Deadly Deceptions. Linda Lael Miller

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      I WOULD HAVE LIKED nothing better than to go back to Greer’s, strip to the skin and swim off some of my angst in her backyard pool, but I knew with my light, redhead’s skin, I’d freckle and fry if I 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.

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