She was studying the card, trying to see more in it, when a noise in the front of the shop made her go still. She’d locked the door after Mrs. Sweet, but it sounded like someone was out there, moving stealthily toward the room where she sat.
She might have called out. Instead she got up and started for the back door. Before she reached it, a man stepped into the room where she was sitting.
He was holding a gun, pointed at her.
“Hold it right there. Hands in the air.”
With no other choice, she raised her hands, studying him. He looked to be in his late thirties. His hair was blond, his eyes were icy blue. She would have noticed him if she’d passed him on the street. There was something in his face that made her shiver. Up close his dangerous aura seemed to pulse around him.
“What do you want?” she asked, struggling to keep her tone even because she sensed that he wanted her to show fear.He liked a woman’s fear. She didn’t have to read his cards to understand that. Not this close to him.
“I’ll ask the questions.”
She swallowed. “I don’t keep much money in the shop.”
“I don’t want money.”
“Then what?” she asked, playing for time. Why? What was going to change in the next few minutes? She couldn’t answer, but she knew it was important to keep him from hurting her yet. Because she sensed something just outside her reach. Something that would help her.
“You know Evelyn Morgan,” he said.
“I don’t know her.”
“You’re lying. Your name was in her day book.”
She raised one shoulder. “She came here. I did a reading for her. That’s all.”
“You’re lying.”
She struggled to keep her voice even. “Why would I lie?”
He made a rough sound. “You know she’s dead, and you don’t want to get involved.”
And he was the man who had killed Ms. Morgan, Rachel knew with sudden conviction.
He kept speaking. “Or you have information that you want to keep to yourself. Either way, we’ll get to the truth. Sit down.”
When she moved to one of the Queen Anne chairs, he gestured toward the ladder back against the wall.
“Over there.”
She sat with her heart thumping inside her chest, watching him as he pulled a set of handcuffs from his pocket and tossed them to her. She caught them and clattered them in her hand.
“Put them on.”
His total focus was on her, so that he didn’t see the flicker of movement behind him.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rachel clanked the metal cuffs in her hand.
“Stop playing with those damn things and put them on!”
She kept moving the metal links in a hypnotic rhythm, willing him to watch her, holding his focus and struggling not to give anything away.
The man who had appeared behind the intruder was Jake Harper, standing like a coiled spring in the doorway, taking in the scene, a grim expression on his face.
She kept her gaze on the guy with the gun. “I don’t know anything about Evelyn Morgan besides what I saw during the reading.”
