All the Wrong Moves (21 page)

The blotchy color that had seeped back into her face drained away again.

“You’re crazy! Roger Carlisle may be a stinker to work for but he wouldn’t . . . wouldn’t . . .” She gagged on the word. “. . .
silence
anyone!”

“You’ve left me no choice.”

The terse comment spun us both around. My heart almost jumped out of my chest when I saw Carlisle framed in the door to the kitchen. The gun gripped in his gloved hand didn’t do a whole lot for my equilibrium, either.

He wore all black. Black slacks, black leather jacket despite the heat, black knit watch cap pulled low on his forehead.

My heart jackhammering against my sternum, I swiped my tongue over suddenly dry lips and managed what I hoped was a creditable sneer.

“Let me guess. You’re all dressed up as a cat burglar because you planned to make this visit look like a robbery gone bad.”

“What I planned was to make it look like a case of domestic violence,” he ground out.

A muscle ticked in his cheek. It didn’t calm my shrieking nerves to realize he was wound tight. Obviously the man wasn’t used to doing his own dirty work. I kept my eye on that nervous twitch as he shifted his glance to the woman beside me.

“You set it up for me, Joy. I could hear you and Brian shouting at each other while I waited in the alley behind your house. I’m sure the neighbors could, too.”

Bennett had remained mute to this point, paralyzed with fear. Carlisle’s utter ruthlessness shocked her into a gasp of disbelief.

“You were going to kill me and let Brian take the blame?”

“Not were. Am. Like I said, you’ve left me no choice.” His gaze darted back to me. I didn’t like the way his mouth went hard and tight.

“Having you here complicates the matter. Freaking Granger. He said he’d take care of you and your friend.”

“He tried.”

“Where’s Mitchell?”

“Outside,” I lied. “Waiting for me in the car.”

He threw a glance at the window in the room just off the foyer. I used his brief distraction to sidle closer to the golf club tilted against the coat rack. I’d moved only an inch or two when Carlisle’s eyes whipped back to me.

“Mitch is armed.” I talked fast, my gaze locked with his but every atom of my being focused on that club. “If you shoot us, he’ll hear the shots and come in firing. He’ll pump a bullet into your head, Carlisle, just like he did Granger.”

That shook him. The muscle in his cheek jumped again.

“Granger’s dead?”

“Missed that part of my conversation with Joy, did you?”

I used the ruse of thrusting my jaw out to ease another inch toward the coat rack.

“I told her just before you interrupted us that her former lover is now minus the top half of his skull.”

“Jesus!”

“The Lord’s not going to help you out of this mess, Carlisle. You’re hanging out there, all on your own. You might as well give it up now.”

“I can’t give it up. I’m in too far.”

“Listen to me! You don’t want to pull that trigger. Even if evidence links you to Sloan and through him to John Armstrong and Patrick Hooker, you can plead to a lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder. I don’t know what penalty that carries in civilian life, but in the military it won’t put you in front of a firing squad. At the most you might get twenty to thirty years.”

I couldn’t believe I was spouting the Uniform Code of Military Justice at the man! All those bored hours perusing the UCMJ and its accompanying Manual for Courts-Martial might just pay off.

I realized I’d overplayed my hand when Carlisle’s nostrils flared. “You’re forgetting those stolen weapons. That’s another ten to twenty.”

“You could serve them concurrently,” I said, clutching desperately at any legal straw I could pull out of my hat.

“I’m not spending the rest of my life in prison.”

I was sure the discussion was over then. I tensed, preparing to leap for the damned club, when Joy distracted us both.

“Tell me something, Roger. If you and Nick were in this together, I assume you were the one feeding him information on B&R’s shipments.”

“Not just B&R’s,” the executive admitted. “I tapped into several of our competitor’s tracking systems, as well.”

“So what did Nick want with . . . ? Why did he . . . ?”

“Go after you?” Carlisle’s lip curled. “It started as a joke. You’re so straight and sanctimonious, he just wanted to see if he could get into your pants. Once he had, we realized you were the perfect scapegoat if any of this should track back to B&R.”

Joy gave a strangled sob and slumped against the wall again. To buy a few more precious moments, I put in my own request for clarification.

