front.
She walked to the phone and lifted the receiver from its hook with hands so wet and clammy she nearly dropped it before she got it tucked into its proper place next to her ear. “Hello?” she said in a hushed and husky voice.
Shaking, heart pounding, she listened to silence…some rapid breathing. And then… “Oh God-
Mary spent more than an hour on the phone with Joy. Afterward, she felt calmer, stronger, a thousand pounds lighter and ten years younger. And how strange it was, she thought, that she should feel this way when there was a murder charge hanging over her and someone-Diego or his gunman-possibly at that very moment on his way to kill her.
The truth was, the murder charge, the fact that her life was in danger-none of that seemed real. What was real to her was the profound sense of relief she felt to have finally stopped running. The tremendous feeling of freedom that came from laying down the burden of her secrets was like breathing fresh air and feeling the sun on her face after being locked in a dungeon.
With her spirits so high, it was hard, in the week that followed, for Mary to stick to the orders Roan had given her. Or, it would have been, if he’d allowed her any wiggle-room at all. She got used to seeing the sheriff’s department patrol vehicles cruising the street in front of her shop, or parked in front of her house at all hours of the day or night.
The days fell into a routine. Every morning, a deputy would show up on her doorstep, escort her to his patrol car and drive her to work. She would remain in the vehicle while the deputy unlocked her shop and searched it thoroughly, then wait to be escorted inside. Deputies kept an eye on the front of the shop; the back door was always locked. At closing time, the process would be reversed, until she was once more safely barricaded inside her house with the doors and windows locked and the shades drawn.
It was always a deputy who drove her to work and brought her home again, never Roan. When Mary asked, she was told the sheriff was busy with preparations for the onslaught of visitors expected for Boomtown Days.
It was just as well, she told herself. But there was a Roan-shaped emptiness in her heart, bigger than she’d imagined it could be. And the longing that came along with his image in her mind-and it came much too often, with blue eyes glinting, a wry smile deepening the thumbprints in his cheeks and his hair bearing the imprint of his Stetson-was the only cloud darkening her skies during those days.
Cat, she discovered, made a very good watchdog, since he growled whenever the deputies came to her door. He was a comfort in other ways, too, and she took to sleeping with him curled up on the foot of her bed.
Her shop was surprisingly busy. More people than usual seemed to be stopping in to make appointments in person rather than phoning. Regular clients popped in to say hello, or to drop off bouquets of flowers they’d picked from their yards, and people who’d never been in the shop before came to browse through the boutique.
Curiosity, Mary cynically told herself, because of the news story. After the first day or two, the constant jangling of the bell attached to the door got on her nerves.
Then she mentioned the steady stream of visitors to Miss Ada when she came for her regular appointment on Friday at five o’clock, and the elderly clerk of court patted her hand and said, “The town’s behind you, dear.”
Mary felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She put down her comb and scissors and fled to the back room, where to her own astonishment, she had a good cry.
But that was a hope too lovely even to whisper in the most secret part of her mind.
Saturday, which was to be the big kick-off for Boomtown Days, dawned warm and clear, with not a cloud in the sky and for once neither rain nor wind in the forecast. Chamber of Commerce weather, Tom Daggett, the deputy who drove Mary to her shop that morning, called it. Tom was one of Mary’s favorite deputies, a very sweet boy, though it was hard to think of him as an officer of the law. To her, he looked barely old enough to drive.
Since pretty much everybody in town would be attending the parade and accompanying concerts, carnivals and food and artisan fairs, Mary had decided not to open the hair salon that day. Like many of the other shop owners up and down Main and the streets that crossed it, she planned to put some of her boutique items out on racks on the sidewalk, hoping to catch the eyes of browsing out-of-towners with extra money to spend.
She spent the morning deciding which items to put out, setting prices and hand-lettering signs, and by eleven or so had what she considered to be a rather nice display set up in front of the salon. There was a rack of clearance items from last winter marked down to fifty percent off, and another with some of her newer, flashier stuff, particularly some things with a Western motif she thought might go well with the theme of the day’s celebration. She enjoyed a brisk business-mostly lookers, but a few nice sales as well-before the strolling crowds drifted off toward Main Street to watch the parade.
Mary was taking advantage of the respite to restore some order to the racks when Betty, from the art gallery next door, came wandering over to compare notes on the morning’s business-like Mary, she’d enjoyed a whole lot of looky-lous and a handful of sales, but was satisfied by the day’s take, overall. Betty was a grandmotherly but elegant woman who favored tunics and broom-stick skirts in bright peacock colors, and wore her thick salt-and- pepper hair in a Navajo twist which she had a habit of sticking writing utensils into.
She stayed to chat, making cozy small talk about her garden and her grandkids, and when they heard the thump of a marching band start up in the distance, happened to mention, with a sigh, that she hated having to miss the parade, since her grandson Cody would be riding on the Future Farmers of America float, and her granddaughters, Jennifer and Ashley, were both in the high school band. One played saxophone, the other, clarinet.
“Why don’t you go?” Mary said. “I can keep an eye on your stuff for you.”
Betty’s face brightened. “Oh-that’s nice of you. Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” Mary assured her. “Everyone’s watching the parade anyway. Go on-hurry. You don’t want to miss it.”
“Thank you so much-I won’t be long…” Betty was already hurrying down the sidewalk. She turned once to smile and wave.
Mary smiled and waved back, a lovely warmth spreading through her.
She turned back to the racks, and as she did, bumped it just slightly. When she did that, a rather gaudy beaded suede jacket-one of the clearance items-slithered off its hanger and fell to the sidewalk. She muttered, “Oops,” and bent over to pick it up.
At precisely the same moment, the window behind her, bearing in gilt letters the words, Queenie’s Salon & Boutique-We Pamper You Like Royalty, disintegrated.
As the crystalline cubes of safety glass rained down around her, Mary’s natural impulse was to rise and stare in utter bewilderment at the hole where her shop window had been. She never knew what it was that made her, after that first instant, drop like a stone and flatten herself on the concrete sidewalk underneath the rack of clothes.
Out on Main Street the parade was going by. She could hear the thump of a marching band, people clapping… cheering. Directly above her head, she could hear something hitting the clothes on the rack with sharp little thumps. Each thump made the rack jerk and twitch and rattle on its castors. She heard other sounds, like angry mosquitos, and felt the sting of something hitting her cheek. Her body was shaking violently; her chest and throat felt raw, as if she’d been screaming and screaming, the way people do in nightmares.
It seemed like a nightmare. Half a block away there were crowds of people, laughing, happy people…people waving flags, throwing confetti, calling out to their friends, children and neighbors riding on the floats, or on horses or marching in the band. There was no one to notice a woman huddled under a rack of clothes, no one to hear her terrified cries for help. All alone and caught in a killer’s gunsights, Mary covered her head with her arms and waited to die.
It might have been seconds later, or minutes or an eternity…She heard the roar of an engine, the screech of brakes, the slam of a door. Pounding footsteps. But her shocked mind heard only more danger. Her body curled itself into a tight, trembling ball, and Deputy Daggett had to almost lift her bodily up off the sidewalk, repeatedly shouting her name, before she was able to comprehend that salvation truly was at hand.
“Go, go,
