Page 104 of Gem Warfare

Gideon pressed the gun into my ribs. “Twenty.”

I gulped. “No.”

“I thought you’d say that so I made a backup plan. Your friend is Lily, isn’t she? Such nice, blond hair. Lovely family. Really picture perfect. I bet you’d miss her.”

Fear chilled me. “Lily? There’s no way you could get to Lily.” But even as I said it, I wasn’t sure. I’d posted her outside the Dugans’ house. Gideon could have seen her.

“You think I meant Lily? No, the ‘her’ I meant is Poppy. Cute, little thing.”

I paled. My head swam as nausea filled me. “What?” I whispered, the word choking in my throat.

“I have someone watching her as we speak. If you’re not backwith the jewels in twenty minutes, poor, little Poppy is going to disappear. Poof!” His breath was warm against my cheek.

“But I…”

“No ifs, no buts, just get in there and… ooof!” Gideon’s eyes swiveled then rolled upwards. He lurched against me but before I could push him off, he sank to his knees and keeled to the ground, hitting the pavement like a dead weight.

I looked up into a woman’s eyes. The same eyes I’d seen only a short time ago. The face I thought I’d mistaken.

“I knew it!” I said and punched the air.

“You’re welcome.” The woman’s lips slid into a half smile. She nudged Gideon with the toe of her sneaker. Slumped on the ground, he didn’t make a sound.

“Who are you?” I asked. Her visage was the same. Same high cheekbones, set into a sweetheart face. Yet she looked completely different from the woman in uniform. The blues were gone and the pointed cap and sunglasses. Hair longer now, and blonde, falling around her shoulders. She wore fitted jeans and a frilly, peach blouse with neat, pointed pumps that I recognized from my wish list. Her jewelry was understated and elegant, just a couple of gold chains around her neck and studs in her ears.

Was this the real her? Or another version, another disguise? I wasn’t sure I’d ever know.

I wasn’t even sure why she was in front of me right now.

“A better question is what am I doing,” she said, pointing to Gideon’s crumpled body. In her hands, she held a light, retractable, baton. “Saving you, of course.”

I grimaced at the weapon, another one far too close to me, but she didn’t make any move to use the baton further. “Did you kill him?” I asked, stooping to check his pulse at his wrist. The beat was strong but when I peeled back his eyelids, there was no cognition. Gideon was out cold. I removed his fingers from the gun he still held and kicked it along the wall behind me whereneither of them could reach it.

“No, I didn’t hit him nearly hard enough for that. He’s just going to have a snooze on the ground and then a nice, big headache. I heard what he said. Who’s Poppy?”

“My niece.”

“I doubt she’s in any danger. Gid’s not dangerous. Well, not usually. Definitely not to kids. He probably wouldn’t have shot you either.”

“Probably?”

“I doubt it’s loaded. He’s really not a guns man.”

“You seem to know a lot about him.”

She pulled a face. “Unfortunately.”

“I’m going to call Poppy’s mom all the same.” I pulled out my phone and paused. I wanted to know something else first. “I know it was you in the police uniform, coming out of the station.”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” she said but she couldn’t stop the small upwards curve of her lips.

“If you know him, you probably knew he put a tracker on our car,” I said.

“That doesn’t surprise me. I put a tracker on his motorcycle. Gideon always thinks he’s the predator but I’m top of the food chain here.” Again, that flicker of a smile.

“I was interrogating him!”

“Oh, that’s what you were doing.” She tapped her forehead, mocking me. “My bad. Perhaps I shouldn’t have stepped in.”

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