Page 77 of Guilty as Sin
She didn’t have to. “I knew the woman I was with,” Jace said. “Even if I didn’t know her name. Will that work?”
Lily’s relieved sigh came right over the line. “Yes. Good.”
Paige had, somehow, polished off most of her scrambled eggs during all that. She’d been hungrier than she’d thought. Now, she picked up a lovely buttery toast finger, made with Jace’s wonderful bread, and said, “Selling or not selling doesn’t matter. That’s not what this is about. If my head weren’t so fuzzy, I would’ve figured it out quicker, but I kept falling asleep. Also, Jace is distracting.”
He looked at her, that smile lurking again, and she told him, “If you want a woman who doesn’t kiss and tell, don’t pick a twin.”
“Good to know,” he said. “Fortunately, I have confidence in the outcome of my fitness report.”
“I want to know more,” Lily said, “but not while he’s on the phone. For heaven’ssake,Paige.”
“Lily’s the tactful one,” Paige told Jace, and this time, he wasn’t holding the grin back.
“Got that,” he said. “No dramas.”
Paige said, “One second, baby. I’m finishing this breakfast.” When she’d eaten her toast, she said, “OK. Somebody’s vandalized your shop, and they got a few of your chickens killed, too. I’m sorry about that. Jace has a plan for helping us fix it, and I think he’s doing it soon.” She looked at him. “Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, the smile vanishing. “I am. Supplies arriving today. I’ll get your house and shop kitted out, no worries.”
“Wait,” Lily was saying. “They killed my chickens?”
“Yes,” Paige said. “But I don’t think that’s who hit me. I think that was somebody else. And I’ll tell you why.”
Jace sat back against the headboard and listened to his non-shopkeeping, non-goat-owning, non-beekeeping non-neighbor lay out her thought process. With a concussion.
How he’d ever thought this woman could be anything but what she was—that was the question. The human mind was capable of some mighty feats of rationalization.
She told her sister—therealLily, whom Jace could envision, no doubt wearing something effortlessly feminine, looking as ethereal and perfect as Paige somehow never managed—“The first thing you need to know is that Jace has a stalker.”
“Another stalker?” Lily asked. “Or the same person?”
“See?” Paige said. “That’s it. That’s the question. Another stalker, almost certainly. Entirely different motivation. At least I think so. Mine’s got to be motivated by getting me—you—to sell. At least I’ve assumed they are. Jace’s is personal, and it sure sounds like a woman. She’s escalated fast, and she’s invaded his space. Broken into his house, even, which is pretty significant. It also shows us that she’s physically here. Living here, or living close by. And I think she could have attacked me.”
“But you said my chickens got killed,” Lily objected. “That my shop window got broken. That’s invading my space. Why wouldn’t they have hit you, too? Or why wouldn’t it be the same person? Breaking the shop window, killing the chickens,anddoing… whatever to Jace?”
“But you see,” Paige said, “the person didn’t actually kill the chickens. Not hands-on. And by the way, your window’s getting fixed. Today.” Jace made a note to check on that. “And we’re doing the greatest sale. Remind me to tell you. So don’t worry.”
“Would youquittelling me not to worry? I’m not worried about mywindow.”Paige might think Lily was sweeter than she was, and maybe she was, but right now? She didn’t sound all that sweet to him.
“All right,” Paige said. “Fine. Maybe all of it’s been the same person. If it is, it’s Jace’s, not mine. Or rather—I don’t have a stalker.Wehave a stalker. I’m pretty sure Jace’s stalker is jealous of me.”
Jace said, “She implied that. More than once.” He managed to get the words out even through that freezing prickling of your scalp when you realized the danger that had been there all along. When you saw the enemy and finally recognized him for what he was.
Or whatshewas.
“Tobias was here last night,” he said. “My dog,” he explained to Lily. “My stalker’s a risk taker, but she’s not that big a risk taker. She hasn’t come farther than the front porch when Tobias or I have been home. She knows what I used to do. I’m too hard a target. Paige isn’t, or the person doesn’t think so.” Might not be a bad idea, he thought, to makesureshe knew what he’d used to do. And that nobody was going to be an easy target, not if he had anything to say about it.
“Right,” Paige said. “On the one hand, you don’t have alarms or cameras here, Jace, and neither do I. But everybody knows the cops will take a while to show up to an alarm, and who’s going to look at that blurry security footage? The cops aren’t putting in overtime matching it against photos of convicted burglars and finding their last known addresses, I’ll tell you that. Unless the homeowner recognizes their teenage kid’s lowlife buddy, good luck. And you’re remote up here. No neighbors to look out their kitchen windows. But a big dog? A scary breed? An arrest might or might not happen in the future, and they’re betting on ‘might not.’ But a big dog will bite you rightnow.”
“OK,” Lily said, “but—”
“And Idon’thave a big dog,” Paige said. “There my place is, empty all day. I mean your place, Lily. When did Jace’s stalker come into his house? After he spent the night at mine. And when did I get hit? When he was with me again. When he went to the gym with me. For the third time. And last night was different. That was apersonalattack. About as personal as you can get. When you hit somebody in the head? That’s more personal than a gunshot. That’s trying to wipe them out. Their face. Their head. Theirself.”
Lily said, “Oh, no.” Faintly.
Paige said, “She didn’t wipe me out, so don’t worry.” Which Jace thought was pretty cavalier of her, but which wasn’t too different from all the things he’d said to his mum. Downplaying the danger didn’t mean you weren’t aware of it. It meant you didn’t want the people you loved to worry about it. “And it didn’thaveto be a woman,” Paige went on, “but itwasthe woman’s locker room. A man would have a job convincing people he’d, what? Wandered in there in the dark? Suspicion falling on him right there, bingo. And I don’t believe the person seized an opportunity, either, after a mysterious power failure. Maximum of fifteen seconds after the lights went out, and I was in a curtained cubicle. The person had to know where I was, to be holding whatever they hit me with, to get to me fast, and then to look innocent again by the time the lights came back on. They either turned out the lights, or they worked with somebody who did.”
“That second part,” Jace said. “That looks more likely. That’s the problem with your scenario, and you know it. My stalker’s one person. How many people want Lily out, do you know?”
