Shiver

often than she saw Marla but who at some point would surely realize that his son was nowhere to be found, and the people at A+ Collateral Recovery, and . . . “People probably are already worried about us.” She thought about Kendra again. “If they know about Mrs. Menifee, they’ll be going out of their minds.”
    Marco had both crutches firmly under his armpits now, and was standing on his good leg. “You gave your phone to Sanders, didn’t you?”
    Sam nodded.
    “Then he’ll have passed it on to the cleanup crew, and the people you call most often, or who call you most often, will have gotten a text from you saying something like you were called away on a family emergency. It was probably sent even before we got on the plane this morning.”
    “Nobody who knows us is going to believe that!” Sam thought about her great-aunt, who was ninety-two and lived in a nursing home in Wentzville. Kendra might actually believe the emergency concerned Marla, who had been kind of sickly lately. If Kendra didn’t hear from Sam and Tyler in a few days, though, she would almost certainly call Marla, or rather the nursing home where Marla was living, to be told that no, it didn’t, then start calling around to their various friends, to check out other possibilities. If Kendra then found no trace of them, what would she do? Call the police? Maybe, but calling the police wasn’t something that people in East St. Louis did. File a missing persons report? Maybe again, but . . . Sam frowned as one really good reason why nobody would believe she’d just been calledaway on a family emergency hit her. “Nobody’s for sure going to believe it when they find out that poor Mrs. Menifee was murdered in my house. ”
    “Maybe they’ll think that’s the real reason you left. That you were involved in something bad that went wrong. Maybe you found the body and were scared and ran away. Or maybe you committed the crime and fled.”
    “Nobody’s going to think I killed Mrs. Menifee.” Sam’s eyes widened as she made some unwelcome mental connections. “Oh, my God, that’s not what the police think, is it?”
    “She was killed in your house, and when the police got there you were nowhere to be found.”
    Sam must have looked horrified, because his grin flashed at her again. That’s when she knew she was being teased.
    “This isn’t funny,” she said crossly.
    “The look on your face is, just a little bit. Uh, didn’t you say you fired some shots in your house? I bet the police will be able to trace those bullets back to your gun.”
    Sam had an electrifying thought. “What about those two men I shot? Will they be able to connect the bullets they recover from my house to them?” Visions of being charged with murder—maybe three murders if they included Mrs. Menifee—made her stomach knot.
    He shook his head. “I doubt the cops will ever know anything about those guys. They’re probably making the acquaintance of the Mississippi River catfish about now.”
    “Oh, my God.” Sam didn’t know what her face looked like, but it must have been expressive, because he laughed.
    “Anyway, since Sanders took your gun, it’s long gone. No ballistics to compare.”
    “That’s a good thing.” If she sounded slightly doubtful, it was because that was how she felt.
    “Yeah.” His eyes still danced. Then, in response to something he saw in her face—probably stark fear—his expression turned serious. “The cleanup crew—the agents on the ground—they’re pros. They’ll see to it that there’s some sort of cover story about what happened to Mrs. Menifee that most likely won’t involve you as the murderer, and that includes where you and Tyler went, and they’ll wrap it up in a big bow that will make it easy for the local cops to buy. They’ll pacify whoever needs pacifying, and they’ll make sure nobody goes all Nancy Grace looking for you. Believe me, you won’t even make the papers.”
    Sam was aghast. “They can do that?”
    “Oh, yeah.”
    She looked at him with disbelief. “Who are you guys?”
    The grin came and went. “Your tax dollars at work, baby doll.”
    Remembering that he was no longer entitled to be paid by those tax dollars, Sam didn’t say anything for a moment. When she did, her voice was softer, troubled.
    “Mrs. Menifee—I saw her. Tied to one of my kitchen chairs. It looked like—” Sam took a deep breath. “It looked like they tortured her. There was blood everywhere.