Page 44 of More Than Meets the Eye

“You are not Sheriff Reynolds’ wife, and I want you out of my shop,” I said, reaching for the baseball bat I kept behind the counter.

“You can’t have him!” she shouted. “I’m the only one who’s good for him. Once I get rid of that horrible woman he married?—”

“She’s not horrible! She volunteers at the library!”

I’d learned that yelling completely irrelevant details at an attacker sometimes caught them off guard.

Three guesses how I’d learnedthat.

It worked this time, too. She stopped walking and stared at me with a puzzled look on her face, her head cocked to the side in what I thought of, since Pickles, as the puggy head tilt.

“What are youtalkingabout?”

I held my bat up to show her. “Nothing. Listen, I have a boyfriend. Jack Shepherd. The guy you left the threatening voice mail messages for.”

She circled to the left, and I could see from her tense muscles she was preparing to rush me. “Those weren’t threats. They were gentle warnings.”

“Okay. Sure. Consider this a gentle warning from me: get out of my shop, and I won’t hurt you with this bat.”

“It’s too late for that!” Her eyes were wild, and her pupils were dilated. Maybe she was on drugs?

She glared at me. “I had to kill Quark. He was going to fight Paul for the alpha spot. I had to take him out. After I get rid of you and that useless Vicki, Paul and I can be together. Forever.”

Her voice turned sing-songy. “Forever and ever and ever. Just like we always dreamed about.”

One thing I’d learned in my true crime and psychology reading was that damaging a delusional person’s fantasies could turn dangerous, fast. So, I wasn’t about to tell her Sheriff Reynolds wanted nothing to do with her.

But I had a question on a different topic. “Kay, are you a member of NACOS?”

She did the head tilt thing again. “What?”

“Does the name Barstow mean anything to you?”

“The town in California?”

“What? No. General Barstow.”

She shook her head. “No. And quit stalling. I need to kill you now so I can get on with my day.”

She said that like I’d say,oh, sure, don’t want to hold you up, just kill me now.

I clutched the bat tighter. “Kay?—”

She leaped clear over my counter and wrenched the bat away from me.

That’s when I saw my life flash before my eyes. “Kay! Please, I don’t have anything to do with Sheriff Reynolds!”

“Then why did he go to your house?” she screamed, so much frustrated anger in her voice it made me shake.

“Because that’s where you killed his deputy!” I screamed right back. And then, before she could rip my throat out, I closed my eyes and blasted her right in the face with the pepper spray I also kept beneath my counter.

By the time I heard sirens, I’d put on my box-opening gloves and wrapped Kay up in so much duct tape she wasnevergetting free. I’d also poured water over her eyes to flush them out, because I wasn’t a monster. Then I unlocked my door, made a few phone calls, and settled in to wait. When Jack burst through the door right in front of Susan, I was sitting on my counter, watching Kay struggle and resisting the urge to kick her in the ribs.

Okay. I wasn’t a monster, but I maybe had a few monster-ish tendencies. Shehadtried to kill me, after all.

Jack strode straight over to me, lifted me into his arms, and hugged the breath out of me, and then Sheriff Reynolds rushed into the shop.

“Jack. Jack! Can’t breathe!”

---