When the knock yielded no response, Sanders called out, “Sheriff Ronald Sanders, here to serve a warrant, is entering the premises.” He turned the doorknob, and when it opened, he didn’t spare Grey a glance when he said, “Be ready.”
His favorite handgun, a Glock 17, steady in his hand, Grey followed Sanders. They were in the middle of the living room when a querulous voice called out, “Who’s there?”
“Mr. Johnson? It’s Sheriff Ronald Sanders. Would you please come out?”
They heard a mechanized humming sound before William Johnson appeared before them. Though his face had the appearance of a healthy, if somewhat slight, man, and his shoulders, though not broad, looked strong, the fact that he was in a wheelchair was a surprise. Grey had no intel that William Johnson was physically handicapped. Eli had said nothing about it either. So either his intel was faulty, which he doubted, or Eli hadn’t thought it pertinent, which he knew better, or Johnson was faking it, making the bastard even lower than the slug Grey knew him to be.
“What are you doing here?” Johnson asked. “What do you want?”
“I have a warrant for your arrest,” Sheriff Sanders said. “Please place your hands above your head.”
Though Sanders hadn’t holstered his gun, he had lowered it to his side. Grey couldn’t tell if he’d bought Johnson’s act or not.
Johnson complied immediately and raised his hands above his head. The sheriff stepped forward, took Johnson’s hands, cuffing them to one of the arms of the wheelchair.
“What’s this about?”
“You’re under arrest for the murders of Alice Cavanaugh and attempted murder of Eli Slater.”
“Murders?” Johnson’s eyes were wide, but Grey swore they were gleaming with excitement, not fear. “I don’t know anything about any murders.”
Determined to show the man he wasn’t the least bit fooled by the man’s innocent act, Grey snapped, “Cut the crap, Johnson. We know everything.” He glanced over at Sanders. “Do what you need to do, and then we’ll need that ten minutes I asked for.”
As Sanders read Johnson his rights, Grey spoke into the mic on his wrist unit. “You guys can come in now.”
Fighting back the anger at this indignity, William barely paid attention to the sheriff as he eyed the big man in front of him. He’d recognized Grey Justice immediately. Ego maniac got featured all the time in magazines and on television specials. Just because the man had a charity, the media acted like he was something special. Like he was some kind of big deal.
If he’d wanted to, William knew he could be just as popular and get just as much press. He just didn’t want to.
Grey Justice was a friend of Slater’s. Probably pulled all kinds of strings and paid a boatload of money to dig out his location.
None of that mattered. He was a Johnson. And a Johnson always had a contingency plan. What happened over the next few minutes was what counted.
Even though his heart was pounding and his palms were wet with sweat, he would play this out. No, it wasn’t exactly what he had planned, but it would still work out fine. These people were so damn arrogant, so sure they could outsmart him. He had worked all his life to get respect, and no one had ever truly appreciated his genius. He would soon prove that underestimating a Johnson was a foolhardy thing to do.
“I assume you have some solid evidence, or you wouldn’t have been able to persuade the law to come with you. I’m willing to cooperate.”
“Fine,” Justice said. “Before we leave, though, there are a couple of people who want to meet you.”
The door opened, and the two people he’d never thought to see alive were standing before him. Hatred boiled within him. It didn’t matter that they wouldn’t be alive for long. He shouldn’t have to suffer their presence.
Determined to play the game to win, William smiled brightly. “And who are these two lovely people?”
“Cut the crap, Johnson,” Eli Slater growled. “We have everything we need on you and your screwed-up father, but before we leave here, you’re going to tell us how to get in touch with the woman you hired to kill us.”
“Why, I never. I—” William chuckled, unable to keep up that much pretense. Besides, he could have fun another way. One they would never suspect.
“What’s the woman’s name?” Slater asked. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know her name, and I have no idea where she is.” He was delighted that they would assume he was lying when he wasn’t.
Eli pulled out a cellphone, dropped it on William’s lap. “Call her.”
“And say what?”
“Tell her the contract is canceled.”
“She’s already agreed to that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our agreement is, if I’m captured, the contract is void. I can’t very well pay her from prison.”