“What about Patrick Hooker? Was he a scapegoat, too?”

“Hooker was a problem. We’d heard rumors from sources inside the Justice Department that he was making noises about cutting a deal before his lawyer pushed through that writ of habeas corpus.”

There it was again. That “high level” interest. Carlisle must have played his Washington connections for all they were worth.

“We couldn’t risk letting him be shipped back to Colombia for trial. Ed assured me their methodology for extracting confessions is considerably more direct than ours.”

“Rubber hoses,” I murmured, wishing I’d taken Paul Donati at his word and stayed out of his business.

“Exactly. Ed arranged Hooker’s escape.”

“And subsequent demise. How does it make you feel, knowing you and Granger played on a father’s grief to get him to commit murder?”

His face hardened. “We didn’t have a choice.”

“Bullshit!”

The explosion came from Joy. Her eyes lit with fury, she shoved away from the wall.

“You made choices every step of the way, Roger. You
chose
to get into the business of selling stolen arms. You
chose
to partner with Nick and this Patrick Hooker. You
chose
to come here tonight.”

She took one pace forward for each of her boss’s bad decisions, stalking him like a harsh, unrelenting conscience. I held my breath and expected to hear his gun go off at each angry step.

“You made all kinds of choices, Roger. You just made the wrong ones!”

I knew I’d never get another opportunity like the one Joy gave me in that instant. She’d drawn Carlisle’s attention, angled him away from me a few precious degrees. In one swift lunge, I got a grip on the club and swung it with everything in me.

The shaft cracked against bone.

The gun flew out of Carlisle’s hand.

He doubled over and I swung again. This time the club head connected. I don’t think I’ll ever hear anything as satisfying as the whack when it hit the back of his skull.

He went down, but not out. Moaning, he tried to get his knees under him.

“Quick!” I shouted to Joy, preparing to wield the club again. “His gun!”

The snick of a round being chambered brought my head around with a snap. The Brow had taken my meaning literally and was about to pump a round into her former boss.

“Joy! No!”

“You called it,” she grated hoarsely. “A robbery gone bad. I had to shoot him. Self-defense.”

“Don’t do it! He’s not worth it!”

“He ruined my life. My marriage.”

“You did that yourself.”

I can see now that wasn’t the smartest thing to point out at the moment. All I can offer in my defense is that I was a leeeetle frazzled.

“If you’re going to shoot him,” I said with what I honestly intended as heavy sarcasm, “do it because he’s a total slime who profits off the pain and suffering of others.”

Much to my dismay, I discovered sarcasm rolled off Joy Bennett with the same Teflon ease it did off Pen.

“Good point,” she agreed and pulled the trigger.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

IN one of those ironic twists that life sometimes dishes out, Roger Carlisle ended up in the hospital room right next to Mitch’s.

When I arrived at the North Tucson Regional Medical Center early the next morning, the third floor corridor was swarming with uniformed police officers, plainclothes investigators and television news crews. I kept my head down and threaded my way through the milling throng to Mitch’s room. I’d given my statement—several times!—to the various law enforcement types who’d responded to Joy Bennett’s house last night. I was all statemented out.

I should mention I’d also met Joy’s husband last night. He’d raced home in response to his wife’s frantic call and barreled his way past the police cordon. I have to admit I sniffed back a tear or two when he opened his arms and Joy fell into them. Sobbing her heart out, she kept crying over and over that she’d been such a fool, that she’d never meant to hurt him, that she would give anything to erase the past.

Speaking from experience I will say it’s a kinda tough to erase the mental image of your spouse going all hot and heavy with someone else. I hope Mr. and Mrs. Brow work things out, though. They’d obviously invested more in their marriage than Charlie and I had.

I was thinking about that when I knocked on Mitch’s door and stuck my head in. “Morning.”

He was sitting up in bed, already dressed in the navy blue sweats I’d purchased in my Walmart shopping spree yesterday. His arm was bandaged to his side, but he looked ready to blow this joint.

“Morning.” His hazel eyes tracked mine as I entered. “Hear you had a busy time last night.”

“Busy is one way to . . .”

The sight of the thickset male in the chair by the window stopped me in mid-stride.

“Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh is right,” Paul Donati growled. Folding his arms across his chest, the FBI agent pinned me with a decidedly unfriendly look. “Care to explain why you didn’t bother to mention your planned excursion to the Bennett place when we talked last night?”

“You said you couldn’t discuss details of the case over the phone.”

Weak. Very weak. But the best I could come up with at the moment. The FBI agent didn’t buy it, of course. Beneath his black, wavy hair, eyebrows almost as thick as Joy Bennett’s drew together.

“I believe I also told you to butt the hell out of my business.”

What’s that saying? A good offense is the best defense? Or maybe it’s the other way around. Whatever. Aggrieved by his lack of appreciation for my role in busting up a stolen arms ring, I went on the attack.

“Good thing I didn’t butt out. If I had, Joy Bennett would be a statistic this morning and you’d have nothing on Roger Carlisle.”

“Not quite nothing,” Donati huffed. “I checked the phone calls made to and from his office yesterday morning, as you suggested. One call traced to a disposable phone found on Ed Granger’s body.”

I didn’t come right out and crow. I have more cool than that. I let a snickery snort convey my sentiments.

“Have a seat.” With a smothered grin, Mitch patted the bed beside him. “Paul was just about to fill me in on Granger.”

“He was one of ours,” the FBI agent admitted reluctantly as I hiked up on the hospital bed beside Mitch. “He worked for the Bureau for almost a decade before leaving to freelance.”

“Like Patrick Hooker,” I put in, remembering the information I had Googled up on the former U.S. soldier who’d gone mercenary.

“Like Hooker,” Donati concurred. “We know now Hooker and Granger connected while they were hired guns in Iraq. Carlisle came into the picture later, when Granger offered to cut him in on a deal for a shipment of grenade launchers. Carlisle subsequently provided inside data on at least three B&R shipments.”

“He said last night he also tapped into competitors’ systems.”

The FBI agent nodded. “Ms. Bennett gave us that input. Our data systems experts have already alerted several of those competitors. We’ll work with them and with B&R to determine how much of their systems have been compromised.”

“What’s going to happen to Joy Bennett?” I wanted to know. “When I left her place last night, the on-scene detectives were talking possible assault charges.”

Especially after The Brow admitted we’d had Carlisle facedown on the foyer floor when she splintered the tile two inches from his face and almost put out his left eye with a near lethal shard. She told the police her intent was to scare him, but she’d never fired a handgun before and didn’t know the bullet would ricochet like that.

Personal opinion? Her aim was simply off. Either way, I considered that jagged-edged tile shard minor compensation for Mitch’s tree branch.

“We’ve already nixed any talk of charges against Ms. Bennett,” Donati said with a shrug. “They’re still pending against you, however.”

“
Me?
”

My startled squeak drew a thin smile from the wavy haired agent. His first since I entered Mitch’s room, I might add. Raising a hand, he ticked off a daunting list.

“Obstruction of justice. Interfering with a federal investigation. Suborning witnesses.”

“You gotta be kidding!”

“You think?”

I angled toward Mitch. “Tell me this guy isn’t serious.”

“He’s not serious.”

I don’t like being jerked around any more than the next gal but I suppose I deserved a few pulls. I let the agent enjoy a brief gloat, then Mitch keyed in to the aspect of this case that had become so personal for him.

“What impact will the events here in Tucson have on the case against John Armstrong Sr.?”

“Hard to say at this point,” the FBI agent replied with blunt honesty. “He did murder two men.”

“He was set up, Paul. Just like Joy Bennett.”

“I know. I’ll talk to the DA. See if we can work some mitigating circumstances.

Donati pushed out of his chair and crossed the room.

“I’ve got a copy of the statement you gave the investigating officers last night. I’ve also got Mitch’s statement. I may want to talk to you both again. If so, I’ll contact you in El Paso.”

He shook Mitch’s good hand and unbent enough to give me a real smile.

“Think you can make the drive home without sailing off into another gully?”

“I’ll give it my best shot.”

I had Mitch strapped in and exiting the hospital parking lot when I remembered EEEK. I wasn’t up for the drive to Phoenix to return him to his rightful owners, but the least I could do was bail him out of jail.