Page 171 of A Dead End Wedding

Charlie was slowly sidling toward me when, suddenly, they both seemed to notice.

"Stop right there, Deaver," Langley said, producing a small but deadly looking pistol and aiming it at me. "I'll happily shoot your lawyer right now." He laughed, a little hysterically. "Although maybe you wouldn't mind that. Who cares about a few dead lawyers, right?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "You're losing it, Addison. Shut up. We'll get far enough out, and we'll dump them."

I heard the boat's engines revving and realized Karl had vanished.

"Get far enough where?" I said, looking out the window, where the dock slowly got further away from the boat. Or, probably, the other way around.

She laughed. "Far enough out to sea to dump your dead bodies."

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Sarah laughed again. "Didn't you hear? It was so sad, really. You were screwing up poor Charlie's case because of your drug use. So your grief-crazed client went berserk and shot you and then himself."

I stared at her in disbelief. "How can you be so evil? You're a lawyer!"

Charlie and Uncle Nathan both blinked. Charlie spoke up first. "I'm thinking that's kind of the point. No offense."

I realized how stupid I'd sounded, then went with that. People had underestimated me before because I looked like a blonde airhead. I could only pray they would this time.

"What about Uncle Nathan? How are you going to explain him?" I asked, trying to get her monologuing. She seemed like the type.

Addison sneered. "We'll dump him overboard and let the police figure it out. Karl said if you wrap enough chain around a body, it will never surface."

I noticed Uncle Nathan fiddling with his wrists, which were tied behind his back on the chair.

Go, Nathan.

Edging sideways, I asked another question to distract them as I partially blocked Nathan from their view. "Why? That's all I want to know. Why would you go to the length of murder to protect a client – especially a client who covers up something as terrible as insulin tampering? What happened to your vows as an officer of the court?"

Sarah and Addison look at each other and started laughing. "You unbelievable moron," Sarah said. "You never would have figured it out."

"Shut up, Sarah," Addison hissed.

I looked back and forth between the two of them, suddenly sure my suspicions were true. "It's you. Somehow — some way —youtampered with the insulin to build more business for yourselves. BDC knew nothing about it."

"Well, it took you long enough to figure it out. Do you think yacht payments come easy? Or house payments?" Sarah said, then she pointed at Addison. "He has five kids in private schools and colleges, plus a wife with a weakness for really big diamond jewelry."

He agitatedly stepped closer to me, still pointing the gun at my head. "There weren't any big drug cases in the past five years. The attorney fees were drying up. We had the toxicology experts and the insider contacts at the FDA. Hell, we know more about the science of pharmaceuticals than most people who worked at the drug company do ."

Sarah slapped a hand on the bar, making me jump. Addison flinched, too, and his finger tightened on the trigger, making my heart leap into my throat. "It wasn't even difficult," she pointed out. "We planned to tamper with a batch of insulin, just a little, and make enough people sick so that the resulting round of mass tort cases would keep us all in business until the next bad drug case came along."

Addison broke in, glowering. "But your goon screwed it up, Sarah. Something went badly wrong, and over two dozen people died."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "You killed all those people? Plus the hundreds who went into comas?"

Charlie looked bewildered. "What are they saying, December? They ruined the insulin on purpose?" Sheer rage transformed his bloody features, and he lunged at Addison.

Addison swung the gun almost casually and smashed it into the side of Charlie's head. I screamed and jumped on Addison, but he swung the gun back toward me as Charlie crumpled into a chair.

Sarah walked over to us. "We never meant for anyone to die. But it was way too late to back out."

I glared at her, wanting more than I'd ever wanted anything in my life to get my hands around her throat. "So poor Marion Ziggeran? And Richard Dack?"

She snorted. "More sloppiness on Addison's part."

He glared at her. "I said shut up, Sarah. It wasyourassociate."

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