Say Goodbye (Romantic Suspense #25) by Karen Rose

            “How long have the cameras been here?” DJ asked.

            “I had them installed before you bought the place.” Kowalski cranked up the volume on one of the frames, picking up Mrs. Ellis’s voice from the backyard. “I get audio, too. This mic is mounted on Mrs. Ellis’s side of the fence. She worries me.”

            “If I kill her, the cops will come snooping,” DJ said, anticipating Kowalski’s next order.

            “Find a way so that they don’t snoop. She’s seventy-five, for fuck’s sake. Make it look like she died in her sleep.”

            “I can do that.”

            “Have you done it before?” Kowalski pressed.

            “Yes. Once.” To his own father, as a matter of fact.

            No one in Eden had questioned his father’s death, when they should have. Waylon Belmont had died in his own bed, two days after returning to Eden with a sobbing, repentant Rhoda, along with the remains of a young man whom he’d claimed was Gideon Reynolds.

            Gideon had deserved to die. He’d murdered Edward McPhearson, who was not a good man. Actually a really bad man, but Gideon had killed him.

            Waylon had also deserved to die, and DJ hadn’t even known the full extent of his father’s betrayal. Now that he did, he wished he could kill Waylon all over again.

            Or, at least, that he’d made his father’s death more painful.

            “How did you do it before?” Kowalski asked, yanking DJ from the pain of the memory.

            “Pillow. Looked like a heart attack.” He smiled, picturing the look on Waylon’s face as he’d struggled to breathe. Mine was the last face he saw. That Waylon knew who had killed him had been important to DJ then.

            That Mrs. Ellis would know who killed her wasn’t important at all. He hadn’t killed anyone so up close and personal in a while, but he imagined it’d be like riding a bike.

            Kowalski dug in his pocket, producing a syringe and a small vial, placing them on the coffee table. “If you’re gonna do it that way, go with the injection. MEs can detect pillow smothering. This’ll make it look like a heart attack because it will be a heart attack.” He pressed the TV remote again and a different set of camera feeds appeared.

            Mrs. Ellis was sitting in an easy chair, speaking on a phone with an honest-to-God cord. “He’s weird,” she was saying. “So antisocial. Never smiles, never talks to me unless I talk first.” She paused, listening, winding the curly cord around one finger. “Well, he’s handsome enough, I guess. Gives me the willies, though.” She shuddered. “He’s only here part of the time. I wonder what he gets up to when he’s not here.” Another pause. “Of course I asked! He says he’s a traveling salesman. I bet a lot of serial killers say that.” Her face hardened with resolve. “There is something odd about that man and I’m going to find out what.”

            Fucking hell. Several things occurred to DJ, in no particular order:

            Kowalski had cameras inside the woman’s house. He’ll know when I’ve killed her.

            This is a damn test.

            Mrs. Ellis is talking about me. And it was dark outside her window, but the sun hadn’t set yet. It was barely one in the afternoon.

            “Wait.” DJ held up a hand. “Is this prerecorded video?”

            Kowalski hit the pause button and the screen froze. “It is. This conversation happened last night. She was peeking in your windows this morning.”

            “What about whoever she was talking to? That phone she’s using is ancient. It won’t have caller ID.”

            “She has a cordless phone in the kitchen. It will.”

            “What about the cameras? Once she’s dead, her family will be all over the house. They’ll see the cameras.”

            “They’re the size of a pencil eraser. You’re good with your hands. Cover them up.”

            “Fine.” DJ waved at the syringe and vial. “You knew you were going to tell me to kill her.”

            “Yep. You really should have had the cameras installed the first time she pushed you for information. Little old ladies often get ignored, but they are fonts of knowledge. All it takes is her telling the wrong person that you’re weird and antisocial and people will start to wonder.”