Page 36 of Shane

“Ouch, you’re hurting me. Let me go. You can’t do this,” the reporter/murderer hissed. Without glasses, the whites of her eyes were wide with fear. “I have rights. Who the heck are you guys,‘Dumb and Dumber’?”

Shane got the movie reference, but he wasn’t playing. He dropped to one knee alongside the struggling prisoner while Ev cuffed her wrists behind her back. “Settle down, Ms. Bremmer. We’re only here to help.”

Of course she pitched a fit. “You call this help? And I’m not Ms. Bremmer! Stop calling me that. Now you’re putting handcuffs on me? You idiots just made everything worse. Get off me. Let me go!”

“Not happening, Ms. Tuesday Bremmer or should I call you Diane Sawyer?” Everlee asked with sarcasm. “Seeing as how you think you’re a reporter.”

Shane agreed. “Do you even know any of the people you were talking with? Your neighbors? Don’t you care about anyone but yourself?”

“I’m… I’m…”

“You’re a liar is what you are, ma’am,” he said quietly, his eyes on the crowd in case anyone decided to come to her aid. “Now, we can do this the hard way or you can come quietly, but youarecoming with us. We’re not turning you over to the police. We’re taking you somewhere safe.”

That took the wind out of her sails. “Really? You’re not? You can? How… how can I be sure? Show me some ID.”

Shane leaned back far enough to let her see the bright, shiny, federal contractor, TEAM badge clipped to his belt. “I’m TEAM Agent Hayes. My partner’s Agent Yeager. We’re not the only ones looking for you. You’re on the FBI’s most-wanted list, but we’re not the Bureau if that’s who you’re worried about. We’re private contractors who only want—”

“You’re bounty hunters?” she hissed, struggling and kicking as if she could get away. Which wasn’t likely.

Ev wasn’t much older than Bremmer, but she had police training and experience on her side. She knew precisely where to exert pressure. Her knee in the small of Bremmer’s back instantly ended the fight. “Nope. Not even close,” she said as she rolled Bremmer over and jerked her up onto her knees. “But right now, we’re the best chance you’ve got at staying alive. You didn’t set that explosion, did you?”

That right there was the perfectly worded question. It offered Bremmer a way out, even as it stated her crime and her dilemma. The starch went out of her. She stopped resisting and swallowed hard, her chest heaving like a blacksmith’s bellows. “No, I don’t know how to do stuff like that. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have blown up my own house. What good would that do?”

Which begged the question: Who did? And did she know how to set fire to her flesh-and-blood children while they slept? Did she know how to taser a stupid old man just because he fell in love with her, file fraudulent insurance claims, or make a buck off the deaths of others?

Everlee waved Shane away like she didn’t need help. Which was true. With an unladylike grunt, she lifted to her feet, and, while keeping a hand on the flex cuffs now behind Bremmer’s back, she hoisted their prisoner off her knees.

“I didn’t know my house was going to blow up, and I don’t know for sure who did it.”

Everlee scoffed. “And yet here you are, in disguise pretending to be a reporter while your alleged home burns to the ground. Is it a coincidence that you just happened to have a trench coat and a mic handy? I doubt it.”

Bremmer’s eyes darted up and down the street. Everyone and everything at her home’s end of the block was cast in an orange glow against the dark night’s shadows. She kept licking her lips, a sure sign she was nervous, but not a sign of innocence. “I had to be ready. Some guy’s been following me. He’s built like a weightlifter, and every time I’ve seen him, he’s been in a black suit and black dress shoes. I don’t know what he wants, but he looks like he’s from the mob. I suspected he’d flush me out eventually, so I kept a go-bag in my car, just in case. That’s why the coat and mic, but now you guys blew my cover, and he’ll—”

“Who?” Shane asked.

She bit her lip. “I don’t know. I haven’t gotten close enough to see his face. He’s always wearing dark glasses, and I think he even called me once. It was weird, that voice on the phone. If it was him. Kind of robotic.”

“What’d he say?”

“That I can run but I can’t hide. Isn’t that cliché? Sounded like something straight out of some cheap gangster movie. I laughed but only so he’d think he didn’t scare me. But he did.” Bremmer shivered so hard it sent her hair ruffling over her shoulders in a soft, foamy wave. “Never mind. You don’t believe me, and why should you? I’m nobody. My house is gone. So’s everything I own. I’ve got nothing.”

Which was an outright lie. She had the insurance money from her first kill and possibly from the second. Which made Shane wonder about her parents’ allegedly fatal accident. Had she had something to do with that? Was she covering for someone else? Did she have a partner? That’d explain a lot.

“Are you armed?” Shane asked as he took hold of her left arm while Everlee took her right.

“Not with anything that’ll hurt us,” Everlee snorted. She glanced at Shane when she said that. Where Bremmer seemed fragile, helpless, and acted as if she were in over her head, Ev was decisive and capable, her body fit and toned. She’d taken Bremmer down with a damned good running tackle, evidence she’d kept in shape despite her sprained ankles. The message in her big, brown eyes was clear: Don’t trust anything Bremmer says.

He nodded a curt but unnecessary message received. A person didn’t need guns or knives to kill. Bremmer’s weapons of choice, if she truly was a black widow, were seduction, sex, deceit, and disguise. Ev wanted him to remember that. Like he’d forget?

With her P365 Nitron Micro still in her right hand, Everlee set a course away from the burning house. Shane had no idea why she’d opted for the longer, scenic route. Their ruined rental car was behind them and their gear bags were getting farther away with each step. The police had his pistols and the EMTs had his holster. Only weapon he had left was the knife in his boot sheath and three useless magazines in his pockets.

“Our car’s back that way,” he reminded her.

“No worries. I’ve got us covered, but if Bremmer’s telling the truth—”

“Tuesday Smart,” Ms. Bremmer interrupted, still looking over her shoulder with every other step away from her burning home. “Please. My maiden name’s Smart. I don’t know who Tuesday Bremmer is, but I’m not her. I’m Tuesday Smart. That’s the name on my birth certificate, check if you want. You’ll see. I was named after my mom’s sister, and my parents called me Tuesday. Just Tuesday. Please. At least call me by my real name.”

“Why not Ms. Lamb?” Everlee asked testily. “Or isn’t that your name, either?”