Blue Smoke and Murder

63

SEPTEMBER 16

3:35 P.M.

Score read the transcript, reread it, and then read it a third time. Though his face was flushed, his hand was fairly steady as he set the transcript aside and looked at his eager employee.

“Well, that wraps it up,” he said, forcing a smile. “You earned yourself a few days off. See you next Monday.”

“Yes!” Amy said with a force that made her hair bounce.

She rushed out of his office, shutting the door hard behind her in case her boss changed his mind.

Score fisted his hands and glared at the door like a man hoping for…something.

Anything.

Just not what he already had.

There weren’t many options left. St. Kilda had the paintings, which meant that it would take a truck bomb to destroy them. He didn’t fancy his chances of walking away from that kind of op free, much less alive.

At least Frost is out of the picture, Score thought angrily. Hurray for our side.

The Breck bitch is a lot easier to get to. Take her out of the game, and the game’s over.

And there’s just one op with her.

He sat in the chair for a long time, vibrating with anger, thinking about ways and means of “accidental” death.

Fire was his personal favorite, but he wasn’t inclined to use it again. Kidnapping and disposal was an option. Unfortunately, it would take more than one person to do it right. Another person was a potential witness for the prosecution.

Or a potential blackmailer.

Drowning was good, but the targets were a long way from deep water. Car crashes worked only if the local coroner had the brains of a flea. Otherwise an autopsy would prove that the victims were dead before the crash. A robbery gone wrong was an old favorite, but not his first or even his second choice.

He really didn’t want St. Kilda crawling up his ass. Word on the street was that if a St. Kilda op died on the job, Ambassador Steele got even. Always.

No matter how long it took.

But only if there’s a trail of blame to follow.

Score thought about calling the client and saying, Sorry, no can do. Here’s my bill.

It might be the smart thing to do.

And it would be really dumb for business. When word got out that he’d turned a straightforward black-bag job into a gigantic goat roping, he’d lose his high-end clients real quick.

When the reputation that kept him in business was part of the ante, busting out of the game wasn’t an option.

Motionless but for the pulse beating hard in his neck, Score went through everything again, thinking through the probable fallout from each course of action, all the ways of clouding the blame trail, leaving someone else to take the fall with St. Kilda or the law.

Then he went through the options all over again, searching for anything that he might have overlooked the first time through. When his temper was riding him, he had to be extra careful.

He read the transcript a fourth time. After a few more minutes of thinking, he put the sheets through the cross-shredder, along with every other piece of paper from this case. When the confetti machine finally fell silent, he was a little calmer. He keyed his way into the mainframe computer, accessed Amy and Steve’s machines, and erased everything to do with the case.

Then he wiped the master files.

And the hard disks that had held them.

Score had used enough computer files in court to know that they were a double-edged sword. He didn’t want anything coming back on this case to bite his ass.

When he was sure he’d cleaned up all traces of the case in the business computers, he reached for the phone. Blowing smoke was a long chance, but it was the best chance he had of winning the game.

And he would win.

They didn’t call him Score for nothing.