That would be more than enough to start a real investigation with him as the suspect, instead of the half-hearted investigation the cops had going now.

Then, if anyone started to look closely at the Riverside Mall project, all his layers of concealment would peel away, and it would become fairly obvious that the project was marginal at best.

Then if the insurance company—or worse, the Feds!—ordered an investigation of their own, everything would come tumbling down.

He reached into his pocket for the fetish-bundle; it had become something like a worry stone for him, and just simply handling it always calmed him. This time was no exception; as his hand closed around the leather, confidence quelled the rising panic. There was no real need to worry. After all, he had run deals along the edge of the shadow before. He hadn’t ever needed to use final solutions, but he’d always had them in reserve. There was no real difference between planting a trap to get rid of the girl, and ordering her hit—other than the fact that it took control out of his own hands.

If the Talldeer girl actually had anything on him, there would be Feds crawling all over here even now. So she didn’t have anything solid, only suspicions. You couldn’t convict anyone on suspicions; hell, you couldn’t even get an indictment on suspicion.

So, since she wouldn’t fall into his traps, he was going to have to take the direct approach to getting rid of her, even though it would be a bigger risk to delegate that task to someone else. Tulsa was a bigger city than people realized; it had its share of scum and lowlifes. If you were truly desperate, there were even punks who would fill your contract for as little as fifty bucks. But those were generally burned-out druggies, and dangerous to use; the going rate was about five thousand for a pro.

But with a pro there would be nothing leaving a trail. Not with the people Rod intended to use. Those fifty-buck punks were extremely unreliable, the five-hundred-dollar hit men would sometimes come back looking for blackmail. Rod had used the latter, now and again, but never for anything that he could be blackmailed over; most smart contractors knew muscle. Not Mafia-related, of course; that was out of his league. Just guys who, a hundred years ago, would have been rustlers and horse thieves. Rod used guys like that to strong-arm reluctant farmers or homeowners into selling at a reasonable price, or to scare tenants into moving without filing complaints with the authorities about substandard construction. He knew the right jargon, things that sounded perfectly normal on the phone.

But this time, Rod would take out his contract with a real workman; someone you saw once if at all, paid in advance, and never heard from again.