The Widow by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page B

cigarette between his lips. “What the hell about me? I’d like to thrive.”
    “Then stop smoking. That’d help.”
    “Sarcastic little shit, aren’t you, considering the spot you’re in?”
    Linc felt his jaw set hard. “I hate your guts.”
    Mattie laughed. “Feeling’s mutual, kid. You got my best friend killed—”
    “Your best friend? You didn’t even go to his wedding. You were in a ditch somewhere sleeping off a couple bottles of cheap booze.”
    “So I was.” Using a small disposable lighter, Mattie lit his cigarette, inhaling deeply before returning lighter and pack to his pocket. “Do you have my money?”
    “A thousand. I can’t get my hands on ten grand at once without drawing attention to myself. I told you—”
    “Show me the thousand.”
    Linc reached into his day pack, dropped at his feet, and withdrew a sealed envelope. His stomach rolled over. Sweat erupted on his back. He couldn’t believe what he was doing, but what choice did he have? Especially now, with his sister Grace’s State Department appointment in the works.
    He handed the envelope to Mattie. “Go ahead and count it if you want. It’s all there.”
    “I don’t need to count it. If you’re lying, I know where you live, don’t I?”
    “You’re scum. I don’t know what the Brownings ever saw in you. They were good guys. You’re a piece of shit.”
    Mattie didn’t react with his usual anger and defensiveness. “Chris and his grandfather looked past my mistakes. They saw the real me. I’m getting back into my photography.” He folded the bulging envelope, squeezing it into the palm of his hand as if it held all his answers—as if it wasn’t just money. “Your money’s going for a good cause. Think of it as your penance and my new beginning.”
    Linc snorted. “The real you is a bottom-feeding lowlife. It always has been. It always will be.”
    “I never stole from the people who cared about me.”
    Shame rippled through Linc, and his legs weakened under him. “If you’re so good, why don’t you tell the police what you know? About me. The burglaries. Why blackmail me?”
    “A guy like me doesn’t get many second chances.”
    “Why did you wait until now?”
    “I wasn’t going to put the squeeze on a teenager. And now—the timing’s right. You’re not going to the police, not with your sister’s big appointment hanging in the balance.” Mattie grinned, the sarcasm—the pleasure he took in what he was doing—back. “What do you think Grace would say if she could see her baby brother now?”
    Linc couldn’t bear to think about Grace’s disappointment. Eighteen years older, more like an aunt than a sister, she was the only child of their father and his first wife, a marriage that had ended the summer Doe Garrison had drowned. He and Grace had no other siblings. It was just the two of them.
    Mattie blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. “Relax, kid. I’m not greedy. Once I have my ten grand, we’re square.”
    He was forty-two but looked older. Grace said she remembered when he was a talented, promising photographer. But Mattie Young had hit the self-destruct button a long time ago.
    “I returned all the items I stole,” Linc said, hating the meekness in his voice. “Why punish me?”
    “Why shouldn’t I?” Mattie gave him a knowing look. “Don’t you punish yourself?”
    Linc didn’t answer.
    “And you didn’t return everything, did you? Abigail’s necklace is still missing.”
    “I told you. I didn’t steal it. I didn’t attack her. I didn’t kill Chris.”
    “Who’ll believe you without proof of who did steal the necklace and attack her, of who did kill Chris?” Mattie dropped his half-smoked cigarette onto the stone and crushed it under his cheap work boot. “I need to get back to your uncle’s rhodie. Work on the rest of my money. I want it within the next few days. All of it.”
    “I’ll get it just to watch you piss it away.”
    “All that anger. It’ll eat you