Deadly Proposal(71)
IT TOOK Anna longer to get the information than Grady was comfortable with. He was worried she was going to try and weasel out of it, but when she finally returned to the office, she had a puzzled look on her face.
“Did you find it?”
Anna closed the door, making sure to give them privacy. “I did, but this doesn’t make any sense.”
“What doesn’t?” Sophie asked.
“You said that whoever wired that money tried to kill Amanda Avery,” Anna said. “That’s what you said, right?”
“Yeah,” Grady replied, getting to his feet. “Why? Who wired the money?”
“Sheryl Avery,” Anna replied. “Isn’t she Amanda’s stepmother?”
All of the air whooshed out of Grady, realization washing over him. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Grady exchanged a worried look with Sophie. “Get James on the phone. Now!”
Twenty-Six
“Sheryl.”
Shock wasn’t the right word for what Mandy was feeling. Never, not during the entire time she was recovering, did her stepmother being responsible for the explosion enter her mind. It hadn’t even been a curious consideration. Now, with the woman standing in front of her, gun in hand, she felt like an idiot for not seeing the obvious answer to the question.
“Sheryl? Your stepmother, Sheryl?” Ally furrowed her brow. “Oh, well, this can’t be good. James is going to kill me.”
Sheryl looked different from the last time she’d seen her. Her face was haggard and drawn. Her dark hair, which was usually dyed and coiffed to perfection, had gone completely gray.
She looked … unhinged.
“Hello, Mandy.”
The other women in the beauty parlor were suddenly screaming and rushing to the back of the salon. Sheryl didn’t even glance in their direction. She was focused on Mandy and Ally, who stayed in their seats.
“What’s going on?” Mandy asked.
“What? You don’t know?”
“Well, I have an idea,” Mandy said, swallowing hard. She forced her attention from the gun, focusing on Sheryl’s face. She didn’t know which one was scarier. “I’m guessing you tried to have me blown up, and now you’ve decided to just do it yourself.”
“I don’t have a lot of options,” Sheryl said. “Thanks to your boyfriend and his meddlesome family, it’s only a matter of time until I’m discovered. I guess I should have taken that into consideration.”
“Then you should probably run,” Ally said. “Why waste your time here?”
Sheryl ignored Ally. “You can’t be surprised to see me,” Sheryl said. “You had to know I wouldn’t let the murder of my son just go. Of course, you never bothered to check in with me after your boyfriend killed him, so I shouldn’t be surprised that you’ve been so caught up in yourself that my misery wasn’t even on your radar.”
“Troy wasn’t murdered,” Mandy said, slipping her feet out of the basin and leaning forward. “Troy tried to kill me, and James did what he had to do to stop him. It wasn’t murder. And, as for the other stuff, I wasn’t sure what I should say to you. It wasn’t exactly a normal situation.”
“Yes, well, James is going to get what’s coming to him, too,” Sheryl said, her evil tone causing Mandy’s blood to run cold. “I figure I’ll let him mourn you for a few days, really feel your loss, and then I’ll let him join you in the hereafter. Then maybe I’ll check in on him, see how he is doing, and finish him off.”
“Do you think you’re going to get close enough to him to try?”
“I think that grief does funny things to people,” Sheryl said. “Look at me. He’ll be too distracted to even see me coming.”
“The cops will catch you,” Mandy said. “The wire transfer into Cole’s bank account is being tracked right now.”
Sheryl scrunched her face up. “That information is private.”
“Not if you know the right people,” Mandy said. “Grady is at the bank right now, and he just happens to know the right people.”
“It will still be too late for you,” Sheryl said. “At least I can watch you die.”
Mandy wasn’t sure what she should do. Talking to Sheryl seemed like the best option, but the woman standing in front of her seemed lost to the world. Mandy didn’t want to press the wrong buttons.
“Are you sure you really want to do this? I mean, you told me that you didn’t agree with the things your family did to survive when you were younger, that’s why you changed your name and escaped from them,” Mandy said, trying to appeal to Sheryl’s sense of humanity. “Why would you embrace this lifestyle now? I mean, this is so much worse.”