Perhaps he had overplayed his hand. Both Slater and the Callahan girl looked at each other, and then the girl moved forward. She’d holstered her gun the moment she’d seen him in his chair, which had tickled him, but as she came closer, she pulled a long knife from a sheath at her waist.
“Call her. Now.”
William bristled at the woman’s bossy, unladylike tone. He had expected rudeness from Slater. Considering who’d sired the man, he was surprised he wasn’t crawling on his belly. The girl surprised him, though. He remembered his father talking about Daniel Callahan being quite genteel—a gentleman thief, his father had called him. Too bad the girl hadn’t learned her daddy’s manners.
When she held up the knife, it glistened in the light, and William swallowed thickly, imagining how easily she could stick him and how much pain it would cause. The very thought of pain caused his bowels to loosen.
“Very well.” Inwardly wincing because he knew the woman wouldn’t be happy to hear from him again so soon, he punched in the numbers.
“Put it on speaker,” Slater said.
William pressed speaker, and there was complete silence other than the ringing of the phone. As they waited for her to answer, William worked to settle himself down. This would take subtle finessing.
As they waited, Kathleen glared silently at Johnson. He looked even more like a pip-squeak than she had imagined. How could someone so innocuous and harmless-looking cause such destruction? He had thinning black hair, a small goatee, and light green eyes. He didn’t look like a man who’d destroyed so many lives. The wheelchair had been the biggest surprise. None of their research had indicated a physical disability, which made her doubly wary.
After about the tenth ring, the phone was finally answered. “Yes?” Though it was a one-word answer, the tone indicated suspicion, disdain, and irritability.
“There’s been a change of plans,” William said.
“In what way?”
“I’ve been captured.”
“I see.”
“As per our agreement, the contract is now voided.”
Total silence.
“Do you understand?” William asked.
“Perfectly,” she said without the slightest hint of emotion. And then she added with surprising amusement, “Have a nice life…sentence.” The phone clicked dead.
“Satisfied?” Johnson asked.
Kathleen saw the arrogance, the contempt in his eyes. He believed he was far from beaten.
“No.” She took the phone from him and handed it to Grey.
Eli had pulled up two chairs, and sending him a quick smile of thanks, she sat down in one. The minute he’d settled into the other, Kathleen leaned forward, making sure the knife in her hand gleamed with sharp brilliance. “Now, we’re going to talk. You’re going to tell us everything we want to know.”
“And why would I do that?” Johnson asked in a pleasant voice, as if they were discussing the weather.
She held up the knife and said softly, “Because I asked you to. That’s why.”
Eli relaxed into his chair, preferring to stay quiet for the moment and give Kathleen the floor. She had lost so much and deserved to be the one to begin the questioning.
“Tell us why you hired a hit on our families,” she said.
“I thought you said you knew everything. Why then must I repeat it?”
“Because killing two generations of families for something that happened half a century ago seems quite lame.”
Johnson sniffed. “You weren’t the injured party.”
“Yeah, well, neither were you, pal,” Eli scoffed.
“My father suffered, so I suffered. It was a sin that carried consequences beyond death.”
Kathleen cut her eyes over to Eli, who gave her a slight nod of agreement. Ego and overconfidence would be Johnson’s downfall.
Eli took the first shot. “Something that petty?”
As first shots, it was enormously effective. Johnson’s face went to an unhealthy, florid color, and his handcuffs rattled as he gripped the armrests of his chair. “Petty? You call the death of my grandmother and the ruination of my father petty?”
Sending a “can you believe this guy?” look over at Eli, Kathleen took her own shot. “Was your father not in on the robbery? Didn’t he cause the whole mess in the first place?”
“He was just a young man. They coerced him in to going along with it.”
“So he was such a weakling, a coward, that he couldn’t say no.” Eli nodded. “Yeah, I can see why he’d carry a grudge. He blamed other people for his own spinelessness. Much the way you have.”
Johnson’s body began to shake. “You know nothing of what he suffered, we suffered. He was disowned by his family, forced out into the world to fend for himself.”
“You know,” Eli continued, “what I can’t for the life of me understand is why those men, who obviously did have some guts, if questionable ethics, would pay your weasel of a father a penny, much less thousands of dollars for decades.”
