CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kyle Maxwell slid the next stack of papers into the shredder and said his dozenth prayer of thanks for .
The shredder was delivered in a plain cardboard box that could have been anything from an air fryer to a coffee maker.
The FBI grunts watching him wouldn’t know that he was actually in the process of deleting reams of evidence of fraud.
He hated being nervous. The FBI watching him made him nervous. He was a skittish sort of fellow already, prone to restlessness and irritability. Those traits had made him a terrible cop.
It would surprise the general public to know this, but ninety percent of police work was filling out paperwork, nine percent of police work was getting yelled at by your watch commander for screwing up some minor detail on that paperwork and being forced to complete it again, and nine-tenths of one percent was attending mandatory conferences, speeches, therapy sessions, and miscellaneous other bullshit.
In a sixty-hour workweek, Kyle would be lucky to have fifteen minutes of actual action.
Sure, that might be an exaggeration, but the point was that law enforcement was not the career for Mr. Maxwell.
As a private investigator, he found his niche.
He took pictures of liars and got paid. Simple as that.
Step one: take a picture. Step two: give the picture to the interested party.
Step three: receive money. If he got behind on paperwork, well, he was his own boss, and he was a kindly sort who would be just as apt to tell himself to take the day off and grab a beer or two at Paddy's, the only Irish bar in town, hence the ridiculous and possibly racist stereotype of a name, as he would be to demand that he remain at work until every t was crossed and ever i dotted.
The problem with a restless person holding an easy job was that restless people couldn’t leave well enough alone. They couldn’t just work a good gig and leave it at that. Boredom eventually set in, and then restless people had to tinker around until they broke something.
Kyle’s tinkering came in the form of adding a step four to his process.
Or rather, moving step three to step four and changing step three to contacting the subject of the photographs and offering to forget the evidence he’d found for a fee equal to a significant but not extreme premium over the fees he would be owed for providing the evidence to his client.
And that worked like a freaking charm, especially on men and women who were financially dependent on their partner.
Men of all walks of life were terrified of their wives leaving them.
Women tended not to care, or not to care enough to pay him, except when they were trophy wives married to rich husbands.
Then they absolutely wanted this hush-hushed.
They were the best because they would pay almost anything he asked.
The woman who liked to go to swinger parties and lie down naked holding a sign that said FREE and a rotating selection of specific offerings was very motivated to ensure that her banking executive husband didn’t find out about her dalliances.
She had paid him fifteen thousand dollars to make his pictures go bye-bye when he revealed that he’d backed the photos up before the Carltons scared him away.
And now the FBI was looking at him. Freaking wonderful. Kyle wished he could find the dipshit responsible for killing the Carltons and Dr. Hammond on the same damned days he was investigating them. Then they’d have a reason to arrest him for murder.
He slid the next stack of papers into the shredder when he heard the front door to his front office opened.
He swore and leaped to his feet, then swore again and bent over to shut the machine off.
He got to his feet, lifting his fists to either side of his head and swearing. How could he have forgotten to lock it?
The door to his back office opened, and he cursed inwardly, then forced a self-righteous frown.
“Hey, you guys can’t just walk in,” he called. “You need a warrant to…”
His voice trailed off. It wasn’t the FBI standing in front of him. It was an old client of his.
“Miss Bennett?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Miss Bennett smiled coldly at him. “I stopped by your office the other day, but you were out. It’s unfortunate. I had to work out of order. Oh well. I think the message will be clear enough.”
Kyle blinked. Something in her eyes disturbed him. He looked down and saw a pair of knives in her hands, one a thin stiletto with a triangular blade, and the other a comparatively dull Ka-Bar.
He was keenly aware of the fact that his snub-nosed Ruger LCR was at his apartment, left there as a result of his damned anxiety, which had forgotten to take it, then decided it was more important to get here and start shredding ASAP than to go back for his weapon.
He was just as keenly aware that his cell phone was on the counter behind him, in between the microwave and the minifridge that held his daily allowance of two craft ales, a bag of Reese's Fun Size Peanut Butter Cups, two bottles of spring water, and a dozen microwaveable beef-and-bean burritos.
“Look,” Kyle said, raising his hands. “I worked for you over two years ago, Miss Bennett.”
