Page 108 of Sting
“You bastard.”
He didn’t blink. “It’s been said.”
She rolled her lips inward, clinging to her temper by a thread which was unraveling a little more with each word from his mouth. Clearly, he shared Wiley and Hickam’s suspicion that she had been, and possibly was still, involved on some level in her brother’s criminal activity.
Joe Wiley said, “Ms. Bennett, did you know that Josh reneged on his deal with us and had run off?”
“No. Not until he told me.”
Shaw said, “For whatever it’s worth, Wiley, she seemed shocked when I told her that Josh had been missing for four days. I don’t think she knew. But that didn’t cancel the possibility of her knowing something. I knew she would be afraid of me because she’d seen me kill Mickey. I figured I could use that fear to get information from her.”
Hearing him admit it snapped her control. She shot from her chair and, planting her palms on the tabletop, leaned across it toward him. “You badgered me for hours about that damn phone call!”
“Only after you lied about it.”
“You terrorized me.”
“I guess. To some extent.”
“There’s no extent to terrorism.”
“You’re right,” he said, raising his voice to match hers. “I kept at you, thinking that I’d wear you down until you let something slip about Josh or Panella, which could have proved vital to their capture.”
“You browbeat me about that call, and all along it was you.”
“What matters more than who called is that you responded. You came running in record time. You made sure you weren’t followed. When your surveillance failed to show up, either inside the bar or out on the parking lot, you flunked the test.”
“To hell with you and your test!”
“You shook that tail because you expected somebody to be waiting for you in that beer joint. Who?”
She was about to fire a comeback when her attorney gave the hem of her jacket a hard tug, pulling her back into her chair. Taking the advice being urgently whispered in her ear, she fell silent.
During her shouting match with Shaw, Wiley looked like a spectator at a tennis match, his head swiveling back and forth between them. Hickam kept up the infernal pecking on the screen of his iPad. She couldn’t help but wonder what he was taking down. The session was still being video recorded. Was Hickam adding color commentary, details they would later use against her?
She strived to mask the emotions roiling inside her.
Eventually, Shaw resumed, addressing her. “When I stopped to switch license plates, I used your phone to call myself, so I could show you later that I had tried that number.”
“You’re full of clever tricks.”
He raised a shoulder.
“And bullshit.”
“Effective bullshit.”
Her face burned when reminded of how effective his words, both sinister and provocative, had been. She wanted to kill him. “You called that phantom number several times, hinting that Josh might answer, knowing full well he wouldn’t.”
“Another tactic to try and break you.”
“Well you failed, Special Agent Kinnard. You’ve got nothing to show for all your testing and clever tricks. You got nothing helpful from me.”
“You’d be surprised what I found helpful.”
“My brother is still at large.”
“Which is why you’re still in custody.”
