He stopped, his eyes widening a split second before he caught himself.
“Arsenic in the sparkling water? Really, Nathan? That’s the best you could do?”
His jaw dropped a solid two inches as he gazed at me.
“Yep. I know it all. Along with all those receipts and reports and things you stuffed down the back of your pants—not that I would touch them now—I figure you’ll get a fairly long sentence if Luther doesn’t get to you first.”
He stood without moving, his mind racing a mile a minute.
“Now you’ve done harm to two of Luther’s sisters. I doubt he’ll see the bright side of any of this.”
“I … I can try to scrape something up,” he said at last.
“You’d best have a really sharp scraper, ’cause I ain’t cheap, Keith.”
He glanced around like a cornered animal before refocusing on me. “Will you meet me tonight? We can discuss this, make arrangements.”
That time I did snort. “So you can kill me and bury my lifeless body in a shallow grave?”
He closed his eyes and shook his head. “I would never do that to you.”
Oh, for the love of chocolate. I needed to throw a ticking bomb into the mix.
“Actually, I’m having dinner with Luther Dean tonight. Seems he was quite taken with me, or so his sister says.”
With a frustrated sigh, he scrubbed his fingers over his face. I could imagine the walls closing in on him as his options dwindled down to nonexistent.
“I can get you a hundred grand right now,” he said.
“Cash? Small, nonsequential bills?”
He nodded. “I can get you more later.”
“And I’m just supposed to trust you’re good for the rest? A man who kills wives for a living?”
He lowered his head. “If you had known my first wife. If you’d seen what kind of woman she was. Hateful and materialistic.”
“Like you?”
Fury reared inside him, but he stayed calm on the outside. “You have no idea what she was like.”
“You mean, besides alive?”
He turned from me for something like the tenth time, the melodramatic move losing its efficacy, but he had a decent-enough ass. “She was going to take everything from me. Everything I’d worked for. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Better. We were definitely getting there. “So, you killed her?” When he didn’t answer, I added, “Wouldn’t a good lawyer have sufficed?”
With a contemptuous sneer, he said, “So she could lie in court? Tell the judge I’d beat her or something?”
“Did you?”
He snarled, so I moved on.
“Fine,” I said, drawing in a deep breath, “let’s pretend for a moment I believe you, and you had no choice. What about Monica? What did she ever do to you?”
He visibly struggled to brace himself for what he was about to tell me. Either that or he had to go number two. “She was trying to steal Teresa away from me, telling her I wasn’t good enough, that I didn’t fit in.”
I gasped. “Then by all means, let’s poison her until her kidneys fail.”
That coaxed a smile out of him. “That’s going to be a bit tough to prove, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t argue with that. It would be hard to prove. With head bowed in defeat, I said, “You’re probably right.” Then I perked up. “Or I could just give the cops the bottles of sparkling water I found in your garage and watch you go up the river for thirty to life.”
He didn’t even try to defend himself. “Ever heard of the term chain of custody?”
“Ever heard of the term Luther Dean don’t give a shit?”
Yost studied me a long moment, probably trying to figure out how best to kill me without raising undue suspicion. It was time to raise the stakes.
“The way I see it, this all boils down to three options.”
“I told you, I can pay. You just have to give me time.”
“One, I sell all this to Luther Dean.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I’m listening,” I said with an annoyed nod. “You’re option two.”
He frowned. “Then what’s three?”
“I turn all this over to Agent Carson and see what she thinks.”
He decided to call. “Fine. Turn it over to her. You can’t prove anything.”
Damn. Any lawyer worth his weight could explain away everything he’d said so far. I needed something solid. Something irrefutable. Maybe I’d gone about this wrong. Maybe I should have used my feminine wiles on him.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, stepping around him to leave, “let me find out what Luther’s highest bid is, then I’ll get back with you.”
He grabbed my arm again as I tried to walk past. “What will it take?”
Exasperated, I said, “I told you, a million clams.” A spark of happiness jumped inside me. I’d always wanted to use the term clams in a real conversation. “But let me see what Luther is willing to pay before I commit to that.”
He pulled me closer, fury sizzling around him. “Do you really think you’re just going to walk out of here?”
“That was the general plan, yes.” I wondered if it was too late to invoke my feminine wiles.
“Then you’re stupider than you look,” he said, wrapping one hand around my throat.
Yeah, it was probably too late.
He picked me up and slammed me against the shelves, guiding my head to a sharp corner, obviously hoping it would crack my head open and I’d bleed to death. Honestly, the man was an imbecile. Several people saw us come in together. What was he going to tell them? That I’d slipped and fell against the corner of a shelf that was actually taller than I was?
The guy would never learn. But before I could practice any of the fancy martial arts I’d learned in that two-week annex course, my head exploded with the fire of a thousand suns. An excruciating agony shot to the very core of my being. My eyes watered and I bit down to ride out the waves of pain. He let me drop to the ground but kept his hand around my throat and squeezed. Because bruises in the shape of his fingers wouldn’t be incriminating at all.
Uncle Bob chose that moment to storm the place, and Yost stumbled back in surprise. I rolled over onto my side to catch my breath. Both hands locked on to my head as I curled into a cheese ball.