The security guard called up, waited, listened, and nodded. “You can go on ahead.”
Millie blinked. “Huh. That’s a surprise.” She placed her hand at his elbow and they went to the elevator bank to ride up to the top floor. “Last time we worked in this building, I was undercover and we both nearly ended our careers.”
“Ah, good times,” Scott said as the door opened.
They walked out into the plush reception area, where Gladys waited, this time dressed in a vanilla colored St. John suit with surprisingly sexy red heels.
“Mr. Terentson, Ms. Frost.” Her frown was such that it melded with her chin. She obviously didn’t approve of their visit. “You may come this way,” she said primly, walking behind the desk and down the long hallway Scott remembered from last time.
Millie coughed into her hand to mask a cute giggle, one he wanted to hear again. Instead, he kept his expression stoic as they walked past all the closed doors and the conference rooms to reach that corner office.
Gladys knocked.
“Enter,” Dearth bellowed.
This time Millie rolled her eyes.
“Knock it off,” Scott whispered, nudging her with his elbow and feeling like a kid sneaking out on prom night.
“You knock it off,” she retorted predictably.
He needed to get a grip. This should not be enjoyable, but she had a way of adding light to the darkness always present around him. They were facing jail time for her, or at the very least, loss of employment, somebody wanted them both dead, and yet, he was having fun. He’d been missing this type of interaction during the last year.
They walked into the ostentatious office. Werner Dearth sat behind his massive wooden desk, definitely in the power position of the room. “You have a lot of nerve coming here,” he sneered.
“We really do,” Scott agreed, putting his hand to the small of Millie’s back and directing her to the chair on the left. If Dearth made a move toward either of them, Scott could intercept him easily from the other chair. They sat.
“What do you want?” Dearth asked.
Scott didn’t see any reason to go slow. “We want to know why you paid Henry Halcomb ten thousand dollars to kill us.”
Millie sat up prim and proper, looking like any tough government agent. “Do you have the balls to tell the truth, Dearth?”
“I have never heard of Henry Halcomb.” Today Dearth wore a severe, oversize black suit with a pink tie and a dark green shirt. Once again, he’d buttoned it up too tight and his jowls hung over. Was the guy just trying to fit into his spring wardrobe? Even his eyes bugged out. Sometimes a person just had to get a bigger shirt.
“Sure you have,” Scott said. “We’re tracing the money to you now.”
Dearth fumbled for a shiny gold pen and twisted it in his fingers as he eyed Millie. “I think you just wanted to see me. Are you obsessed with me?”
She snorted.
“Halcomb told everybody in his little world of petty crime and aggravated assault that you paid him ten grand, and the minute the deed was done, he planned to blackmail you for more. He called you a fat cat,” Scott lied.
Dearth swallowed. “If you had any proof of this, the police would be here right now.”
An unfortunately true statement.
“Why do you want me dead?” Millie asked, sounding truly curious.
“I don’t want you dead. I want you broken,” Dearth retorted. “You don’t seem to understand that when you decided to become my enemy, I would treat you as such.”
She crossed her legs. “That’s psychotic.”
An apt diagnosis. Scott drew Dearth’s attention back to him, not liking the guy’s gaze on Millie. “We’re also tracing your movements. Why’d you harm your wife?”
“You know I didn’t harm my wife. I have an alibi. The police checked it out.”
Scott narrowed his gaze. That alibi had been too quick to roll off the man’s tongue. “Oh, I have no doubt you paid somebody to kill us. You have more withdrawals from other accounts you think we don’t know about.” It was a shot in the dark, but Scott felt comfortable taking it.
