shoulder. “What?”

“Are you gonna listen? Or act like a madwoman until you force me to shoot you just to get rid of you?” She didn’t say anything but ceased straining to break his hold. Not completely trusting her capitulation, he relaxed the bear hug, but took her arm and pulled her back to the crate. “Sit down.”

She backed onto it, but looked ready to spring off it at any second, and he noticed the furtive glances she kept casting toward the back of the building.

He touched his throbbing cheekbone with the heel of his hand. The skin hadn’t split, but it was swelling. “That hurt like bloody hell.”

“Don’t expect an apology.”

He removed the battery from Mickey’s phone, but as he slid the two components into one pocket, he withdrew another phone from his other pocket. Recognizing the Extravaganza logo on the case, she sat up at attention.

“That’s mine.”

“That’s right.”

“You told me you’d hidden it.”

“I retrieved it this afternoon while you were asleep.”

He opened the back of her phone and inserted the battery. “By powering it up, I’m taking a chance that the signal will be triangulated and bring the law right to us. But I want you to see something. Your fate really is up to you.” He clicked the phone on. When he got to her call log, he turned the screen toward her.

“Last night, nine twenty-three, incoming call. No ID, no number. But you called it back three minutes later, and again at nine forty-seven. I’m guessing that call was made while you were driving, because your house is several miles from that bar out in the boonies. At roughly ten o’clock you walked in and took a bar stool, looking as out of place as a frosted cupcake atop a pile of cowshit.

“Only one person would get you to a honky tonk like that in record time. Now…” He bent over her, bringing his nose to within inches of hers. “Where is brother Josh?”

She wilted. “That’s my saving grace?”

“That’s it.”

“Then I’m dead.”

“That’s entirely up to you. You die or you live. I either take Panella’s measly two million, or you direct me to Josh and his thirty.”

“I can’t! I’ve told you a hundred times that I don’t know where he is!”

“You also told me that nobody called you to that bar,” he shouted, shaking the cell phone near her face. “You lied about that, you’re lying now.”

She sat back and folded her arms across her chest. He noticed the red marks and bruises on her wrists left by the cuffs, and that gave him a pang of regret, but he didn’t let it stop him.

“Josh put in a distress call, didn’t he, Jordie? An SOS. He asked you to come pick him up at that out-of-the-way bar.”

“No.”

“And drive him to a hiding place?”

“No.”

“Or maybe he didn’t have a hiding place yet and needed your trusted input. Were you going to have a brother-sister confab and discuss options?”

“No.”

“Was he going to leave a message for you at the bar, let you know where he was headed?”

When she didn’t reply to that, he tilted his head. “Was that it?”

“No.”

“Where was he going?”

“I don’t know! Stop with the questions. You’re only wasting your breath. I haven’t talked to Josh. He didn’t call me last night.”

“You’re lying.”

She gave her head a firm shake.

“Then if it wasn’t Josh, who did you talk to on the phone?”

“Nobody,” she said, but the turbulence in her eyes evidenced how fast the wheels of her mind were spinning.

He pressed, but asked softly, “Who did you talk to?”

“Why should I tell you anything?”

“Because you know what will happen if you don’t.”

“I know what will happen if I do!”

“We’ll go to Josh—”

“You’ll kill both of us.”

“And pass on the thirty million? I don’t think so.”