Killjoy by Julie Garwood

Author:Julie Garwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Murder for hire, Women detectives, Kidnapping, Colorado, Aunts, Mystery & Detective, Government investigators, Fiction, Suspense fiction, Women Sleuths, Large type books, Mystery fiction, Suspense
ISBN: 9780345453808
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2002-09-17T06:03:22+00:00

Chapter 15

CHRYSTAL TOLD KENNY THEY WOULD RECEIVE A BIG REWARD if he drove to town and made a call for Avery. Kenny didn’t believe his wife, and he didn’t want to do it. Avery thought it might be because his nose had started bleeding again.

Unlike Avery, John Paul wasn’t interested in trying to coax them into cooperating, because he understood how their twisted pea-sized brains worked. He had had enough of the Bonnie-and-Clod pair. He shoved Kenny into the wall and calmly told him that he would hunt him down and skin him alive if he didn’t do what Avery asked. Simple as that. Kenny believed him, and so did Chrystal. The look in John Paul’s eyes indicated he wasn’t the type of man to make idle threats.

Chrystal jumped back when John Paul walked past. She knocked the phone off the counter and quickly picked it up. Instinctively putting the receiver to her ear to make sure no one else was on the line, she hung up and said to Kenny, “The phone isn’t workin’.”

“Are you sayin’ the line’s dead?” Kenny gasped the question, still trying to recover his breath.

“Didn’t I just say it was broke?”

“She did it,” Kenny decided, glaring at Avery. “She must have broke it after she finished talkin’ to that woman and hung up. You saw her slam it down, didn’t you, Chrystal? You’re gonna have to pay for repairs,” he told Avery.

Avery picked up the phone to see if Chrystal was telling the truth. The line was dead. That was quick, she thought. They must have been ready.

John Paul stood by the door waiting to get Avery’s attention. “Avery . . .”

“Just a minute.” She walked over to the teenagers sprawled out on the floor. Two of them were curled up like cats, sound asleep, but the droopy-eyed boy named Mark was still sitting upright and watching her every move with the stupid grin still plastered on his freckled face.

“Who’s the driver?”

“Huh?”

She nudged his foot. “Who’s driving the car?”

“Me.”

“Give me the car keys.”

The grin didn’t falter. “I don’t have to,” he slurred even as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his key ring. He dangled the keys in front of his face. Then he giggled.

She snatched the keys out of his hand and tossed them on the counter. “Chrystal, you make sure those boys don’t get into that car. You understand?”

“I’m not gonna be a baby-sitter. You expect me to stand here and watch them?”

“Make them sleep outside, but don’t give them the keys.” She turned to leave, but John Paul raised his hand for her to stop.

“More customers,” he said. He glanced out the window and watched two older women, dressed in hiking clothes, get out of a Ford. He pushed Avery’s hand away from the doorknob. “You’re not going with me.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” she insisted.

“Listen to me,” he ordered. “You go back to town with those women and get to a police station. Keep the gun just in case.”

“While you go ahead to Coward’s Crossing?”

“Yes.

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