“She hears everything,” said Grace, shutting the door behind them.
“Kids.” Shee wasn’t sure why she said it. She didn’t know kids from iguanas. “Do you need anything? Are you getting the checks?”
Grace leaned her butt against the front porch railing, arms crossed against her chest. “I work. Between that and Luke’s insurance—what you send is more than generous. Charlotte doesn’t want for anything, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Grace’s tone took a shift toward snotty.
Shee frowned. “Why do you sound angry?”
Grace picked a piece of lint off her arm. “I don’t know. I guess I sort of resent it when you show up.”
Shee’s eyes widened. “You do?” She’d thought she was the seething one.
“Yes. Every time you stop by it reminds me I’m not her mother by blood. It reminds me Luke and I were never able to have our own child.”
“I didn’t know you felt that way.”
Grace put a hand on Shee’s arm. “It’s not that I’m not grateful. Everything you went through with Charlotte’s birth...I’m more grateful than I could ever—”
Somewhere behind Shee a sharp pop! echoed. Something moved past her cheek, so close and hot it burned. She raised a hand and recoiled, thinking a wasp had stung her, even as her mind screamed that wasn’t the case. Grace’s expression froze, her eyes wide and her jaw slack, as if someone had ripped the batteries out of her back. Her sister’s knees buckled and she collapsed to the ground, clipping the back of her head on the porch railing as she fell.
A red mist hung in the air.
Sniper.
“Grace!”
Shee dropped to a squat to feel her sister’s throat for a pulse, but Grace was dead. There was no question. She’d seen the back of her sister’s head explode into a halo of blood. She shifted the body aside and scrambled into the house as another explosion sent a sliver of wood spinning from the porch railing.
The bullets weren’t meant for Grace.
“Charlotte!” Shee called as she closed and locked the front door.
Whoever shot her sister would be arriving soon to finish the job he’d botched. She had to find the girl and get her to safety.
“Charlotte?” Shee ran from room to room, poking her head in each before moving to the next. She opened the back door and scanned the yard as best she could without sticking her noggin out like a shooting gallery duck.
The girl was gone.
Down the street she heard the sound of kids calling to each other, playing.
There she is.
She had to be playing with the other kids.
Did the assassin know about Charlotte? Would he hunt her down?
She heard the front door rattle and reached for a gun that wasn’t there.
Shit.
She’d left it in the car. Grace had scolded her once before for bringing it into the house.
She slid her phone out of her pocket and called Mick, pleased to hear him answer. She hadn’t been sure he would. He hadn’t totally warmed up to cell phones yet.
“Hey, you done already?” Mick sounded relaxed. Other voices chatted and laughed in the background. She guessed he’d stopped at some tiki bar to wait for her.
“Someone shot Grace.”
“What?”
“Someone shot her. I think they were aiming at me.” She touched her cheek remembering the heat of the bullet tearing past. She looked at her fingertips and found them red with blood. The bullet had grazed her.
“I’m on my way.”
Shee dropped the phone as the glass in the front door shattered.
The assassin would be in the house any second.
I should have grabbed a knife.
She’d run right past a butcher block of knives and hadn’t taken one.
Why bring a knife to a gunfight? Mick liked to say.
Now she had an answer.
Because you left your frickin’ gun in the car.
No time to go back.
She hovered at the back door for a moment and then thought better of escaping. There could be another shooter waiting to pick her off. And the kids playing down the street with Charlotte—she didn’t want to endanger them.
Footsteps creaked in the kitchen and Shee dove for the master bedroom. She left the door open behind her. She’d lose any chance of surprising the shooter if she barricaded herself inside.
Slipping into the en-suite bathroom, she scanned the small, beige-tiled room for a weapon, settling upon a toilet bowl brush and a spray bottle of tile cleaner. As she weighed the pros and cons of swapping the toilet brush for the oversized hair dryer, the floorboards in the hall outside the bedroom creaked.
She threw her back against the closet door that was located in the hall between the entrance to the bath and the bedroom. She took deeper breaths, hoping to slow her pounding heart.
She heard steady footsteps move past the room.
Heavy. Probably a man.
Statistically, the odds favored the assassin being a man. She didn’t subscribe to Assassin Stats Weekly, but knew assassins were often retired military. The male-to-female soldier ratio heavily favored men, and it hadn’t taken the shooter long to reach the front door, so it probably wasn’t an oversized woman—
Stop it. Assume it’s a man. Avoid contests of strength.
She searched for some reflective surface to offer a glimpse of the bedroom entrance, but found nothing.
Is he coming with a rifle or did he switch out for a handgun?
She hoped he’d stuck with the rifle. In close quarters it would be less effective.
The back door creaked and then slammed.
Charlotte.
Shee didn’t know how much the gunman knew. Had he followed her to Grace’s house? Had he been to Grace’s before? Did he know to grab Charlotte and use her as leverage to draw her out of
