Party Crashers

asked.
    "Yes," she murmured. "But I need to go."
    "Okay. Nice talking to you."
    Jolie disconnected the call, completely numb. She had to call Salyers. She flipped up the phone.
    "Drop the phone, Jolie."
    She looked over the rail and her heart stalled at the sight of Leann holding a handgun pointed up at her.
    "I said drop it."
    Jolie obeyed and the phone bounced down several steps. Leann hadn't told her to, but for some reason, it just felt right to hold her arms up while having a gun trained on her heart.
    "That was my sister, wasn't it? I heard the tail end of your conversation. Did you call her?"
    Jolie searched for her voice and found it cowering behind her liver. "No. Sh-She called me. I s-sent her a sympathy card. She was confused."
    "Ah." Leann laughed. "I'd forgotten how damn polite you are." Her smile was squinty and mean. "It must have been one of the things that Gary loved about you."
    "I d-don think Gary was in love with me."
    "Sure he was," Leann said. "I could tell. Remember the day we all floated down the river? I could tell by the way he was around you."
    Oh, God—she had invited them both. Although, in hindsight, Leann had finagled an invitation, no doubt gleeful at being able to torment him all day, reminding him that she could cozy up to any future girlfriend, keep tabs on him
    "The fire at his apartment?" Jolie asked.
    "Me," Leann said, proudly.
    "The X on my face in the photograph?"
    "Me."
    "The lipstick note to Gary?"
    "Me, me, me."
    And she'd thought Hannah was scary. "Leann, I don't know how you found me, but my client will be here any minute. Why don't you put down the gun before someone gets hurt."
    "You mean Beck Underwood? The man you took up with before Gary was even in the ground? He's not coming."
    "The call from his secretary?"
    "Me."
    Okay, now she was truly terrified. Alone in the house with a crazed gunwoman, and no one around except Realtor Barbie, who was probably lost somewhere in the right wing. And her arms were getting really, really tired. She seriously needed to work on her upper body strength.
    "Leann, what do you want?"
    "You, dead." Quick and to the point.
    "What will that accomplish, except to mess up your life?"
    Leann smiled. "It will mess up your life. Gary and I could have been together if you hadn't come along."
    Out of corner of her eye, Jolie saw Sammy walking in front of the house, hands on hips, scowling at the dusty domestic car that Leann had arrived in. She must have found a back staircase and was walking the grounds.
    "Leann, can we talk about this? If I had known you were in love with Gary, I would never—"
    "Shut up. I tried to like you, I truly did. Sometimes, I did like you. Do you know how many times I could have hurt you? Gary threatened me not to, but he's gone now. Come down here."
    "I don't think—"
    Leann fired a round into the wall behind Jolie.
    "Okay," Jolie said. "I'm coming." She started down the stairs, half relieved, half terrified when she realized that the shot had caught Sammy's attention. The woman scowled at the house and was no doubt thinking of ways to keep out the riffraff agents and the lookey-loos. And she must have thought of something, because she was charging toward the house, a thundercloud on her brow.
    Jolie was halfway down the stairs when Sammy pushed open the door like a bad wind, catching Leann between the shoulder blades. The gun went off as Leann went down—Jolie heard the zwing of the bullet going past her head.
    "Sammy, she has a gun!" Jolie yelled.
    But Sammy barely missed a beat as she stepped on Leann's back, reached into her Prada bag, and came out with her own gun, long and blue and a caliber that Clint Eastwood might carry. "Mine's new and it's bigger." She dug the heel of her Manolo Blahnik ankle-tie suede pump into Leann's spine. "I don't know who you are, but move and I'll blow your effing head off."
    "She killed Gary," Jolie gasped, reaching for her dropped phone to dial 911.
    Sammy glared down at her detainee. "You ruined my Ralph Lauren comforter. You're going to have to pay for that."

Chapter Twenty-six

    "IT’S LIKE, I CAN’T DECIDE between the Ferragamo wedges and the Stuart Weitzman boots, you know?"
    Kneeling on carpet-burned knees, Jolie peered at the tortured coed over a mountain of boxes. "Why don't you take both and decide when you get home? You can always return a pair later—just don't wear them outside."
    The young woman's shoulders fell in relief. "You're right . I'll take them