“Cut that out,” he said. “You’ve started to tell me and you’re gonna finish.”
“I can’t.”
“But you will.” His grip on her shoulders was like a set of metal clamps. “I had a feeling it wasn’t your idea to begin with. It figures there was an agent in charge of this deal. It figures from every angle. There’s someone in this neighborhood who knows I’m looking for him. He knows what’s gonna happen when I find out who he is and get my hands on him. You check what I’m talkin’ about?”
Bella blinked several times. Her mouth opened but no sound came through.
“I’m talkin’ about my sister,” he said. “She killed herself because she was jumped and ruined and driven crazy. Whoever he is, he knows I’ll keep looking until I find him. So it stands to reason he don’t want me around. You check it now?”
She stopped squirming. She stared at him.
He said, “The man is nervous. He’s scared. What he’d like most is to see me in a wooden box. But he’d probably settle for less, like a twenty-dollar deal to cripple me. To put me out of action so he’d be safe for a while. And that’s where you come in.”
She shut her eyes tightly.
He kept the tight hold on her shoulders. “The way it lines up,” he said, “you were used for sucker bait. The man knew you had it in for me. He appointed himself as a friendly adviser. Tells you there’s a way to even the score, and before you know what you’re doing, you give him the twenty dollars. Ain’t that how it happened?”
She nodded dazedly.