"But you set him up! You said so yourself. You expected him to come storming after you. That was an incredibly stupid stunt to pull, Lydia."

"I know. I know. It got out of hand. I couldn't get him to back off and I got really scared. I finally pulled my knife from the night-stand and waved it at him. He just slugged me again, really hard, in the belly. The bastard was a maniac. I put the knife right against the left cheek of his butt and dug it in." She pulled to the side to let a following car pass.

"God!" Dean could picture the scene. "You should have called the police."

"You think either one of us wanted that? I was just trying to stop him!" She choked back something between a laugh and a sob. "Honest to God. You should have seen the look on his face. And you better believe he backed off-like his life depended on it. Which maybe it did."

They were quiet for a few moments. Dean rolled down his window to let out the smoke.

"But now that he's missing, I'm scared to death, wondering what he'll do next. I had him tied up pretty good-with the tape recording and all." Dean looked at her. It wasn't remorse he saw, but fear. "I mean, he could invent some story-like, blame me!" He continued to stare at her total lack of remorse. "So I screwed up again. It's getting to be a habit."

"Was he still in the bedroom when I got there?"

"No. But there was a lot of blood. It was a real mess."

"How could he drive? He'd just been stabbed!"

"We did a patch job-it wasn't all that serious. I got him out of there and into his car-after we reached an agreement."

"What agreement?"

"I told you. I taped everything he did and said in the apartment. I had my gun out when I confronted him. He was furious, but he knew he was dead meat. We made a deal-he'd go back to Denver-there was no way we could work together-and he'd drop the election. I'd keep quiet. But now he's gone and disappeared. No one knows where the hell he is, or what he's plotting." Dean combed his fingers through his hair. It was difficult to feel sorry for the woman next to him.

"Did you agree to get him off the hook for Billy's death?"

She wouldn't answer directly. "Look, he was making my life miserable. There was no way we could prove that stuff anyway." Dean didn't respond. "I know what you think of me sending him off bleeding and all, but he wasn't going to die or anything," she said. "He was patched up pretty good. God, maybe it got infected or something!"




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