A High-End Finish(79)

He answered immediately. “Shannon, where are you?”

“I’m at the tea shop on the town square.”

“Stay put. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

? ? ?

“Are these yours?” Eric asked, holding up a clear plastic bag containing a pair of thin leather workmen’s gloves.

Pink ones.

“Oh, God.” I buried my head in my hands. “Of course they’re mine. Where did you find them?”

“Near the latest crime scene.”

I gazed up at him. Somehow he looked even bigger and more masculine surrounded by the soft pink and pale green walls of the tea shop. “The crime scene. Naturally.”

“Did you realize they were missing?”

“No. I was using them just the other day.” My eyes widened in realization. “It was the day I was attacked. I had shoved them into my purse on the way to Whitney’s house. Later, I remember setting my purse on the tailgate while I stowed the toolbox in the back of the truck. The person who hit me must have gone through my purse.”

And that pissed me off as much as anything did.

“What else can you tell me?”

I stared blankly at the wrinkled gloves. “I like them because they’re thinner than the usual work gloves. Even the ones made for women. They stretch with your hand movements. You can wear them all day for all sorts of jobs and they don’t chafe.” I pressed my fingers against my eyes. “And I’m blathering. Sorry. What else did you want to know?”

“We’ll hold on to these,” he said, placing the bag on the table. “We might be able to capture some prints off them.”

“That would be great, but they’ll probably just find my prints.”

“Someone else wore them after you did, Shannon. We’ll see what we can get.”

I pressed my lips together, hesitant to ask the next question. But I really needed to know. “What happened to Jennifer?”

“She was strangled, left for dead.”

“She’s dead?”

“No, but she’s in bad shape.”

“Someone strangled her while wearing my gloves?” I tried to swallow around the giant lump in my throat. I felt sick to my stomach and it wasn’t from cookies. The thought of a person slipping their hands into my gloves and using them to choke someone to death was hideous.

“She’s not dead,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“No. She’ll survive.” He rested one arm on the table. “How well do you know her?”

“Well enough to hate her.” Crap. I couldn’t believe I’d said it out loud.

Eric sat back in his chair and observed me. “That’s honest, anyway.”

“You’ll find out if you ask the right people, so I might as well be the one to tell you. We really don’t like each other. She’s spiteful and calculating and just plain awful. We went to high school together and never managed to hit it off, to say the least. She pretty much tries to make my life a living hell as often as possible.”

“She was at the gym the night your equipment broke.”

“Yeah,” I said darkly. “And up until an hour ago, I was certain that she was the one who’d attacked me.”

“It seems unlikely now,” he said without humor.

“I suppose,” I said, resigned to the fact that I was dead wrong. Again. “Anyway, I don’t like her, but I don’t wish her harm, either.”

“Fair enough,” he said.

I stared at my pink gloves, dismayed that another one of my belongings had been used in such a destructive, evil way. I huffed out a breath. “So, how’s she doing?”

“She’s in a coma,” he said flatly.

I stared across the table, met his determined gaze with my own. “We really need to find this guy soon.”

He leaned toward me. “I did not just hear you say we. There is no we, Red. You’re going home and locking your doors until this creep is behind bars. Get it?”

I frowned. “Okay.”

“Because on the off chance that you missed it,” he whispered angrily, “this is another case where the killer went after a person that you don’t like. See the pattern coming back?”

My eyes widened. “Oh no.”

“Yeah, and they’re still using your own tools to try to frame you. So while someone is out there continuing to play games with your life, I would prefer that you not make yourself a target. They already tried to kill you once. Maybe more than once, considering all those so-called coincidences. I don’t want them trying it again. You got that?”

I nodded. “I got it.”

“Good.”



Even though I believed Eric was right, I still couldn’t stay home all day. I called him to let him know I had to go to work. I told him I’d be careful to stay where I could be seen by one of my crew at all times and I would always go home before dark.

The first day back on the job, I noticed a police cruiser driving by and slowing down. It happened five times in total that day. I was grateful, really, but it didn’t help that my guys were starting to tease me about being a fugitive from justice.

I was also a little irked when I found out that the chief had talked to Mac. So now he stood outside by the back gate every afternoon and waited for me to get home, then watched me walk into the house and lock the door behind me. The second day he did it, I turned around and watched him jog up the garage stairs and disappear into his apartment. Okay. So this routine was not exactly conducive to any sort of male-female bonding, the kind that would set Lizzie’s tender heart a-pounding. Basically, I felt like he was babysitting me.