“They had reputations they didn’t want ruined.”
“But the amounts were so measly,” Eli said. “Why not ask for more. The men, other than Daniel Callahan, had millions. Why only a few thousand?”
“It wasn’t the amount that mattered. My father didn’t need the money. It was the acknowledgment of their guilt, their perfidy. My father asked for so little. Then they refused to pay even that. It was an insult. A slap in the face to a man who had lost so much. They had to be punished. Put down.”
“We know Braden’s death was a setup and Alice was innocent,” Kathleen said. “That the woman who shot Alice was forced into it to protect her daughter. We also know that a woman posing as a nurse killed Alice in the hospital while she was struggling to stay alive.”
“Really?”
A surge of pure hatred went through Kathleen, the smug smile on Johnson’s face almost more than she could bear. It would be so easy. One swipe of her knife to his throat and he’d never hurt anyone again. He and his father had taken so much from her.
She felt a comforting hand on her arm and looked up into Eli’s sympathetic eyes. He knew exactly what she was going through, what she was feeling. Just from that small touch and look, she gained the strength she needed to resist temptation.
Johnson chortled. “You two are in love. How precious is that? And you owe it all to me.”
“Why’d you want us to meet?” Eli asked.
“An indulgence on my part, I must admit. I just had to see what would happen.” He gave an eerie kind of giggle. “It was a little like playing people chess.”
“You enjoying playing people, don’t you, Johnson?” Eli said.
He sniffed disdainfully. “You should thank me for bringing you together.”
A memory flashed in her mind of one of the last conversations she’d had with her sister. The man in a wheelchair who’d asked Alice so many questions. “You saw Alice in Chicago. When she was still under Braden’s thumb.”
A thin smile twitched at Johnson’s mouth. “Another indulgence, I admit. I had seen photos of her on her website. Such a lovely treat. She was hard to resist.”
Nausea roiled her stomach. “You didn’t touch her. She said you didn’t.”
“I don’t pay for whores.”
She lunged toward him, her knife drawn. Eli wrapped his arms around her, holding her in place. “He’s not worth it, Kat. He’s nothing.”
“You’re right.” She gave Johnson one last glare of disgust. “He’s not.”
Eyes glittering with evil excitement, Johnson was clearly enjoying being the center of attention.
“How’d you get my brother to send those emails?”
“What emails?”
“The games are over.” Eli’s voice held a lethal edge. “What did you promise Adam?”
His disappointment obvious, Johnson’s eyes lost a little of their shine. “An opportunity to escape prison.”
“You never intended to help him escape, though. Did you?”
The self-satisfied smile returned. “But of course not. He was going to be killed trying to break out. It was amusing to use him, play him.” Johnson gave that odd, mad little giggle again as he added, “He’s not very bright.”
Judging by the bubbling fury she could feel about to explode within him, Kathleen figured Eli was within a second or two of killing the vermin in front of them. “Let’s go, Eli. I can’t be in the room with this filth any longer.”
They were halfway to the door when Eli turned back around. “When we met in Chicago, you weren’t in a wheelchair. Why are you now? What’s wrong with you?”
Johnson sniffed indignantly. “That question is in poor taste. Though I should expect nothing less from a Slater.”
“Answer the man’s question,” Grey snapped.
“I have a deteriorating condition of the spine. In a couple of years, maybe less, I’ll be completely bedridden.”
“Breaks my heart,” Eli said. “Doesn’t it yours, Kat?”
“Yeah. Real tragedy.”
“Let’s get him out of here.” Sheriff Sanders, who’d been kind enough to allow them this time, stepped forward.
Eli took Kathleen’s hand and pulled her from the room. Neither of them needed to be around Johnson any longer. They had accomplished what they’d intended. Prolonging it would have done nothing but give the bastard more opportunity to gloat.
Justice walked out with them. “When did you figure out it was Adam who sent all the emails?”
“I wasn’t for sure until Johnson confirmed it, but Adam’s smugness kept playing in my mind. There had to be a reason for it.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Idiot actually believed Johnson would help him escape.
“Funny, I told Jonah I didn’t think Adam was involved because he needed somebody to lead him to be able to carry anything off. Naive of me to not realize he was working for the enemy.”