Miss Bennett’s soft blue eyes flashed lightning. The soft lips that Kyle couldn’t believe Mr. Bennett had left in favor of a pair of thin rubber-band units pulled back over teeth that gleamed white like a predator. “It’s Mrs. Bennett! Always Mrs.! Marriage is for life! For life!”
“Yeah, sure is,” Kyle said, edging backwards toward the counter. “That’s why I caught your dirtbag ex-husband in the act.”
If he could get his phone and get to the bathroom, he could lock the door and call nine-one-one.
If Miss Bennett broke through the door, he could climb out the window and…
He had no idea. There was no fire escape.
Not in a twenty-story building. He would have to get to the front door and the elevator.
Except she was in between him and that door.
She chuckled. “But you never gave me the proof of that, did you? No, you gave the proof to him. Because he paid you off. So, no one knew that Gregory strayed. No one knew that he had no right to leave me.”
In the heat of his terror, Kyle wanted to point out that if marriage was for life, then Gregory didn’t have the right to leave her anyway.
Why his mind went there or why he thought that made any sense or was important at all, he didn’t know.
He just didn’t want to confront the fact that he might very well be dead in the next few seconds.
And shit. He had blackmailed Greg Bennett.
He had forgotten that. The guy had tossed him eight grand, cussed him out, then left.
Why hadn’t Kyle added a step five and just given Caroline the photos too?
Bennett could sue him for blackmail, but he wouldn’t succeed.
Kyle hadn’t done anything illegal. Not with that case, anyway.
Well, the blackmail, but he could easily claim that Greg was lashing out and wanting to blame Kyle for his indiscretion.
No court would side with the philandering ex-husband just because he was pissed, he got caught.
Then again, the fact that he’d waited until now…
Shit, why was he thinking about this? He had a very angry woman with a weapon standing in front of him ready to kill him.
“Caroline, I’m very sorry for your loss,” Kyle said.
She scoffed. “My loss? My loss?” Her eyes softened, and a tremor came to those soft, kissable lips. “My loss. I lost him. But not to death. No, it was a harlot who parted us. And she had help. Help from others to whom the Seventh Commandment meant nothing.”
She said it that way too, with the capital letters in front. Like she was talking about Scripture.
Wait. She was talking about Scripture. Christ, he was nervous.
“Listen, Caroline—”
“It’s as the Lawgiver says. The wages of sin is death. If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death.”
“Hey, I didn’t make Greg cheat, all right?” Kyle laughed shrilly. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Caroline, but if I had you in my bed, I’d never kick you out. Definitely not for that thin-lipped, flat-chested—”
“How dare you!” Caroline screamed.
Her face had contorted like a harpy. Kyle wanted to run for his phone, but his feet were rooted to the spot as though they’d been glued there.
“How dare you disrespect Francine like that?” she demanded.
He blinked. “Francine? My first wife? What the hell does she have to do with this?”
“May you rejoice with the wife of your youth,” Caroline quoted. “May her breasts satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love.”
Kyle swallowed. He thought of telling Caroline that Francine was more the lay there stiff as a board and wait for it to be over type than the satisfy you with her breasts type, but he had a feeling that wouldn’t go over well.
Her face hardened, no longer enraged but cold. Stony. “But whoever causes one of these little ones who trust in me to fall into sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone hung around his neck, and to be submerged in the depths of the sea.”
Kyle swallowed again. “Listen. I don’t know what—”
She took a step toward him. His paralysis finally broke.
He turned toward the counter and lunged for his phone.
Fire exploded in his back. He gasped and stared in amazement at the thin tip of the stiletto poking from the front of his chest. The knife withdrew, then appeared again just below his belly button.
He dropped to the ground, his legs unable to work.
Maybe I won’t feel it, he thought. Maybe because she paralyzed me, I won’t feel it when she cuts it off.
A foot worked under his shoulder and rolled him onto his back.
He tried to reach for her only to find that her first strike had paralyzed his arms. He could only watch helplessly as she unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his shorts and carefully pulled them down to his ankles.
A moment later, she became the last person to touch him in the place all men craved to be touched.
And he felt pain. Oh yes, he felt pain.