Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead(Finlay Donovan #2)(79)

A thud echoed through the garage as my favorite All-Clad pan bounced off the back of Steven’s head. His phone slipped from his hand as he fell sideways onto the concrete.

Vero bent over her knees, breathing hard. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.” She nudged him with the toe of her shoe. His shallow breaths were warm on my cheek as I hovered over him, checking for a pulse. “Is he dead?” Vero asked.

“He’s fine.”

“Want me to hit him again?”

I glared at her as I picked up his phone, making sure he hadn’t had time to dial his attorney before I set it on the workbench. The drawers were all open, my new tools scattered over its surface. An assortment of blunt instruments and screwdrivers had been meticulously sorted, and the box cutter was open, the guts emptied of blades. “I can’t believe him. He was looking for proof that I’ve been making all this up.” The prowler Mrs. Haggerty had seen wasn’t one of Feliks’s men; it was Steven. Nick had found my door unlocked right after the gas leak at Steven’s house. Steven must have come snooping around and been scared off by the police. “He thinks I wrote that post on the forum. Meanwhile, EasyClean is still out there. And my only lead for figuring out who’s really trying to kill him just drove off in your car.”

Vero held up the pan. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have an idea.”

I knew that tone. It was the same one she’d used when we sat on this very floor and came up with a plan to dispose of Harris Mickler. She’d been holding that same damn pan, and that same scheming gleam in her eye hadn’t led to anything good. “Put it down.”

“Hear me out,” she said, setting it aside. “EasyClean is a contract killer. She—or he,” Vero conceded, “is only after Steven for the money. And FedUp is only offering to pay one of you—whoever gets to Steven first. All we have to do is convince FedUp that the job is done. Then we claim the money. Once the money is claimed, EasyClean disappears.”

“And what happens when FedUp realizes Steven’s still alive?”

“Too late. By then, we have the cash. What’s FedUp going to do, report it to the cops? She can’t go to the police with this. What the hell would she say? I offered someone a hundred Gs to kill a guy, but I got hustled. Could you please find my money for me? No way!

“All we have to do is take a few proof-of-death photos and find a safe place to stash your ex for a couple of days while we contact FedUp and arrange to collect the money. When she shows up to pay us, we’ll know exactly who she is, and we can use that as leverage to make sure she never tries it again. By the time she figures out she’s been duped, the forum’s gone, EasyClean’s out of the picture, Steven is safe, and I have a brand-new car. That is nonnegotiable, by the way,” she said, leveling a chipped fingernail at me.

Steven’s mouth hung open, his face slack with sleep. I gnawed my lip. It wasn’t a terrible idea. “What if we get caught? Nick knows about the post on the forum. He knows someone is trying to kill Steven for money.”

“That’s the beauty of it. Don’t you see? Steven’s not dead,” she reminded me. “No body, no murder. No murder, no foul. At worst, you’re guilty of manipulating the situation to save your ex-husband’s life.”

She had a point. And it was better than letting EasyClean finish the job. “How are we supposed to keep Steven out of sight? There’s no way he’s going to agree to this.”

Vero grabbed a roll of duct tape off the workbench and tossed it to me.

“Have you lost your mind?” I sputtered. “We can’t hide him here! Not with Nick and Georgia barging in whenever they suspect something’s wrong. We’re lucky they haven’t found Carl! And how would I explain to Delia and Zach why their father is duct-taped in the basement?”

“Who says we have to keep him here?” Vero plucked the motel key from her pocket and dangled it in front of me. “It’s already paid for. Cam isn’t using it. Silly to let it go to waste.”





CHAPTER 36


I sat on the garage floor, hunched over Steven’s phone as Vero hauled Steven onto his back and unzipped his coat. Frowning down at him, she lifted one lifeless arm above his head and bent one of his legs at an odd angle. “What are you doing?”

“Staging a crime scene.” She opened a bottle of raspberry syrup and squirted a puddle of it in the middle of Steven’s sweatshirt. Then she doused the end of a long screwdriver and dotted some syrup around him on the floor, leaving sticky fingerprints on its handle. She dropped the murder weapon beside him. “There!” She licked her thumb with a satisfied grin and got busy snapping pictures of our victim. “Grab the tape. I think he’s coming to.”

I set Steven’s phone on the workbench and tore a long strip of duct tape from the roll. Vero and I worked fast as Steven began to stir, taping his wrists together behind his back and securing a few feet of the stuff around his ankles. The last piece I slapped over his mouth, which felt better than it probably should have. Together, we hauled him into the rear of my minivan and shut the door.

I rested against it, wiping sweat from my brow. The van shuddered with Steven’s furious thumps as he fully awoke. A muffled shout penetrated the door. “He’s going to kill me when this is over.”