“When we got out to the next point, I cut the engine. I looked at him, and he knew. He tried begging, crying, and pleading for his worthless life. Pathetic,” he spat. “When he finally realized he would find no mercy from me, he tried fighting. But he was drunker than me. He could barely keep his feet under him on the rocking boat. Even still, he managed to distract me enough that the boat drifted and ran into a bulkhead.” He appeared infuriated, even now, that Tripp had bested him for even a second.
“Of course, it didn’t do any real damage to the boat, but that scrape of paint caused more than one headache for me that I could have done without. For that, I wish I could bring him back and kill him all over again. So inconvenient.” He shook his head in disgust. “I grabbed him by the back of his neck and slammed his head down onto the side of the boat. He was out cold.”
Kelsi swallowed roughly. McGuinness licked his lips as if savoring the words on them.
“I threw him overboard. I made sure he went in face down and left him in the middle of the water. Afterward, I went back to the house and went to bed. When the girls woke me up the next morning looking for him, I joined the search and faked my grief when his body was found. Of course, I was suspected atfirst, and those stupid cops arrested me after that crazy woman came forward and said she’d seen me out there on the boat. But she died, and what little evidence they had against me slowly started disappearing.” He chuckled briefly and cocked his head sideways, looking at her with an unnervingly cold stare. “Then you came along. Suddenly, people started talking. Evidence began accumulating again. I knew something had to be done about you.”
“So, you asked Sheridan to get close to me and scare me off the case?”
The man in question chose that moment to return to the room. He was still an unnatural shade of puce, but he had a bit more color than he had when he fled. His eyes darted nervously toward her when he heard her question. Kelsi didn’t back down and tracked his movements through the room to his chair, before she flicked her eyes to McGuinness’s.
“Yes, I asked him to do what it took to scare you away from the case.” He leered at Sheridan before slowly turning to Kelsi. “You were too clean to blackmail like the others, so we had to resort to different methods. I didn’t ask him to date you, though. That was a stroke of pure genius on his own initiative. I was very impressed with him for that.”
McGuinness shrunk in his chair, his head sinking down to meet his shoulders, neck disappearing somewhere in the middle. “Now, do you have any other questions, or are you done trying to distract me from killing you?” He uncrossed his legs and extended them in front of him as he leaned forward, toward Kelsi, and rested his elbows on his thighs. “Personally, I don’t really want to kill you, but if you can’t be bought, you’ve given me no other choice.”
He smiled coldly at her and reached one hand out to painfully grasp her chin again, forcing her head up to meet his eyes. She let him see the anger and hatred in her own.
McGuinness’s phone chimed from inside his suit jacket. Scowling at the interruption, he reached his free hand into the interior left pocket and pulled his phone out. He looked down at it, and whatever he saw there made his already-thin lips disappear further in his displeasure.
“Well, this will have to wait until later, I’m afraid. I have a date with Dylan. I trust you’ll be waiting here patiently for me when I get back.”
The bastard winked at that and walked out of the room.
CHAPTER 44
Kelsi
30 Minutes to Trial
After McGuinness left,Kelsi and Sheridan sat for a few minutes in tense silence. Her limbs trembled as the adrenaline slowly faded from her system. Her head still throbbed dully, and exhaustion hit her like a sledgehammer.
She couldn’t allow herself to succumb to the lingering effects of the drug, however, with Sheridan still in the room and her bound to the chair, waiting for McGuinness to return and tell her what happened to Dylan.
Kelsi eyed Sheridan, taking in his hunched shoulders and defeated posture as he rested his head in his hands, elbows on the surface of the table. Gone was the confident, charismatic man she thought she’d known. How much of his persona with her had been real, and how much had been fake?
“It’s not too late, you know,” she said softly.
He raised his head, his bloodshot and red-rimmed amber eyes skating over hers. “Isn’t it, though?” He snorted a brief, dark laugh without any amusement. His head fell back on his shoulders, and he stared up at the ceiling.
“Of course it isn’t.” She scoffed at him, wanting him to look at her again. For him to have to look her in the eyes while he told her he could do nothing to save her. “It’s only too late when I’m dead and you can do nothing else to save me. You can still escape charges for my first-degree murder that McGuinness is gearing up for, so long as you do something to prevent it.”
Maybe a rational legal argument would get through to him, if he really thought his life was over. It was disconcerting talking so matter-of-factly about her own murder, though.
“I’m still in for the kidnapping and obstruction of justice.” He sighed deeply. “Once you add in the countless instances of tampering with evidence, destruction of police records, and accepting bribes from him?” He shook his head as he tipped it forward to look at her once more. His eyes were watery, regret shining brightly in them beneath the skylight. “That’s probably a handful of felonies, multiple misdemeanors, and years in prison. Losing my job wouldn’t even rank on the worst of my consequences.”
“So, that’s it? You play the part of my friend, only to help kill me?”
He stared at her, his eyes begging her to understand. A single tear escaped, and her eyes traced its slow path down his cheek before she looked away in disgust.
“Kelsi, please believe me when I say I’m sorry, that I regret ever going to him in the first place. If I could go back, I’d do everything differently.”
“Don’t talk to me about regrets, Sheridan. If you truly regretted helping him, you would cut me free now and help me send his psychotic ass to prison for twenty to thirty. Minimum.”
“I can’t do that.” His voice was beseeching. “If I do now, he’ll ruin me. I’ll go down for helping him with everything. I’ll go to jail, and I have more enemies than him, K. I owe a lot of people.”
The use of her nickname while telling her he was going to let her die sent her rage spiraling out of control. “You disgust me,” she spat, enunciating every syllable at him.
He flinched.
