“I’ll think about it,” I tell him. “Come back tomorrow and bring the contracts.”
Schroder stands back up. He grabs his wet jacket and doesn’t put it on, just drapes it over one of his dry arms. He moves to the door and bangs on it. It’s opened and we don’t hug, he just walks out the door without even a good-bye. I wait in the room to be escorted back to my cell, my world is about waiting, and now I have something new to think about while I’m doing it—and that’s trying to figure out what kind of power fifty thousand dollars could buy in a place like this.
Chapter Six
The fact is she had a plan. A good plan. A two-person plan. There was her, and then there was him—the second person of the two-part plan. A guy by the name of Sam Winston. Sam let her down. Maybe it was something that men with girls’ names do. Sam used to be in the army. She met him over the summer when he tried to break into her house.
She almost killed him, but she saw something in Sam, the same something others see in sick kittens and dogs with three legs, a kind something that makes you want to help. And he hadn’t been trying to break into her house, not really—it’d turned out he used to live there a few years earlier before drugs had taken away his money and chunks of his memory and sent his wife packing. He’d come back. He’d been drunk and furiously unwilling to accept that his key wasn’t fitting into the door.
That was the thing about Christchurch—it was a small world, a world full of coincidences, and people bumped into people like that every day.
Sam had been discharged from the army five years earlier. He hadn’t seen any action, unless you included getting so high that he crashed a fuel truck into the mess hall and injured half a dozen men, but nobody died as he told her proudly. Sam was angry at the world, angry at life, though he never told her exactly what it was he was angry about. He was happy to follow her around and do what she asked. He really was like a three-legged dog. A pet, really. Until he started to figure out who she was. By then they’d been planning on how to shoot Joe for a good two months. Then he got dollar signs in his eyes. She saw it happen. The news was on and the police had figured out her real name. There were pictures of her coming up on the screen and he kept looking at them and then at her, and his eyes widened as if big cash-register dollar signs were ringing off behind them.
So things didn’t work out with Sam after that. That was a week ago. She had to leave him and move on. And, just like any good-hearted pet owner would do, she put him down gently.
The trial starts Monday. Today is Thursday. She doesn’t want Joe deciding to start talking all about her because the prosecution makes him an offer he can’t refuse. She doesn’t want to shoot him on Tuesday, or Wednesday, or a month into the trial. The plan was for Monday, the plan has fallen though, but the new plan can be for Monday too.
Joe Victim: A Thriller
Paul Cleave's books
- The Face of a Stranger
- The Dark Assassin
- Death of a Stranger
- Seven Dials
- The Whitechapel Conspiracy
- Anne Perry's Christmas Mysteries
- Funeral in Blue
- Defend and Betray
- Cain His Brother
- A Breach of Promise
- A Dangerous Mourning
- A Sudden Fearful Death
- Dark Places
- Angels Demons
- Digital Fortress
- After the Funeral
- The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding
- A Pocket Full of Rye
- A Murder is Announced
- A Caribbean Mystery
- Ordeal by Innocence
- Lord Edgware Dies
- A Stranger in the Mirror
- After the Darkness
- Are You Afraid of the Dark
- Master of the Game
- Nothing Lasts Forever
- Rage of Angels
- The Doomsday Conspiracy
- The Naked Face
- The Sands of Time
- The Stars Shine Down
- Pretty Little Liars #14
- Ruthless: A Pretty Little Liars Novel
- The Lying Game #6: Seven Minutes in Heaven
- True Lies: A Lying Game Novella
- Everything We Ever Wanted
- All the Things We Didn't Say
- Pretty Little Liars #15: Toxic
- Pretty Little Liars
- The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly
- Homicide in Hardcover
- The Lies That Bind
- A Cookbook Conspiracy
- Charlie, Presumed Dead
- Manhattan Mayhem
- Ripped From the Pages
- Tangled Webs
- A Baby Before Dawn
- A Hidden Secret: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
- A Cry in the Night
- Breaking Silence
- Operation: Midnight Rendezvous
- Long Lost: A Kate Burkholder Short Story
- Pray for Silence
- The Dead Will Tell: A Kate Burkholder Novel
- Wherever Nina Lies
- Fear the Worst: A Thriller
- The Naturals, Book 2: Killer Instinct
- Never Saw It Coming
- Operation: Midnight Guardian
- Operation: Midnight Tango
- Operation: Midnight Escape
- Cut to the Bone: A Body Farm Novel
- Eve
- Nearly Gone
- Pretty Baby
- The Bone Thief: A Body Farm Novel-5
- Bones of Betrayal
- CARVED IN BONE
- Madonna and Corpse
- The Bone Yard
- The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel
- Bad Guys
- Bad Move (Zack Walker Series, Book One)
- Sin una palabra
- Stone Rain
- Broken Promise: A Thriller
- El accidente
- Bone Island 01 - Ghost Shadow
- Bone Island 02 - Ghost Night
- Bone Island 03 - Ghost Moon
- Deadly Gift
- Deadly Harvest
- Deadly Night
- The Dead Room
- The Death Dealer
- Unhallowed Ground
- The Night Is Alive
- The Night Is Watching
- A Grave Matter
- Alert: (Michael Bennett 8)
- In the Dark
- Mortal Arts (A Lady Darby Mystery)
- Picture Me Dead
- The Betrayed (Krewe of Hunters)
- The Dead Play On
- Breakdown
- Brush Back
- Critical Mass