The Dangerous Edge of Things - By Tina Whittle Page 0,94
up. I heard Trey stir, saw Landon swing the gun his way, smoothly, with no hesitation.
“Stay where you are, Trey.”
Trey stood, but he obeyed. He had blood on his forehead and moved slowly, unsteady on his feet. I started to stand up too, but Landon put a hand on my shoulder. “Do it easy.”
Trey watched from across the room as Landon helped me up. I started to move toward him, but Landon caught me by the elbow.
“Stay here with me, Ms. Randolph. Do you understand?”
I shook free. “I need to—”
“You need to stay still. No sudden moves.”
There was something in the way he said it, like Garrity had. Lay off brandishing that weapon, you do not want to trigger that Special-Ops training. My heart pounded, my head emptied, but I was calm, so calm.
Trey wasn’t the killer. He couldn’t be.
Landon lowered his gun. He seemed calm too, as did Trey, who waited at the other end of the room, head cocked, the dead woman sprawled at his feet. He didn’t seem to notice. He was watching us intently, steady now.
Landon exhaled slowly. “I want you to check her pulse.”
Trey knelt at Charley’s side and laid two fingers on her neck. He examined her chest, watching for the rise and fall. There wasn’t one. He shook his head. “No pulse, no respiration. We should—”
“First, get the gun.”
Trey frowned. “That’s not—”
“Get back your gun, Trey. Now.”
“Why?”
“You don’t get to ask why, you just follow orders!” Landon’s voice rose. “I don’t know how she got your weapon, and I don’t want to know, but we’re taking care of this mess right now! I want you to wipe that gun clean and put it back in your holster, and if anybody asks, I want you to deny it was ever anywhere else, do you understand?”
Trey stood. “I do now.”
And then suddenly, in a rush of understanding, I knew too. I took one tentative step away from Landon. He caught the movement. “Don’t.”
But I stayed where I was. “No, he’ll play it as it lies. I’ll vouch for him. And you, I’ll vouch for you. That Charley was going to kill Trey, that you had no choice.”
“Except that he did,” Trey said.
And I was thinking, shut up Trey, just shut up. But it was too late. Landon’s expression switched into something predatory. But still calm, very very calm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She had my gun,” Trey replied. “You knew that. You have the same gun. So you knew that she’d have no idea how to work the squeeze cocker.”
Landon listened with interest. Then he sighed, loudly, dramatically. “All you had to do was keep Charley from doing something stupid until I could figure this mess out, and you couldn’t even manage that.”
And before I could scream, he had one arm around my neck, snatching me off balance. He yanked the purse from around my neck and dropped it to the floor, then kicked it aside. Trey took a step forward, and I felt the gun against my temple, so hot it burned.
“Don’t even think about it,” Landon said.
All I could see was Trey, not twenty feet away, but he wasn’t looking at me. He had his eyes locked on Landon. He took another step forward. Landon pressed the gun harder against my skin, and Trey stopped.
“Kick the gun over here,” Landon said.
Trey hesitated. My knees went weak, and the shaking started, violent and uncontrollable. Landon dropped his voice. He sounded friendly, conspiratorial.
“Listen to me, Trey—I don’t want to kill you, or Tai.”
“No, you don’t want to. But you have no choice.”
Landon considered the remark. “You know what? You’re right. No point in lying about it, is there?”
“There never was. You have to kill us. It’s the logical end to every scenario. You wanted my prints on a weapon. You wanted me holding that weapon when you shot me.”
I imagined what Landon would say, how he’d spin it now that Trey had refused to play along. Would he plant his own weapon on me, say I’d killed Charley, that Trey and I had been working together, that he’d had to take us both down? Landon the hero, saving the day from the psycho ex-cop and the crazy girl detective.
Landon gripped my throat tighter, and I pried at his fingers, but it was no use. I wasn’t getting out of his clutches, and even if I did, it was a sure bullet to the brain. I had to get him off guard.