Mercy

middle of the

night and dragged him out of his bed. He was taken to jail, and I was very afraid for him. Catherine called her attorney, and he gave her the name of someone else who could help my boy.'

'A criminal attorney?'

'I think so,' she said. 'My son is out on probation now, but every night when he doesn't come home, I think he's been taken away again. He runs with bad people, and I pray to God every night that He will look out for him. He's a good boy,' she whispered.

'But he's a follower and does whatever those bad people tell him to do.'

'What kind of trouble did he get into?'

'Drugs,' she said, and then she crossed herself again. 'He was taking money from people and giving them drugs. He's stopped that,' she hastened to add. 'He promised me and he stopped.'

Theo nodded. 'I understand,' he said. 'I don't want to make things more difficult for you, but there's something I need, Rosa… and you have it, don't you?'

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

God love Catherine Russell and her obsession with having two of everything. Theo had banked on her compulsion when he'd

gone to see Rosa. Catherine hadn't let him down. She had indeed made another copy of the files and given them to Rosa for safekeeping.

Theo hadn't expected to hear that Rosa believed John had killed his wife, but then he realized he shouldn't have been surprised

at all. The man was capable of anything.

The copies of all the papers Catherine had sent to Michelle were on the seat beside him. Theo knew he'd need a couple of hours to break the codes. He hadn't done more than glance through them when he was with Rosa, but he understood enough to know he could nail the son of a bitch for tax evasion, extortion, fraud, insider trading, and more. Detective Harris had told Michelle that the sheet she'd pulled from the envelope looked like a financial statement, and she had been right about that. The other papers were filled with the breakdown of each transaction. All of them, Theo was sure, were illegal, and as he drove toward Bowen, he added up all the charges he could file. There was enough to put Russell behind bars for the rest of his life. Theo was going to add the charge of attempted murder-he was certain John was one of the shooters the night before-but he couldn't prove it… yet. He also wanted justice for Catherine, and he needed time to figure out how to get the evidence he would need to prove the woman had been murdered.

Had John killed her, or had he hired it out? Was that why Detective Harris was in Bowen? She'd told Theo she had an inside tip that a hit man was in town. Had Monk killed Catherine, and was he now helping John get incriminating evidence back?

Where the hell was Cameron Lynch? Underwood had promised to call him the second they picked up Lynch. He was the key, Theo had decided. If he could turn him, he could get all of them.

He thought about the transactions listed in the papers again. There was a letter in brackets beside each entry, indicating the person responsible for that contribution. There was a C, most likely Cameron Lynch. J was for John Russell, but who were P and D? The Sowing Club. What a cute name for their crooked little group. Four men who had illegally accumulated millions of dollars.

'Two down and two to go,' he said. Then he laughed. Catherine had also made a copy of the letter she'd written to John, and Theo pictured how her husband must have reacted when he read the letter and found out what she had done.

Oh, Catherine. You were such a devious woman.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The Swan was packed. The crowd, mostly fishermen, was so dense and loud, Michelle could feel the floor trembling under her feet. She and Noah worked behind the bar, filling drink orders. Noah made the job easy. No matter what alcoholic beverage anyone ordered, he served a draft of beer. The only other choice he allowed was a soft drink.

John Paul managed crowd control and bussed tables from the supper traffic, while Daddy sat at the end of the bar by the kitchen door with his Big Chief tablet and a ballpoint pen. He'd cleaned out an old metal tackle box and was using it as his safe for the tournament money so it wouldn't get mixed up with the cash taken in at the bar. All the latecomers who wanted to sign up for the tournament formed a line that reached to the parking lot. Each man paid his fee in cash-Daddy wouldn't take checks or credit cards- signed his name in the tablet, and was then given a ticket with a registration number on it. The fishermen would hand in the ticket at five o'clock tomorrow morning and receive a tag. Anyone who tried to sneak out earlier to get a head start would automatically be disqualified by not receiving a tag.

There were quite a few outsiders from neighboring parishes. Preston and Monk easily blended in. Like at least half the crowd, they wore ball caps and jeans and guzzled beer while they stood by the jukebox, pretending to be waiting for an empty table.

They acted as though they were having a good old time. Preston struck up a conversation with three men nursing beers at a nearby table. He told them a fishing story about the big one that got away. Monk joined in by showing off a couple of lures he'd purchased at the tackle shop down the road. He wore an oversized fisherman's vest to conceal his gun. Unlike Preston, he wasn't willing to go into the bar unarmed with an FBI agent less than twenty feet away.

Preston was better at chitchat than Monk. They both laughed and drank, even flirted with a couple of available women who hit on them, but never did they let Michelle out of their line of sight while they waited for Theo Buchanan to walk through the door.

John, Dallas, and Preston had made the decision that it would be safer and easier if they hit both Michelle and Theo at the same time. The plan was to lure them outside, then take them at gunpoint into the swamp and kill them. Cameron was out of the picture. Monk had already been instructed to follow him back to New Orleans after he finished his job in Bowen. Although Monk usually decided the method, in this case Dallas explained that they would need a quick death certificate to withdraw their money from die Sowing account. Since everyone at his firm knew how distraught and depressed Cameron was over his pending divorce, Dallas thought Monk should use Cameron's gun to kill him and leave a suicide note behind.

Monk was no longer willing to work on credit. After all, the stakes were higher now. When John protested that there was no way they could get the money in cash so quickly, Monk decided to negotiate. He knew all about their dirty dealings and the money they had waiting for them, so instead of his fee, he offered to help them out this time for Cameron's cut of the funds. As far as John and Preston and Dallas were concerned, time was critical. They had to agree to his terms.

So where was Theo Buchanan? Had it not been three deep at the bar, Preston would have tried to strike up a conversation with Michelle or her father. He'd ask her who her fishing partner was-he'd seen Buchanan's name next to hers on the sign-up sheet- and then casually inquire where Buchanan was.

It was too loud and crowded to talk to her now. Preston would have to wait until the traffic thinned out a little. He figured that most of the fishermen would head home by ten because they had to be back at The Swan with their boats and fishing gear at five A.M. The tournament would officially begin at five-fifteen.

John and Dallas were in a rental car at a crossroad a half a mile away. They were waiting for Preston to call them. The longer they waited, the more anxious and trigger-happy they became. What the hell were Monk and Preston doing?

John opened a bottle of water and took a drink. 'No matter what, we do this tonight. I don't care who gets in the way. If we have to kill everyone in that bar, then, by God, that's what we'll do. We've got the firepower, and I want this finished. Why hasn't Preston called?'