Deadly Deceptions. Linda Miller Lael

      Let this be over, I prayed distractedly. Please let this be over.

      Gillian vanished, and did not return to her chair beside mine.

      Tucker left Allison long enough to go to Helen, help her back to her place.

      I couldn’t stand any more.

      I got up and slipped out through the open doors of the church, doing my best not to hyperventilate. I would have given just about anything to have one or both of my sisters there, but Jolie, recently hired as a crime-scene tech by Phoenix PD, was going through an orientation program, and Greer was caught in the throes of a rapidly disintegrating marriage.

      So I was on my own. Nothing new there.

      I took refuge under a leafy ficus tree, grateful for the shade, one hand pressed against the trunk so I wouldn’t drop into a sobbing heap on the ground. I was dazed by the intensity of my mourning, and I didn’t trust myself to drive. Not right away, anyhow.

      The service ended.

      People flowed past, murmuring, the men looking stalwart and grim, the women dabbing at puffy eyes with crumpled handkerchiefs.

      The pallbearers, Tucker among them, carried Gillian’s casket to the hearse, waiting in the dusty street with its rear doors open like the black wings of some bird of doom, ready to enfold the child and carry her away into the unknown. The minister helped Mrs. Erland into the back of a limousine; I looked for Gillian, but she was nowhere around.

      When a hand gripped my upper arm, I was beyond startled. I could no longer assume I’d been approached by another human being—not the flesh-and-blood variety, that is.

      I turned and saw Allison Darroch standing just behind me, her eyes red rimmed from crying, her flawless skin alabaster pale. She had lush brown hair, pulled into a severe French twist for the occasion, and she wore a black sheath that accented her slender curves.

      “What,” she demanded in a furious undertone, “are you doing here?”

      I swallowed, stuck for an immediate answer. I couldn’t say I’d come to Gillian Pellway’s funeral because the dead child had practically herded me there. Especially not to Allison, who clearly saw me as the Other Woman, even though she and Tucker had been legally divorced for over a year before I even met him.

      Allison leaned in. “It’s sick—this is a little girl’s funeral—but you’ll do anything to get close to Tucker, won’t you?”

      I’d never labored under the delusion that Allison and I would ever be friends, but I did respect her. She was a good, if overprotective, mother to the twins, and in her capacity as a veterinarian she’d recently saved Russell, a canine friend of mine, from certain death.

      “I know Helen Erland slightly,” I said, with what dignity I could muster, considering I still felt as though I might faint, throw up, or both. It was true, too, which admittedly isn’t the case with everything I say. Helen clerked in a convenience store in Cave Creek, and I occasionally stopped in to buy lottery tickets or gas up my Volvo. “My coming here has nothing to do with Tucker.”

      “I don’t believe you,” Allison said.

      “Back off,” I replied, after reassembling my backbone vertebra by vertebra. “I have as much right to be here as you do.”

      Tucker appeared in the corner of my eye, handsome and anxious in his dark suit. His hair was butternut-blond and a little too long, like before, but he didn’t look like the undercover DEA agent I knew him to be. His normal uniform was jeans, a muscle shirt and biker boots.

      “Get in the car, Allison,” he said.

      She stiffened, gave me one more poisonous glare and walked away. Got into the big SUV parked at the curb.

      For a long moment Tucker and I just stared at each other.

      I figured it was his place to speak first, because he’d been the one to stumble into the hornet’s nest. On the other hand, there was a lot I wanted to tell him, because he was, after all, the only person in the world who knew I could see Gillian Pellway.

      I bit my lower lip and stood my ground.

      Tucker shoved a hand through his hair. Sighed. His green eyes were haunted, and I wondered how long it had been since he’d slept through a night. Certainly not since Gillian’s body had been found, if appearances were anything to go by.

      “Allison’s pretty torn up,” he said. “So are the kids.”

      I merely nodded.

      “She asked me to move back in. Just for a while.”

      Tucker had a condo in Scottsdale, but he wasn’t there much; when he was working, he tended to disappear into some mysterious underworld, one I knew little about.

      My stomach pitched, and bile scalded the back of my throat. I swallowed and nodded again.

      He moved as though he might take a gentle hold on my shoulders, or even pull me into his arms. Then, after glancing toward the SUV with its tinted windows, he looked at me again, his eyes begging me to understand. I figured his Harley, his usual favorite mode of transportation, was probably gathering dust in some garage.

      “You’re going to do it,” I said.

      Tucker thrust out a breath. “Moje, this isn’t a reconciliation. Nothing like that. It’s temporary—just until Allison gets over this. Daisy’s having bad dreams, and Danny freaks if every light in the house isn’t on all night long.”

      I thought of Gillian’s silent insistence that Vince Erland wasn’t her killer, and gulped back another throatful of bile. I believed her, and that meant the real murderer was still out there, perhaps already stalking another child. I shivered.

      “Do you think the twins are in danger?” I asked when I could summon up enough breath. I cared about Tucker Darroch big-time, and I wasn’t planning on sharing a bed with him as long as he was bunking in with the wife and kids, but Daisy attended the same dance school Gillian had, wore the same tiny-ballerina getup. Just thinking of that made me cold to the core.

      “I don’t know,” Tucker said.

      I took a step toward him, touched his hand. “See you,” I told him.

      He caught hold of my arm when I would have gone past him, climbed into my car and motored for Greer’s place, on the chic fringes of Scottsdale. Until a week before, I’d lived in an apartment over Bad-Ass Bert’s Biker Saloon, but following an unfortunate incident with a psychotic killer, I’d moved into my sister’s guesthouse.

      “What do you mean, ‘see you’?” Tucker demanded.

      I pulled my arm free, though I didn’t make a show of it. I knew Allison was watching from the SUV, and I didn’t want to spike her drama meter, which was already bobbing in the red zone. “I mean,” I said evenly, “that while I certainly understand that you have to be there for your family, I don’t intend to sleep with you in the meantime.”

      A muscle bunched in Tucker’s fine, square jaw, and he nodded once, sharply. I thought he’d turn and walk away, but he didn’t. His eyes searched mine, probing and solemn. “Have you seen Gillian again—since the day we talked on the phone?”

      She’d been haunting me pretty much nonstop, but that was neither the time nor place to go into details. The way things were going, there might never be a time or place. “Yes” was all I said.

      He absorbed that. Nodded again. “We have to talk.”

      “Not today,” I answered.

      “You’re still living at your sister’s place?”

      The SUV’s horn sounded an impatient, wifely little toot.

      “Until further notice,” I said, and this time when I started for my car, Tucker didn’t try to stop me.

      I WOULD HAVE LIKED nothing better