What if? What if?” He mimicked her like a parrot, then grabbed her chin in his hand. “I’ll give you the only what if that matters,” he said sharply. “What if you do as you planned? Then I won’t hurt your children.” His eyes roamed to her belly, and a fresh wave of fear rolled through her. “Are we clear? You don’t cancel the hit, and you come out on the other side with a neat, clean robbery-gone-wrong, executed by one of the finest hit men in the Royal Sinners, and then you are free. That is your last debt to me from the drugs you sold.”
“Why do you need me to order the hit? If you want him dead, you can call Stefano yourself,” she said, clutching at straws.
He narrowed his icy eyes at her and spoke, low and menacing. “I don’t order hits. I don’t have to. I don’t need a hit connected to me, because I haven’t made the mistakes you have.” He shrugged and fixed on a smile, his tone shifting to an easy one. “But if you pull this off, I will let you go. You can leave town and be free.”
Later that night, as she lay awake in bed next to her husband, Dora imagined calling the police. Asking for help. Turning in Charlie. But how was she to say anything and be believed? She was a drug dealer. A former drug user. A woman who was conspiring to commit murder for hire. An adulteress. They wouldn’t believe her—they’d lock her up, and her children would be in real danger then.
Thomas was better off dead than with Charlie hunting all of them.
She tiptoed out of bed, grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen, opened the screen door, and closed it behind her. In her nightgown, she walked deep into her yard and called Stefano. “It’s back on.”
She hung up, closing her eyes, the ground swaying as she made her choice. This was the only way she could protect Michael, Colin, Ryan, Shannon, and the baby in her belly.
And she did protect them. Even when it all unraveled. Even when the police locked her up. Even when Stefano went to prison. Even when the jury convicted her to life, too. She never gave up the names of the others.
She wasn’t innocent. Not by a long stretch. But her silence made sure no one else ever knew who was involved.
It was her last chance to do the right thing when she’d done so much wrong.
For the next eighteen years from her six-by-eight-foot prison cell, she’d pulled it off, her silence driving her mad. But at least her children were safe from men who killed without mercy.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Four months ago
Sanders glanced around the cluttered office of Special Agent Laura K. Reiss. Her desk towered with papers, mugs, and picture frames. The bulletin board behind her was stuffed with notices.
She handed him a mug of coffee and sighed sympathetically as she took a seat across from him.
“I need your help, Mr. Foxton,” she said, and her voice was deceptively sweet. She was petite and had blond hair that bounced in a ponytail. A Reese Witherspoon lookalike.
“How so?” he asked, forcing his voice to stay steady even as his gut twisted with worry.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, in that soprano voice. “Some of those guns you were transporting were illegally obtained. Which makes you a gunrunner for illegally obtained guns.” She spelled it out like he was five, then lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “That’s kind of a no-no.”
“I didn’t know what I was transporting,” he protested. “I swear to God. I’ve never known. They give me the packages, and I take them from point A to point B.” That was the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth. He’d never asked questions.
Laura nodded sympathetically and took a pull of her coffee. “Oddly enough, that’s not really a good answer,” she said with a frown. Then she turned it upside-down, her cheery demeanor returning. “But I believe you. I believe you’re telling the truth.”
He sighed with relief. “Good. Can I get out of here?”
She laughed, then shook her head. “Not so fast.”
“What do you need?”
“We have a few options. I can work up some charges against you for your role in transporting firearms as part of the illegal gun trade in Las Vegas, and you can face time behind bars. Or you can use what’s in here,” she said, tapping her head, “to help me