I knew it!
The two men moved off again, but it was okay. I had to call Tuney Sluggs. Okay, maybe not Tuney. I’d call his deputy, Earl Granger, and get him out here. Earl would listen to me.
I pulled my phone from my purse and saw it was dead. Crap. Why hadn’t I remembered to charge it?
I dipped my hand into the pocket of Shane’s jacket. “Is this your phone? I need to call the cops. That’s proof right there that Sykes was involved in Sadie’s death.”
“Um, wait.”
But I didn’t wait. I took the phone from the jacket and pushed the home button, but nothing happened. It was dead, too. Drat! I turned it over to hand it back to Shane, but a sticker on the case caught my attention.
It was Sadie’s sticker—the one with our company logo. My heart jackhammered against my chest, and I glanced up at Shane, my mouth dry.
He pulled a gun from his waistband and leveled it at me. “I knew I should’ve kept that at home. I really wish you hadn’t found it.”
“Shane?” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes.
His face had changed, darkened by the shadows that sliced across us. He looked twisted now, fierce and sinister. “Told you that you couldn’t be too careful around here. It’s always wise to pack some heat. Now, nice and slow, stand up and walk away from the party. If you don’t, I’ll shoot.”
Chapter 22
Shane had killed Sadie. Vomit surged up the back of my throat. My tongue pulled away like Velcro from the roof of my mouth. “What are you doing?”
His shoulders tightened. “Walk slowly away from the party.”
Could I thrust my arm out and get him to touch me? Could I do that quicker than he could pull the trigger?
“And don’t even think about trying to pull your magic on me like you did those two men.”
I gasped. He knew?
Shane rolled his eyes. “What did you think—I couldn’t figure out that you had magic? How else could you have taken down those two truck drivers?”
Before I could answer, Shane waved the gun. “Get.”
Walking might buy me time. Shane wouldn’t shoot me out here, not with so many people around.
If he got me inside his truck, I would be dead meat. Above anything else, I had to make sure that I didn’t get inside that cabin. Once a victim entered their abductor’s care, chances of survival decreased by a significant amount. I couldn’t remember where I learned that—Oprah maybe?
Maybe if I kept him talking, distracted him, then his focus would slip. Of course, my situation was not in the least bit helped by the fact that I faced away from him and he held a gun to my back.
The devil definitely lay in the details.
“Why’d you do it? Why’d you kill Sadie?”
He chuckled. The sound was foul to my ears. Wow. What lousy taste I had in men. If they didn’t want to steal my powers, then they had killed my best friend.
Perhaps I should consider avoiding dating at all costs.
He spoke. “Your friend Sadie had been borrowing money from the mafia.”
“I know, to pay her mother’s medical bills, but those had stopped.”
“And she was pulling money from your business account to pay them back,” he explained, suddenly sounding so superior that I wanted to smack the tone right out of his mouth. “Well, one night she confessed to me what she’d done. She felt so bad about it—lying to you like that. But at the same time she seemed proud of the fact that she’d hidden her theft from you so well.”
I scoffed. “More like my stupidity.”
“A while back I found myself in a bit of a financial struggle with the bar. We were having a hard time paying our bills. Needing money, I went to Sadie.”
