The Silent Witness. Dani Sinclair

the window at the street below straining to see. Was someone lurking in the doorway of the small appliance store across the street? His words made it more than likely. The darkened shop made it impossible to tell for sure.

      “He can’t know.”

      “I’m telling you, he knows. It’s all coming unraveled. We have to talk, right away!”

      Her mind twisted, looking for a way out. A movement caught her attention. Someone was watching from the shadows across the street. She was pretty sure she knew who that someone was. She turned from the window, bumping her already bruised arm and nearly stepping on Nicki’s cat. She ignored the pain and the animal. If he was right, she was no longer safe. Not here. Not anywhere.

      “How soon can you meet me behind the craft store on Main Street?”

      “Two minutes,” he said, sounding surprised. “I’m at the restaurant.”

      “Hurry.”

      She disconnected but continued to clutch the phone’s portable handset like a lifeline. Reaching for her purse, she almost knocked the bowl of fresh flowers off the coffee table. The heavy weight of the gun inside the soft leather bag reassured her. She pulled out the weapon, staring at the dull, ugly metal. No matter. Ugly, but deadly. No one would add new bruises to her body with this in her hand.

      She blocked the cat when it tried to escape into the night. Shutting the door, she hurried as she descended the back stairs over the shop as quietly as possible. It was nearly nine o’clock. Nicki would be closing the craft store any minute now. She must be gone before Nicki headed upstairs to the apartment for the night.

      She reached the darkness of the alley and the parking lot behind the shops and stopped. Her lips formed a curse. She held Nicki’s telephone. Her own cell phone sat on the hall table by the door. She’d have to go back for it.

      A car engine shattered the silence of the moonless night. The vehicle swung around the corner and entered the alley. There was no time to go back for her telephone now. Yet, even as she hurried forward, instinct screamed that she wasn’t alone. Someone else shared the darkness of the alley.

      The car stopped in front of her only a few feet away. Now or never. It was too late for second thoughts. She really had no options left at all.

      She stepped from the deep shadows.

      The explosive sound of the barrage of gunshots seemed to echo off the walls of the old brick buildings. She turned to run. Her fingers punched 911 into the phone she still held.

      “Emergency operator. Do you need police, fire or medical assistance?”

      She reached the stairs. A figure rose from between two parked cars. She fired the gun in her hand at the shape, and knew she had missed. He ducked, but she had seen him—just as he had seen her. She fled up the stairs and back inside the apartment. The handset dropped from her fingers, bouncing across the carpeting. She grabbed her cell phone and plunged through the front door. Her heart hammered in her throat as her fingers pressed the now familiar number.

      Chapter One

      “Nicki? What’s the matter? You sound funny.”

      Nicki locked the front door and turned off the main light. There were no customers inside the craft shop so it didn’t matter if she closed early. What did matter was the man leaning almost negligently against the brick wall near the mouth of the alley across the street.

      “Nothing’s wrong.” She told herself he wasn’t staring at her windows, he was just waiting for someone. The second feature at the movie theater started at nine. He was probably waiting to meet someone and go inside. He could even be waiting for someone to come out from the last show. It was silly to feel so uneasy. “Everything’s fine. What’s up?”

      “I was wondering if you could go out and check your car after you close tonight. I can’t find my gold bracelet and I think I might have lost it in your car the other day.”

      Nicki called on patience. Her much younger half-sister wasn’t generally careless, but the request didn’t surprise Nicki. If it didn’t involve a horse, Hope seldom paid a lot of attention to details.

      Nicki’s gaze flicked to the street. The man was in deep shadows, but he was still there.

      “Uh, Hope, I’ll let you know if I find it.”

      “Okay. Did Ilona find you okay the other day?”

      Shocked, Nicki forgot about the man and focused on her sister. Ilona Toskov had been her roommate at the University of Maryland more than eight years ago. Nicki had run into her at a Frederick shopping center a few weeks ago and they’d decided to meet for lunch the following month. Two days ago, Ilona arrived on Nicki’s doorstop, scared, bruised, and seeking a haven.

      “What are you talking about?”

      Hope hesitated. “Is something wrong, Nicki? She called here trying to find you and I gave her your number and told her where you lived. That was okay, wasn’t it?”

      “Yes. Of course. It’s just that Ilona is having some, uh…personal problems. I didn’t know she’d spoken with you.”

      “Oh. She didn’t say anything about that to me.”

      Nicki wasn’t surprised. Ilona had seemed horribly embarrassed. An abusive boyfriend who turned out to be married wasn’t something most women would want to discuss with anyone.

      “Look, Hope, I’d rather you wouldn’t mention her name to anyone else right now, all right?” Especially not with Ilona hiding in Nicki’s apartment over the store at this very moment.

      “No problem. So you’ll go out back right after you close and check for my bracelet?”

      “I’ll check.”

      “Thanks, Nicki. Talk to you later.”

      Nicki replaced the receiver and stared out the window of her shop. The man was still there.

      Nervously, she checked the lock on the front door, flipped the sign to Closed, removed the cash drawer and headed for her minuscule office. A car barreled down the alley leading to the parking area behind the building. Nicki tensed.

      Good grief. If she kept jumping at every sound she’d need tranquilizers. Someone probably wanted to reach one of the stores before it closed. Despite her own slow evening, she hoped the store they wanted to reach wasn’t hers.

      Nicki sighed as she opened the safe. Fools Point didn’t have much crime as a rule, but lately, things had been changing. There was that unsolved car bombing several months ago in which a man had died a terrible death. The police believed it was gang related. That struck a nerve locally, occurring so close to town. Then the rash of car thefts in the area was increasing, and Fay Garvey’s murder and the destruction of the Bide Awhile Motel had shocked everyone. Only a month later Jerome Inglewood had been killed in a bank robbery in D.C. Local men had been involved. They’d gone after Jerome’s pregnant wife because she was a witness to the murder.

      Nicki sighed again. There was no such thing as a safe place anymore. Ilona had brought that home when she sought refuge in Nicki’s apartment two nights ago.

      Ilona refused to go to the police. The bruises and threats her boyfriend had made had given both women good reason to be nervous.

      Nicki closed the safe and spun the lock. She hefted the awkwardly shaped box of new supplies and tried to plan the next window display in her mind. But her mind wouldn’t cooperate. She was far too edgy.

      A car engine idled behind the store. She needed to get a grip. There was nothing sinister in that. Three days ago, she wouldn’t have thought a thing of it.

      Three days ago, her life had been a whole lot simpler.

      Telling herself to stop acting so jumpy, she carried the box out front. The car suddenly backfired several times. The noise reminded her of firecrackers