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Shane stared out at the swamp. Fucking Fortunatos.
“The nuptials should be quite lively,” Wilson said.
“Agnes!” Taylor had said as Agnes had picked up the next plate and slung it after the first one into the hall, where it smashed onto the tile floor. It had been satisfying, but it had lacked form somehow. “I need a point system,” she’d told Taylor, and was working one out—ten points for a dinner plate, maybe eight for a soup bowl, triple that if any of them hit his lying fatheaded skull—when he tried to take the box from her
“Hey.” She yanked it back, and started grabbing dishes from it and slinging them out into the hall as fast as she could, one after the other, while he yelled, “Goddammit, Agnes, what the hell are you doing?”
How are you feeling right now, Agnes? Bite me, Dr. Garvin.
“I hate a liar, Taylor,” she said as she sent the last of the teacups after the dinner plates and started on the saucers. “You’ve been lying to me, just like you’re lying to me about these crap dishes, you’ve been lying to me about Brenda, and that makes me mad.”
He tried to grab the box from her, but she was in hyperdrive by now, diving to the bottom for soup bowls.
“Because I don’t get it. I don’t get why some people are so goddamn selfish”—a bowl went flying—”that they think it’s all right”—and another—”for them to lie in their goddamn teeth”—and another—”so that they can get what they want.” She stopped for a moment to breathe and looked him in the eye. “Why do you and Brenda get to lie and cheat and everybody else has to play fair?”
“Agnes, it’s not what it looks like?—”
“Hold it,” Agnes said, plate in hand, hot anger going cold in an instant. “Do not even think about pulling that line on me, you and your fine Southern gentleman crap?—”
Taylor’s face darkened. “Now wait a minute?—”
“—because you are no gentleman, betraying a commitment?—”
“—I keep my commitments?—”
“And you expect me to be your wife?” Agnes shrieked in his face, forgetting she was about to dump him. “Some fine Southern gentleman, betraying his own wife?—”
“I haven’t betrayed my wife!” Taylor snapped.
“What?” Agnes said, stopped in her tracks, and then as Taylor’s face grew slack with the realization of what he’d just said, she sucked in her breath and said, “You’re married? You’re already married to somebody else?”
“Now, Agnes,” he said, and as a red haze flooded the kitchen, she lunged for the counter and grabbed the nearest thing at hand.
“You’re my obvious replacement,” Wilson said to Shane as he prepared to go. “A seasoned professional, an unblemished record, and, we thought, no personal ties to distract you from your work.”
“My uncle is hardly a personal tie,” Shane said. “He’s called me for help once in twenty-five years.”
“Right before you made the only mistake of your career,” Wilson said, no expression in his voice at all.
“The mistake was not mine,” Shane said.
“You’ve caught bad intel before,” Wilson said. “You should have caught it this time. Can you honestly say you weren’t distracted by personal issues?”
Shane met his eyes squarely. “I?—”
His cell phone rang.
Since he was staring at one of the four people who had the number, and the second one was in the boat, watching him with nonjudgmental eyes, and the third was in the house, throwing dishes, it had to be Joey.
Wilson waited and Shane knew it was a test.
It rang again.
Shane answered it. “Yeah?”
“Agnes okay?” Joey asked.
“She’s in the house throwing dishes at Taylor.” Take a cue from my voice and hang up, Joey.
