Found Money - James Grippando [124]
“I don’t think I can drink it straight.”
“Don’t think about it. Just chug it.” He handed her the bottle. She hesitated. He tipped the neck toward her, helping it along. “Go on. Trust me, Marilyn. Just trust me.”
She brought the bottle to her lips. Her head went back. The whiskey touched her lips. It burned her throat. She wanted to stop, but Joe held her head back and kept the bottle in place. She swallowed once, twice. She was losing count. The burning stopped, but the whiskey kept flowing. She was feeling dizzy, then totally numb. She pushed the bottle away. She blinked to focus, but Joe was a blur. He was smiling and moving closer. Her mouth moved, but she couldn’t even form a sentence in her head, let alone with her lips. Her body tingled, then she lost all sensation as her head rolled back and the lights went out…
Marilyn opened her eyes. She was lying on the bed. The headache had lessened somewhat. Slowly, she sat up and glanced across the room. She could see again. Her gaze landed upon the fax machine across the room. The receiving bin was empty, which came as a relief. No more threats.
It was a threat, she’d decided. On the heels of her appointment, there was no other way to interpret it. The timing could not be coincidence. The header on the fax said it was from the 719 area code, which included Piedmont Springs. At the lunch break she’d confirmed it was from a drugstore in Prowers County, one of those places that will let anyone send a fax for a couple of bucks. She figured it had to be from someone in the Duffy family, which could not be good. True, the message was vague. It didn’t say, “Do this, or else.” But it didn’t have to be explicit to be threatening. And she knew what she was supposed to do if ever she felt threatened.
She drew a deep breath, then picked up the phone and dialed Joe Kozelka.
57
Sheila was beginning to worry. Rusch wasn’t happy with her work. One little mistake—a stupid cocktail glass left behind in a Panamanian hotel. It was such a tenuous link to Kozelka anyway. Even if the FBI got a match on her fingerprints, they would still have to make her buckle under pressure and finger Kozelka. She was no snitch, but her roots as a hooker must have made Rusch nervous. Clearly he was assuming she would deal with the FBI the way she used to deal with him.
Everything was negotiable.
Her survival instincts were kicking in. When Rusch had said they would “reevaluate,” she knew what that meant. If the frame-up didn’t keep Ryan Duffy from taking that glassful of fingerprints to the FBI, Sheila was dead. One way or another, Rusch would make sure she was never subjected to FBI interrogation.
Sheila herself had been reevaluating things all afternoon, ever since she and Rusch had stopped to rest in a cheap roadside hotel. It was time to get out of Dodge. But not without a piece of the action.
Late Sunday afternoon, she picked up the phone in her hotel room and dialed Ryan Duffy. She tried his clinic, but no one answered. She tried his mother’s house and hit pay dirt.
“Remember this voice?” She used the same seductive voice she’d used in Panama.
Ryan felt a chill. He was alone in his mother’s kitchen, standing by the counter. “Where have you been?”
“Closer than you think. I’ve got something for you.”
“What?”
“Your father’s gun.”
His pulse quickened. “I want it.”
“How bad? Or should I say, how much?”
“Are you saying it’s for sale?”
“That’s a keen grasp of the obvious you’ve got there, Doc.”
“How much?”
“A bargain. According to my sources, you’ve got another two million dollars cash somewhere. Just a hundred grand is all I want.”
“How do I know you really have it?”
“Because I took it.”
“From Kozelka’s thug? Right. The guy’s a Goliath.”
Sheila glanced over her shoulder. Rusch lay naked on the bed behind her, flat on his back. He was still erect—a bigger stud unconscious than he was wide awake.
“He’s not so tough,” she said with a smirk.
Ryan’s interest piqued. He sensed a crack in the alliance. But