“Call Bolden’s phone?”

“Yes. If you hit the Redial, Panella will answer. He’s waiting to hear that Mr. Kinnard went through with it.”

He and Hick had discussed whether or not to try to connect with Panella, but decided in favor of postponing that redial until they had the phone hooked to every conceivable monitoring device. There was another solid reason for Joe’s delaying contact with Panella: He wanted to hear everything Jordie Bennett had to say first.

He asked her now about the tone of the conversations between Kinnard and Panella. “Did you get a sense that they’d ever met face-to-face?”

“No. The contract went through Mickey Bolden.”

“Did you overhear what they said?”

“Yes. Most of the time the phone was on speaker.”

“Did Panella ever give a hint of where he is?”

“No. None.” She reflected a moment. “It seemed surreal to be listening to two men bargaining over my life. Panella’s creepy voice.”

“Creepy voice?”

She described it to them and said, “It made him seem all the more monstrous when he agreed to pay Mr. Kinnard the two million.”

“Excuse me?” Joe said.

“Two million?” Hick exclaimed.

“That’s what Mr. Kinnard demanded and Panella agreed to it.”

Joe tried to wrap his mind around the staggering amount. Kinnard had gall to ask for that much. It had to be way above his normal rate. But then he would know that Panella was good for that amount and more. He said, “I’m more amazed than ever that Kinnard didn’t cash in.”

“You mean kill me,” she said, and when he nodded, she continued. “Last night, just after dusk, I became certain he was about to.”

“What made you think so?”

She glanced down at her lap, up at Hick’s gaze in the rearview mirror, finally coming back to Joe. “Just an intuition.”

“An intuition?” he repeated, ending on an inquisitive note to which she didn’t respond.

Her gaze, her demeanor remained evasive. Joe wondered what she wasn’t sharing. Hick was squirming with curiosity, too, but he didn’t press her. For right now, they wanted the overall picture. They’d hammer her for details later. He did, however, ask her what had led up to her stabbing Kinnard and how she’d managed it.

“He’d…he’d found an arrow. He thought he’d outsmarted me, that he’d found my secret weapon.”

“He didn’t know about the broken propeller.”

“No. I went back to it, and managed to pry it free from the crack between the boards, and…and…jabbed it into him as hard as I could.”

She stopped and lowered her head to stare at her clasped hands. Deputy Morrow had given her a bottle of hand sanitizer to clean them with, but bloodstains were still evident.

She described how Kinnard had pulled out the blade and she’d packed the wound as well as she could, how his condition continued to worsen throughout the night, how his fever spiked.

“Then that deputy sheriff arrived,” she said. “I begged Mr. Kinnard to surrender. I told him that I didn’t want to be responsible for another death. For anyone’s death, including his. That’s when he asked me for the name of the most senior FBI agent who’d interviewed me about Josh. He said he wouldn’t surrender to anyone else. I gave him your name. You know the rest.”

Joe was aware that she’d left a dozen or more gaps wider than the Grand Canyon, but she looked done in, and by now they were on the outskirts of the city.

He said, “Thank you, Ms. Bennett. I know you’re exhausted and that having to talk about the experience couldn’t have been pleasant.” He looked over at Hick. “You have anything specific to ask?”

“I do.” He addressed her in the mirror. “That unknown caller on Friday night. You said that before Kinnard hid your phone, he tried to reach the person.”

She nodded. “Like every other time, no one answered. He thought it was probably Josh who’d called me, trying to set up a rendezvous with either him or a messenger who would give me information about where he was going, something like that.”

“You told him it wasn’t Josh.”

“I told him I couldn’t be certain, but that I didn’t think so.”

“He pressured you to tell him who it was.”

“That’s right. He wanted me to admit that it was Josh.”

“Why? Why was Kinnard so hip to connect with your brother?”

“He thought Josh might pay more to keep me alive than Panella was paying to have me killed.”

“More than two million?” Joe asked.

“Mr. Kinnard is convinced that Josh has the stolen money, not Panella. I tried to disabuse him of that.”

“But his intention was to bargain with Josh for your life?”

“Yes. But he never got the opportunity.”

“Josh didn’t answer Kinnard’s calls.”

“No one did. And for the hundredth time, I don’t know that it was Josh.”

Joe looked over at Hick before coming back to her. “Why don’t you simply tell us where he is, Ms. Bennett?”

“Where Josh is? I don’t know!”

“Not Josh. Tell us where to find Billy Panella.”

“Panella? I have no earthly idea.”

It wasn’t until that moment that she became aware that they had pulled under the porte cochere of a downtown hotel. She looked at the two of them with bewilderment.

“What’s this? Why are we here?”

“We took the liberty of booking you a room.”

“Why?”

“So you can get cleaned up, rest, sleep, have a couple good meals, take it easy. We’ll need to interview you again tomorrow.”

She looked at Joe, then over at Hick, then back at him, now less puzzled than wary. “I have a small apartment attached to my office at Extravaganza for when I stay over. I thought that’s where you were taking me.”

“Extravaganza has media camped around it in a quarter-mile radius. So does your house in Tobias. Staying here will be hassle free. You’ll have room service. It’s closer to our office where we’ll reconvene first thing. A female marshal is bringing you some clothes from your Tobias house. In fact—” Joe checked his wristwatch “—she should be waiting for you in your room.”

“I’ll go check.” Hick got out, showed his badge to the doorman and asked him to leave the car where it was for the time being.

Joe reached for his door handle, but Jordie Bennett stayed him. “Wait a minute. What’s this really about?”

“I told you—”

“You told me a great lot of nothing. Are you placing me under house arrest?”

“What? No,” he said, and realized how phony he sounded. “This is strictly a precaution, meant for your protection.”

“From what?”

“The media.”

She looked at him with disgust and a shade of disappointment. “I know how to handle the media. Try again.”

“You and my wife,” he mumbled. “She sees through me, too.”

His folksiness didn’t impress or faze her. She kept glaring at him, demanding a no-bullshit answer.