Deadly Deceptions. Linda Miller Lael

did. So I settled myself in the front seat of my Volvo, switched on the ignition and turned the air-conditioning up as high as it would go.

      I sat, watching other people drive off in their cars.

      The young woman with the video camera passed by, accompanied by another teenage girl with a mascara-streaked face.

      The crowd consisted mostly of couples, though, going home to commiserate together.

      Tucker and Allison among them.

      I closed my eyes for a moment. They had each other. I had two distracted sisters and a very small ghost. Not much comfort there.

      I rallied.

      Told myself to get a grip.

      Okay, so Tucker and I were on hiatus. Maybe we were even over, as I’d thought earlier. It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a life, after all. I’d recently started my own one-woman, kitchen-table detective agency, which I’d dubbed Sheepshanks, Sheepshanks and Sheepshanks, to give it some substance, and I’d inherited a biker bar. I had friends—so what if they were in Witness Protection and I was never going to see them again?

      I sighed. My palms felt damp where I gripped the steering wheel.

      Was there a Damn Fool’s Guide to Making New Friends? I made a mental note to scour the bookstores and the Internet for a copy.

      I shifted into Drive and pulled away from the curb, made a wide U-turn and headed for Bad-Ass Bert’s.

      Cave Creek isn’t exactly a metropolis, so I was braking in the gravel parking lot the next thing I knew. Staring at the weathered walls of my saloon, cluttered with rusted-out beer signs. My old apartment was upstairs, and the last time I’d been in residence, I’d nearly been murdered myself.

      Still, I missed the place, and it bugged me that I was afraid to stay there. I wasn’t comfortable at Greer’s, luxurious as it was. For one thing, I was worried that her husband, Alex Pennington, M.D., not exactly my greatest fan, might turn up beside my bed in a ski mask some dark night, and for another, Greer was really getting on my nerves. She had plenty of problems, including a cast on her left arm—some guy had tried to wrestle her into the back of a van in broad daylight just a few days back, and if Jolie hadn’t been there to scald the perp with hot coffee, Greer would have been toast.

      It wasn’t as if she was out of danger, either.

      One thing at a time, I thought. As if there was some universal crisis monitor out there someplace with a clipboard, making sure I didn’t get overloaded.

      Yeah. Right.

      On an impulse, I pulled the keys from the ignition and got out of the car. Locked up and headed for the outside stairway leading to my second-floor apartment. Okay, I definitely wasn’t ready to move back in, but I was up for a little immersion therapy. I was a grown woman, twenty-eight years old and self-supporting, and I’d survived some pretty hairy situations in my time.

      I could stand walking through my empty apartment.

      Sooner or later, I’d have to come to terms with the things that had happened there—some of them bad, some of them very, very good.

      All the very, very good stuff involved Tucker, unfortunately. And it wasn’t just the sex, either. We’d shared a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches in that apartment, swapped a few confidences, laughed and argued, too.

      I climbed the stairs, and my hand shook only a little as I jammed the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked on its hinges as I pushed it open, and I forced myself to step over the threshold.

      Dark memories rushed me, left me breathless.

      I switched on the light in the short hallway, even though it was three o’clock in the afternoon and the sun was blazing through every window.

      My heart began to hammer as I moved into the living room. The atmosphere felt thick, smothering.

      I half expected my dead ex-husband to appear, but he didn’t.

      Even he would have been some consolation that day.

      I stayed close to the walls as I did reconnaissance, as cautious as if I were a member of some crack SWAT team staking out dangerous territory.

      I sidestepped around the edges of the living room, the kitchen and finally the place I was most afraid to go—the bedroom. There was a peculiar humming thud in my ears, and my stomach kept bouncing up into the back of my throat.

      I got down on my hands and knees, snagging my panty hose in the process, and peered under the bed. No monsters lurking there.

      A tap on my shoulder nearly launched me through the ceiling.

      I smacked my head on the bed frame and whirled on my knees, stoked on adrenaline, prepared to fight for my life.

      It was only Gillian.

      Her blue eyes glistened with tears. I wondered if she’d gone to the cemetery, seen her coffin lowered into the ground.

      But no, there hadn’t been time for that. And I knew there was no graveside service planned. Her mother and a few friends would be there, no one else.

      I straightened and pulled her into my arms. I didn’t even try not to cry.

      She clung to me, shivering. She felt so small, so fragile. Ethereal, but solid, too.

      “Talk to me, sweetheart,” I whispered when I’d recovered enough to speak. “Tell me who—who did this to you.”

      She shook her head. Was she refusing to tell me, or was it that she didn’t know who her murderer was? Yes, she’d denied her stepfather’s guilt with a shake of her head, but that didn’t mean she’d recognized her killer. He or she might have been a stranger. Or perhaps she hadn’t actually seen the person at all; I wasn’t even sure how or where she’d been killed. The police weren’t releasing that information and there was no visible indication of trauma in her appearance, either.

      Still, I had a strong intuitive sense that she was keeping a secret.

      I got up off my knees, sat on the edge of the bed I was still too afraid to sleep in. Gillian perched beside me, looking up into my face with enormous, imploring eyes.

      “Honey,” I said carefully, “did you see the person who hurt you?”

      Again, she shook her head, another clear no. There had been a slight hesitation, though.

      I let out a breath. “But you’re sure it wasn’t your stepfather?”

      She nodded vigorously.

      I was about to ask how she could be so certain when the phone on my bedside table rang, a shrill jangling that made my nerves jump.

      Gillian instantly evaporated.

      I picked up the receiver more out of reflex than any desire to talk to anyone. “Hello?”

      “It’s Tucker.”

      I closed my eyes. Opened them again right away, in case some psycho was about to spring out of the woodwork and pounce. “What?” I asked, none too graciously.

      He let out a sigh. “Look, I don’t blame you for being upset,” he said after an interval of brief, throbbing silence. “But we still need to talk.”

      “How did you know I was here?”

      “I guessed.”

      “Liar.”

      “All right, I drove by after I dropped Allison off at home, and I saw your car in the parking lot at Bert’s.”

      “Where are you?”

      “Standing at the bottom of the stairway, trying to work up the nerve to come up and knock on your door.”

      “Don’t,” I said.

      “Moje, we need to talk—about us, about lots of stuff. But today it’s all about Gillian.