Irah’s eyes measured him for a moment, then she shrugged. “Yes.”
Rage hit Cole in an incandescent bolt. A rage fueled in part, he realized, by his own guilt. One word, delivered so casually, as if it meant nothing, destroyed the last hope that he might redeem himself by finding Sara still alive somewhere…and indicted him for sacrificing her to his obsession.
He bared his teeth. Now taking down Sara’s killer was all he could do for her. “And I will take you down for it, Irah, if it’s the last thing I do.”
“Now…as long as you insist on being given knowledge of a capital crime,” Irah added, “you might as well know I killed Dunavan, too…also down in the garage.” She fired a finger gun at Flaxx.
Cole swore. If only he could be recording this!
Flaxx choked. He stared at Irah in horror…then took a deep breath and asked casually, “What made you decide to do that?”
Despite his apparent calm, the air felt supercharged. Current ran down Cole’s spine. Irah eyed her brother warily.
Before she could answer, he continued, “Did you ever consider…” His voice suddenly hardened. “…first discussing it with me!” His fist slammed down on the desk.
Irah jumped. “There wasn’t time to ask.”
New fury boiled up in Cole. Irah killed two people, but what upset Flaxx was not having the chance to approve it? “You’re as twisted as she is.” He was going to love working them over!
“But Dunavan’s a cop.” Flaxx leaned on the desk toward her. “A fucking cop.”
She gave him wide eyes again. “I didn’t have a choice. Dunavan had Benay checking all of Earl’s accounts that Gao assigned her and she saw the correlation between Earl taking over accounts and stores being burglarized. My spy cameras caught- ”
“What spy cameras?” Flaxx asked.
Something Cole wanted to know, too.
Irah smiled. “Little self-contained units I planted. They broadcast to a TV type receiver. Installation just takes a ladder and a few minutes. They’ve been very useful for checking out target stores in setting up the jobs.” She settled back in her chair. “I thought we’d be smart to watch whoever worked on Earl’s accounts. So when Benay stayed late, I did, too…which is how I caught her leaving a phone message saying she’d found incriminating evidence in the files. After a little scuffle to take away the phone…” She touched the bruise on her cheek. “…I found out she called Dunavan. When I hit Redial, the number offered to connect me to his voice mail.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Flaxx straightened, shaking his head in disgust. “So she found something. That’s no reason to kill anyone. You should have called me. Screwing around with Dunavan makes all that inadmissable in court. Plus we could have bought her off and made things very hot for Dunavan. Maybe lost him his badge.”
Exactly what Cole would expect of Flaxx.
Irah sighed. “Unfortunately, by the time I learned what she knew, and about her relationship with Dunavan, there was no way to buy her off, at any price.”
Cole heard no regret in her voice. He remembered the fear in Sara’s.
Flaxx frowned. “Why not?”
Irah shrugged. “Persuading her to talk got…intense. I had to hold the bitch’s head in a toiled until she almost drowned.”
Which she enjoyed doing, it sounded like to Cole. Guilt choked him, imagining how Sara must have felt, the panic, tearing at Irah’s wrists as she fought to come up for air…panic that was just a prelude to her later terror, when cloth or tape replaced water to suffocate her. Without him, Sara would never have been in that position.
“The toilet!” Flaxx recoiled. “That’s disgusting!”
Irah smiled. “Not at all. You know how a sharp deal makes you feel? That’s nothing compared to the rush of- ” She shook head. “Never mind. The point is she took the dunking personally. I made the mistake of turning my back on her to call you — because I did suggest compensation, after explaining why her information would never make it to court — and the bitch grabbed me from behind in a choke hold. ‘Let’s call the police instead,’ she said. ‘I’ll bet I can take assault and battery to court. And don’t even dream you can “compensate” me enough to drop the charges. Nothing will give me more pleasure than telling Inspector Dunavan and your insurance companies all about why you attacked me. Don’t forget that firefighter’s death is considered murder.’”
Cole groaned. He admired Sara’s guts…but it would have been smarter to play along with Irah until she got clear. Irah obviously took the situation personally, too. Killing Sara the way she did now sounded like retaliation.
“Breaking the choke hold was no problem, of course, but it did mean roughing her up some more, which only made her attitude shittier. When I took her to your office- ”
“My office!” Flaxx stiffened in indignation. “Wasn’t it locked?”
Irah rolled her eyes.
He grimaced. “Of course…how stupid of me. You picked the lock.”
Not likely, Cole reflected. That took two hands and she had to hang on to Sara. She must have a key. More knowledge she withheld from big brother. Well, well.
“Why take her to my office?”
“Because you have a bar. I needed your Jack Daniels — and don’t have a cow; I’ve already replaced the bottle and you never noticed. I needed to calm her down and slow any attempt at escape while I decided what to do with her. Though of course I told her I was getting her drunk so if she tried calling the police after I took her home, they weren’t going to believe someone they could practically breathalyze over the phone.”
No wonder Sara sounded drunk. In spite of that, when Irah stepped out of the room for some reason, Sara used the chance to call him again. A gutsy, gutsy lady. A wave of regret joined the anger and guilt in Cole. Too bad he never had the chance to really know her.
“I said that in the morning she’d see it was more profitable to deal with you than the police and court and our lawyers.”
Flaxx nodded. “That’s reasonable, and she might- ”
“No, Donald.” Irah spoke in the measured tone of someone explaining to a child. “She’d have done exactly what I would, called the police as soon as she got home, drunk or not. And…” Irah’s eyes flashed. “…there’s no way in hell that am I going to jail!”
Flaxx eyed her for several seconds, then shook his head. “But why kill Dunavan, too?”
“Let’s say it’s because he’s been a royal pain in the ass! Even though he couldn’t use anything Benay found, knowing for sure that evidence was there, he’d find a way to get it. I told you, there’s no way I’m going to jail.”
Flaxx groaned. “A cop. Fuck!”
She shrugged. “It couldn’t have gone slicker. He thought he was coming to Benay’s rescue. I made sure no one seeing me could identify me later. Between the liquor hitting Benay and her believing I planned to drive her home…as soon as I went back to the office for a minute… it was safe to leave her sitting in my car. I put on some thrift store clothes I keep in my trunk for quick disguises and went and did Dunavan.” She fired the finger gun at Flaxx again. “Then I drove my car over by Dunavan’s, put Benay in his trunk, and did her. After that, I drove their bodies away…to where…” she finished, with a ta-da spread of her hands, “…they will never be found.”
Did him, did Sara. As though, Cole reflected bitterly, she were talking about making phone calls. The gleam in her eyes and savoring tone in her voice belied the casual words. She enjoyed killing them. Her photographs screamed adrenaline junkie. And the rush from murder had to surpass all others. Risk enhanced it…leaving Sara in her car, shooting him without a silencer, taking the chance of someone hearing Sara’s agonal struggles in his trunk, not to mention driving across town with a dead body taped upright in the passenger seat.