“So there’s no problem here, right?” I turned my hands palms up, smiling, being agreeable, being friendly, being accommodating. “We’ll move along and I’ll see you around, okay?” Nodding a cheerful good-bye, I took an angled step forward, intending to go around Luke, keeping my body between that nasty gun and my niece.
Luke stared at me and didn’t move. I watched carefully, ready to knock Kate aside the instant his finger started to tighten on the trigger, the instant his eyes started to focus.
We made it one step. Two steps. And just as I was wildly hoping that my pretense at innocence might actually work, footsteps pounded toward us and Courtney Drew appeared.
“What are you doing?” she called.
I wasn’t sure to whom she was talking, Luke, me, or Kate, but I jumped ahead of anything either one of them might say. “Hi, Courtney,” I said, smiling broadly, edging closer to the gun. “Remember me? It’s Minnie Hamilton. I drive the bookmobile. We met at Rupert and Anne Marie Wiley’s house a few weeks back. My niece and I were hiking, but now we really need to be getting back. Our friends are expecting us soon, and—”
“Stop talking, already,” Courtney said. “And you’re not going anywhere.”
“Um.” I stopped and reached backward. Kate grasped my hand and I gripped hers tight. If I’d been smart a long time ago, I would have learned Morse code and taught it to my nieces and nephew during holiday gatherings, thus providing a current means of communication. Sadly, all I knew were the letters for SOS, but even then I wasn’t completely certain I wouldn’t be spelling OSO, and neither sequence would help much, anyway.
Courtney stood next to her boyfriend. “You know who she is, right? That librarian. The one we almost took care of with the air conditioner.”
“That’s her?” Luke frowned down at me. “But she’s so short.”
I knew this wasn’t the time to mention that good things came in small packages. And from a lifetime of being underestimated due to my size, I also knew nothing I could say was going to change his point of view of my capabilities. What I could do was bide my time and hope an opportunity presented itself that would let me take advantage of his prejudice.
Behind me, I heard Kate suck in a breath. I squeezed her hand as hard as I could and said, “There’s no information I have that the sheriff’s office doesn’t already know, so there’s no point in hurting my niece. She doesn’t know anything anyway.”
“Do, too!” Kate said. “I know that—”
My hand squeezed Kate’s so hard I heard her knuckles crack. “She doesn’t know anything,” I repeated. “So how about it? Let my niece head back to Chilson. Nothing will change if she leaves.”
Neither one glanced my way.
“This is a problem,” Courtney said, crossing her thin arms. “I wasn’t prepared for this.”
“We can put them in the shed.” Luke tipped his head in that direction. “That lock is pretty good.”
“You think?” Courtney rolled her eyes. “And five minutes after we leave, they kick a piece of siding off and wriggle their way out. She’s short, remember? And that girl is skinny. With a boost, I bet she could get out the window.”
Luke studied the shed. “Yeah, I guess.” He looked over at Courtney. “You want me to shoot them, right? Now or later?”
But Courtney was shaking her head before my brain freaked out. “We have a delivery to make, remember? And if these two really are meeting up with friends, they might have said where they were going.”
“We need time to hide their bodies, then.” Luke shifted the gun from one hand to the other. “Do you think we need to kill them somewhere else?”
Courtney frowned. “That’s a good question.”
I thought it was a horrible question, but I was fairly sure my opinion didn’t count, so I kept quiet. A better question would have been when had Rafe headed home? Or would anyone think to read the houseboat’s whiteboard? I’d written an itemized list—Brown’s Road, King’s raspberries, Lighthouse Park—but did anyone other than my mother know that’s where I wrote my whereabouts? I couldn’t think, couldn’t remember.
My mind whizzed at a million miles an hour. There had to be a way out of this. I had to think of something. I had to get Kate away from these two. I had to get her safe.
“Got an idea.” Courtney dusted off her hands as if she’d handled something dirty. “Keep them here a minute.”
“You going to put the delivery together?” Luke asked. “Because you’re right, we need to get moving. Last time we were late out there, he said if we did it again, he’d find another supplier.”
Courtney sighed. “I know. Well, I have one idea, but do you have any?”
“One idea is better than none, right, babe?” He grinned at her.
Thieves/killers/black marketeers who internally managed their enterprise through collaboration and cooperation? Who knew? But that meant my first instinct, to figure out a way to divide and conquer, wasn’t going to be easy. I needed another plan, and I needed one fast, because I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to care for any of Courtney’s ideas.
“Distract him,” Kate whispered.
I frowned, but before I could turn my head to whisper a puzzled reply, she’d slipped out of my grasp.
“Hey!” Luke yelled.
“Kate, no!” I called.
Instead of paying attention to her aunt or the guy with the gun, she launched herself at Courtney, arms out, fists flying.
Luke took one step, lifted a hand, and yanked her backward by the hair. “Stupid kid,” he said, disgustedly. “What did you think you were doing?”
“Trying to escape,” she said through gritted teeth. “What did it look like?”
Courtney glared. “Like you were trying to earn yourself a faster death. Luke, hang on to her. I’ll be right back.” She marched to the shed and pulled a key out of her shorts pocket. One click, and the padlock dropped open.
Kate shot me a look. “Why didn’t you—”
“Shut up.” Luke, who was holding my niece by the neck with one hand and pointing the gun at me with the other, rattled Kate hard enough to make my own teeth hurt. “I don’t want to hear a word out of you. Like ever.”
He smiled, and that’s when I was certain that Luke Cagan had shot and killed Rex Stuhler. Whether it was Luke or Courtney who’d killed Nicole Price, I didn’t know, but if Luke had killed once, what was there to stop him from killing again?
Well, nothing except a vertically efficient librarian and her contrary niece.
“A very determined librarian,” I murmured.
“You either,” Luke growled, pointing the gun between my eyes.
Having a gun aimed at me had happened once or twice before, but that familiarity did not decrease my heart rate. Or loosen my suddenly tight throat. Or stop my forehead from sweating.
I nodded and, as the gun dropped, started to breathe again.
“This will work.” Courtney came out of the shed and showed him a handful of twine. “Do the kid first, then her,” she said, nodding at me. Either she didn’t remember our names, or was already demoting us to non-name status. Neither possibility boded well.
Luke gave her the gun, which she handled with unfortunate familiarity. So much for my short-lived plan of shoving her to the ground while simultaneously grabbing the gun away from her. Anyone that at ease with a firearm would almost certainly have the impulse to hang on to the thing.
“How tight?” he asked, shoving Kate around and hauling her hands behind her back.
Courtney shrugged. “All I care about is they can’t get loose.”
“Works for me.” He wrapped the twine around Kate’s wrists, pulled it hard enough to make her gasp—and grinned.
Which was when I started to hate him. This was not a calm, detached hatred. No, this was more the Captain Ahab and the Great White Whale kind of hatred, the kind that could consume you.
“You will regret that,” I said quietly, making it less a vow and more a personal goal.