Inked

moved in what she hoped was a nod.
    She straightened, sat, and swung her legs up to her chest—hard squeeze to get them fully twisted around in this tight space, but she made it, letting them dangle out the opening. She dropped, weapon out.
    Nothing. No one fired, no one came running out of some previously unnoticed hidey-hole. Two quick steps took her to Rule. She knelt and put her hand on his neck—his clean-skinned neck. No tattoo.
    His pulse was strong. She kept her weapon out, her eyes scanning the area. What the hell was going on?
    The scuff of feet. A woman’s voice, too low for her to catch the words. The sounds came from the opening to the cul-de-sac—a wide opening, not a narrow, slither-through-it crevice. From the trail beyond—and not very far down that trail.
    With her empty hand she tapped her head once: stay put.
    Question was, did she do the same, or try to ambush whoever was coming? She did not like leaving Rule stretched out, helpless and unaware—but logic said he’d be safest with his kidnapper caught, and the best way to catch her was by surprise.
    Lily stood and started for the side of the cul-de-sac that would screen her from whoever was approaching. And stepped on a damned pebble. It slid under her, making her jerk to regain her balance—making her make noise, dammit to hell. She froze, listening.
    The voice was silent. The footsteps had stopped.
    Never mind stealth, then. Lily swung out around the rocky wall, weapon held out in both hands. “FBI! Freeze! Hands up!”
    Two women, not one, looked back at her. One was Mariah Friar, her eyes huge in her pallid face. The other was taller, older, heavier, with dusky skin and dark brown hair in a wild froth of curls halfway down her back. She wore jeans and a snug, short-sleeved black sweater.
    With one arm, she kept Mariah’s arm pinned high behind her back. Her other hand kept her snub-nose Beretta jammed under Mariah’s chin. Her eyes were tilted and smiling, as were her full lips. “Maybe you should freeze, too, FBI.”
    Now it made sense. Crazy sense, maybe, but Lily knew she should have figured it out the second she spotted those damned rose petals. Adele had watched too many episodes of Murder She Wrote. She thought she could stage a murder-suicide. Lily could read the script the woman had written: Mariah lured Rule here for sex. Rule, being lupus, accepted. Mariah—for what reason, Lily wondered?—killed him instead of fucking him, then shot herself.
    No doubt Adele would have supplied some kind of motive, given time.
    “You’ve got a problem, Adele. Your little plan to kill a couple more people to distract me didn’t work.” Lily shook her head. “And your staging sucks. A romantic tryst on rocks? What were you thinking?”
    The woman’s eyes flashed, but her smile didn’t budge. “You don’t think it’s a pretty setting? I’m crushed—or would be, but your presence here makes your opinion less important than it was. It seems we will have an even worse tragedy than I’d originally thought.”
    “How’re you going to manage that, Adele? If you shoot Mariah, I shoot you. If you move that gun so you can shoot me, I shoot you. Seems like you wind up dead no matter what—unless you put that gun down.”
    “Oh, you’re tough, aren’t you? Not so tough you’ll stand there and let me shoot poor little Mariah, though.” She jammed the gun harder into that terribly vulnerable spot, her face twisting with hate. Mariah whimpered. “Shut up, Mariah. God, but I’m so sick of your whiny little feelings. All that sweet, sweet neediness of yours seducing Steve…”
    Suddenly she laughed. “You want to know how to lie to an empath, FBI? All you have to do is mean it when you say it. She can only read what you’re feeling right that moment, so if you keep the hate pushed down deep, she doesn’t know.”
    “I knew.” Mariah’s’ voice was thin and shaky, but clear. “I knew how jealous you were, but the friendship was real, too. You know it was.”
    “Shut up.” She jerked Mariah’s arm higher, making her cry out. “And you, FBI. Put the gun down. I’ve got nothing to lose. Might as well shoot this little friend of mine, eh?”
    “You’re lying,” Lily said calmly. “You want to live. You shoot her and I shoot you. We’re only ten feet apart. This close, I can go for a head shot, no problem.”
    For the first time, uncertainty flashed across the woman’s face—only for a second, but that sublime, crazy