Free Sting by Sandra Brown Page A

down to bring them eye to eye. “Ooops.” He said it softly but with enough emphasis for her to feel his puff of breath against her face. “Earlier you asked who’d hired Mickey and me to kill you. Why’d you play dumb when you knew it was Billy Panella?”
    When she didn’t answer, he pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger and tipped her head back so she had to look at him directly. “Do you know where he is, Jordie?”
    “How would I know?”
    “Fucking good question.”
    “No one knows. He vanished. No one’s seen or heard from him—”
    “Mickey did.”
    That momentarily stymied her. Then she said, “Well, I certainly haven’t. I’d be the last person he would contact.”
    “You’re completely in the dark about where he is?”
    “Completely.”
    “Then why was he willing to pay two hundred grand to put you on ice?”
    “You can ask him that when you renegotiate your deal. But if he thinks I know anything about anything , he’s wasting his money to have me killed.”
    “What about your brother Josh? Does he know Panella’s whereabouts?”
    Her blue eyes were turbulent with anger, frustration, possibly fear, a catalog of strong emotions, but she didn’t verbalize any of them, perhaps fearing that she would make another slip.
    He goaded her with a cold grin. “Cat got your tongue?”
    “Not at all. I can articulate Go to hell .”
    They stared at each other for several moments, then he said, “Interesting.” She didn’t ask him what was interesting, but he continued as though she had. “Yesterday morning as Mickey and I were leaving the city, he pointed out a billboard on the freeway.”
    Her face remained impassive.
    “The thing couldn’t be missed. ‘Extravaganza’ was spelled out in glittering capital letters, a sparkly firework exploding behind the letter E . And across the bottom of the sign was your name.”
    He gave her time to comment. She didn’t.
    “Now, your brother being an outlaw and all—”
    “Josh hasn’t confessed to or been convicted of a crime.”
    “—you’d think that you, his big sister, would want to keep a low profile. Maybe move someplace where you weren’t so well known, even change your name to avoid any connection to him.” He lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “But you didn’t do that, Jordie. You put your name up on a billboard for all the world to see.”
    “Does this have a point?”
    “Either—and here’s where it gets interesting—”
    “About time.”
    “—either,” he stressed, “that billboard is a declaration that you’re your own woman, separate and apart from Josh and his misdeeds…”
    “Or?”
    “…or, it’s your way of giving everybody the finger. Let ’em think what they want to about your baby brother. You’re not ashamed of him. You’ll remain loyal, steadfast, and true, no matter what.” He waited a beat. “Are you distancing yourself from Josh, or announcing that he’ll always have your love and support, that you’ll be at the ready to lend assistance if ever he needs you? Which is it, Jordie?”
    “What difference does it make to you?”
    “It doesn’t,” he said. “But obviously it does to Billy Panella.”

Chapter 8
    z
    J oe Wiley walked into his office, dropped a Subway sack on top of a pile of paperwork on his desk, and, without unnecessary preamble said, “I thought he was in Mexico.”
    “He was,” Hick said.
    “On the payroll of a drug kingpin.”
    “He was.”
    This was the first chance they’d had to talk freely about Shaw Kinnard.
    As soon as Joe had notified his office of Kinnard’s apparent involvement in the execution-style slaying of Mickey Bolden, he had wrapped up as swiftly and as neatly as possible in Tobias, relinquishing that aspect of the case to Deputy Sheriff Morrow so he and Hick could concentrate their efforts on the search for Shaw Kinnard and Jordie Bennett.
    Sensing their urgency to get going, Morrow had brought them up to speed on what had transpired