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“I am. I know you don’t know me too well, but I’m gonna ask you to try to help me out, okay? If you can. If it’s too much, we’ll figure something else out.”
“Okay.” She squeezed Duncan’s hands. He squeezed back.
“Why was this woman here? Do you remember?”
Dropping her head, Phoebe took a long, slow breath. “Uh ... She wanted to talk, I think. But ... I don’t think we ...” Her halting attempt at an explanation stopped suddenly, and for a second Duncan feared she’d gone away again.
But then she said, quickly and with anger, “arrogant little bitch!”
Duncan and Dex both reacted. They flinched and glanced at each other, but neither could guess where that outburst had come from.
However, Phoebe was all the way back. “Oh shit! She wanted to try to make me apologize. I think she found out we worked out the repairs, so she came out to make more threats. I told her she had to go. But Vin came down, and he recorded her making the threats. She was angry, but I thought we’d won. I thought she’d go—but then she jumped at Vin and knocked him down. He hit his head. When she tried to get his phone, I grabbed her. She swung at me, and then we were fighting. I don’t remember after that—except oh shit, Dunc! I killed her! I killed her!”
Duncan grabbed her and pulled her close, held her as tightly as he could. She flung her arms around him and clutched at the back of his kutte.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said into her hair. “We’re going to handle this. I promise.”
“We are,” Dex said, still crouched beside them, but leaning back a bit now. “If you can answer one question, we can take it from here.”
Phoebe turned her head and peeked at Dex from the shelter of Duncan’s chest.
Dex smiled kindly and asked, “Do you have any problem of any kind with us taking the body away and staging an accident with her car?”
“I killed her,” Phoebe said.
Dex leaned on his knees and peered directly at her face. “First, sounds like she was attacking you, so anything you did was self-defense. That’s a result of her actions, not yours. There’s no guilt here for you unless you take hers on.” He stood up. “Now, I’m gonna need your man for a while, so we can take care of this. We don’t want you to be part of what happens next. Do you think you’re good to stand and let Margot and Vin take you up to the house?”
She looked up at Duncan. Though she didn’t speak, he understood the question in her eyes.
He wanted to stay with her. He wanted to sweep her up in his arms, carry her up to the house, up to her room, put her to bed and curl himself around her, to keep her safe from all the troubles around her and all those inside her, too.
“I will be back, fast as I can. But we’re gonna fix this for you. Okay? Let me do this.”
Her head dropped, and she curled more tightly against his chest. Duncan snugged her close again and kissed her head.
“Okay,” came a small voice, muffled inside his kutte. “Thank you.”
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~oOo~
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Once Margot and Vin had Phoebe well away from the stable, the Bulls huddled up.
“Here’s what we know,” Dad started. “Her name is Lydia Copperman. Her husband runs Copperman Resource Management.”
Eight sighed heavily. “Goddamn, you youngsters got a knack for hooking up with chicks who got trouble with important civilians. How many accidents we gotta stage to deal with your girls’ bullshit?”
Duncan figured he was referring to Athena’s ex-boyfriend, who had raped Athena, and had therefore been killed by her family: the Bulls. They’d staged a car accident to dispose of that body as well. It was an effective means of dealing with a body when the person who’d worn it couldn’t simply be erased. Like the son of an advisor to the mayor of Tulsa. Or the wife of a CEO.
“Athena’s trouble and this trouble got nothing to do with each other, Eight,” Dex snarled. “And we deal with the trouble we got.”
“Yeah, I know,” Eight grumbled. “I got on the horn with Apollo,” he added. “He ran her deets quick with what Margot and Vin knew, and he’s digging deeper now. Margot ran up to grab the woman’s purse from her car, so we’ve got her license and cards. She has one of those leather planner books. I guess she’s old school. Anyway, we know where she was headed next today, so we got a sense of the route she’d have taken.”
“So here’s the deal,” Dad said, taking over again, “We’re going to put the body in the back of her car. We’ve got Chris bringing Lynette down here.” Lynette was one of the club’s girls. She had long, straight, pale hair, and Duncan guessed what his father said next: “She’s going to drive the Rover back toward the City. We’ll follow her. There’s a tricky patch before we get to I-40, where we can set a scene.”
“We can rig it to make sure it burns when it hits,” Dex continued. “We want fire so nobody questions her facial damage. We’ll hang around long enough to make sure the car’s fully involved, and then we’ll turn home. There’s been enough wet weather this year that we don’t have to worry much about a fire going out of control.”
