The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (Charley Davidson #12)(64)

But our approach was far from perfect. I seemed to possess some kind of disability when it came to butt-dialing people. Like the one time I butt-dialed Cookie, and she recorded an entire afternoon of me trying to learn to Jazzercise. Needless to say, she was not happy. She kept trying to figure out if I was really being attacked or if I was grunting and groaning from exertion.

“So, how about it? Why did you kill your brother?”

She scoffed, then raised her chin, annoyed. “Check her.”

Taft did as ordered. He leaned forward and frisked me, running his hands up my hips and along my waist before reaching between my breasts to check for a wire there. He ran his fingers along the edges of my dress, brushing his fingers along the tops of Danger and Will, who were quite scandalized.

With his face hidden from Elena, he let a half-second grin slip, letting me know he was having fun. Since Elena could still see my face, I couldn’t glare at him too blatantly, but I did stab him with my best scowl of annoyance.

Satisfied, he leaned back and nodded.

“As I was saying,” she continued, “I … I didn’t have a choice.” She looked at Taft as though she weren’t explaining to me but to him. “He’d been arrested. He’d made a deal. He was going to give the feds everything.”

Ah. Of course. The secret meetings Judianna had told me about. The ones he’d partaken in right before she’d tried to leave him.

“I had no choice,” she said, practically pleading with Taft.

He finally broke the stoicism and looked at her. Took hold of her chin and tilted her face up to his. “I would have done it for you, bunny. You should have come to me. But your mother can’t know.”

She nodded and snuggled against him. Her hero. He was better than I ever gave him credit for. Brad Pitt had nothing on this guy. Besides the fact that he was Brad Pitt.

“So, you poisoned him?”

She didn’t answer, but how did she know Hector had made a deal?

I began to worry there was a mole at the FBI. A mole who had tipped her off. “How do you know all of this?”

“Hector told me.”

Unexpected, but it made sense. If there’d been a mole, she would’ve known about Taft.

“He came to me, crying, saying Mom would never speak to him again. Please. She would never speak to him again?” She scoffed, embittered. “He was her baby boy.” Her pretty face twisted into a sneer at the thought of him. “Her favorite from the day he was born.”

“I take it you were older?”

“No matter.” She looked up into the face of her one true undercover love. Poor thing. “I’m taking over soon, anyway.”

“The family business? Mazel tov. Does your mother know?”

Taft smiled down at her, so good he almost convinced me. If I couldn’t feel every emotion pouring out of him, I would’ve bought it, too. “She won’t know what hit her.”

Elena’s smile turned to one of almost worship. I was certain she reserved that particular smile for when they were alone. Any woman that hungry for power would never flaunt her weaknesses so openly.

She reached over and knocked on her window.

The driver obeyed instantly. He pulled to the side and rolled to stop. “This is where you get out.”

The driver had taken a side road with little to no traffic. There wasn’t another car in sight. Or house. Or animal, for that matter. The Franklin Mountains rose to the north, and the Rio Grande sat to the west.

“Can you call me a cab?” I asked.

That calculated smile spread again. “You won’t be needing one.”

Uh-oh. Now it was my turn. For Taft’s sake, I had to make it good.

I pretended to just now catch on, as though reality were finally sinking in. I straightened and looked around, fear rounding my lids.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “They’ll know. Plenty of people saw me at the funeral. They saw me get in with you.”

“What people? You mean my family and friends?”

Pretty much. I began to pant, my gaze darting around, looking for an escape. “My car. My car is at the cemetery. They’ll find it.”

“Your car is being taken care of as we speak.”

No. Not Misery. She was innocent! “Taft, tell her. Tell her I can keep a secret.”

She raised her brows at him in question.

He scowled at me. “She’ll burn you the first chance she gets.”

Her grin turned triumphant. “Would you mind taking care of this, sweetheart?”

Relief flooded every cell in his body. He may have been worried she’d have the vault door up front do me. “Not at all.” He took hold of my arm and started to drag me out the door.

I put up as much of a fight as I could without actually damaging him. I did manage a punch to the side of Elena’s face. She totally deserved it.

Taft took a handful of my hair and slammed my head into the doorjamb, somehow managing to hit only his hand but making a loud enough thud to convince our audience that he’d knocked me out.

I collapsed, growing listless as he continued to drag me out of the car and into the desert surrounding us. I came to just enough to help him half walk, half drag me toward an incline of rocks where no one passing by would see my body.

“No one’s going to see me out here,” I said, pretending to plead with him.