Page 99 of Last Seen Alive

“Is she armed?” Trent asked.

“Yes,” the woman whispered.

Amanda made a call to the officers outside, and then she and Trent headed down the stairs.

They followed the sound of a man and woman talking. The man’s voice was strained.

“They don’t know everything. I swear. How could they?”

“You should have just left it alone,” the woman said.

Amanda and Trent stopped beside a room with an open door. Peeked in.

Mona was pacing and holding a gun.

“Claire hadthegun,” Nick pleaded.

“So what?”

“It was all the evidence the police would have needed to put me away. I don’t want to go to prison.” His voice took on a high shrill.

“Do you think I give a crap if you go away? But, no, you had to go and make a big freaking mess. The police have been here twice, and you decide to race through the streets of Washington. Do you have a brain at all? What in the world did Rita ever see in you?”

“Claire was going to turn us all in. I did what I thought was best.”

“That’s the problem, you didn’t think. Well, I’m not going down for her murder or yours. They’ll never find your body when I’m finished with you.”

Amanda burst through the doorway, gun raised, Trent at her side. “Stop! Police!”

Mona froze for a second. “Why should I be surprised? You idiot!” She turned on Nick and pulled the trigger.

Nick screamed, and in that split second, Amanda had put a bullet into Mona’s arm.

Mona’s gun clattered to the floor, but even wounded, the older woman scurried to get ahold of it again.

“I wouldn’t, if I were you.” Trent stood over Mona, his gun in her face.

She lifted her uninjured arm in surrender. And just as all that happened, footsteps were coming down the hall. The cavalry was here.

Amanda called for an ambulance for both Nick Clayton and Mona Lawson. Then she went over to him.

“Claire… she was going to bring us all down.” His eyes rolled back in his head, but his chest continued to rise and fall.

Thankfully for Nick, Mona was a bad shot. Just a few feet away, and she’d hit him in the shoulder. It was likely Nick would survive his injuries to serve time in a federal prison.

All’s well that ends well.

Then Sergeant Graves stepped through the doorway, a scowl on her face.

THIRTY-SEVEN

The next day, Amanda and Trent were headed to Nick Clayton’s hospital room. She and Trent got to keep their badges and even warranted a “well done” from the police chief. Charges against Logan were being dropped. As she’d thought, Nick was going to pull through just fine—except for he would be going to prison. That was a foregone conclusion given the case they already had against him. A search of his place had turned up a receipt showing a purchase at Betty’s Boudoir for lacy lingerie early Friday evening and a quick trip there had confirmed it was the set Claire had been wearing. Malachi from the gallery had finally come through with that employee list—a day late, a dollar short—and Nick had worked there at the same time as Claire and Rita.

They found him awake and hooked to a couple intravenous lines. He still had a bruise on his forehead from when Claire had struck him with the lamp.

“We’re looking for a lot of answers.” Amanda hoped his date with a bullet made him talkative. “You can begin with why you killed Claire Hunter.”

“I was never supposed to get caught.”