To Die For

I didn’t follow the two of them, but I heard him pause in the family room and turn on the television-checking to see if I’d messed with his remote, huh? I gri

I had glasses of iced tea sitting on the table when they came back to the breakfast room. Wyatt picked up one of them and chugged down half of it without pausing for breath, his ta

When he finally lowered the glass, he looked at me and smiled. “Your bread pudding was a hit. The pan was empty within thirty minutes, and everyone was on a sugar high.”

“Did you make doughnut bread pudding?” Je

Wyatt smirked. “It just so happens two were made, and one of them is still in the refrigerator. Want some?”

She accepted with all the enthusiasm of a hungry wolf, and Wyatt pulled the pan out of the fridge. I turned to the cabinet and got out two saucers and two spoons. “Aren’t you having some?” Je

“No. I can’t work out right now, so I have to watch what I eat.” I wasn’t having any fun doing it, either; I would much rather work out for an hour or two every day instead of counting calories. I wanted some of that bread pudding, but it wasn’t as if I’d never again have any-just not right now.

We all sat at the table while Wyatt and Je

“The forensics team did find a footprint in the dirt behind your condo, and we ran it through analysis. It’s a woman’s athletic shoe-”

“Probably mine, then,” I said, but he shook his head.

“Not unless you wear size eight and a half, and I know damn well you don’t.”

He was right. I wore six and a half; none of the women in my family wore that size shoe. Mom was a six, and Siana and Je

“I thought you said it probably wasn’t a woman trying to kill me,” I said accusingly.

“I still don’t think it is. Sniper fire and tampering with a car’s brakes just aren’t generally the way a woman would go about it.”

“So the shoe print probably doesn’t mean anything?”

“Probably not. I wish it did.” He rubbed his eyes.

“I can’t hide out forever.” I didn’t say it accusingly, just stating a fact. I had a life, and if I couldn’t live it, then this creep had killed me in one sense even if he hadn’t managed to kill my body.

“Maybe you won’t have to,” Je

My jaw dropped so far it almost hit the floor. “What?” I squeaked. Never in a hundred years would I have expected Je

“Let me do this for you,” she begged, and to my surprise tears welled in her eyes. “Let me make it up to you for what I did. I know you’ve never forgiven me and I don’t blame you; I was a selfish bitch and didn’t think how much I’d be hurting you, but I’ve grown up, I truly have, and I want us to be close the way you and Siana are close.”

I was so flabbergasted I couldn’t think of anything to say, and that’s not an everyday occurrence. I opened my mouth, then closed it again when my brain remained in neutral.

“I was jealous of you,” she continued, still talking fast, as if she had to get it all out before her courage failed. “You were always so popular and even my friends thought you were the coolest person they knew; they all tried to do their hair like yours, and buy the shade of lipstick you wore. It was sickening.”

Now there was the Je

“You were the best cheerleader, you were cute, you were athletic, you were the class salutatorian, you went to college on a cheerleading scholarship, you pulled down really good grades and got a degree in business administration, and you married the handsomest guy I’d ever seen,” she wailed. “He’s going to be governor someday, maybe a senator or even president, and he fell into your hand like a ripe plum! I was so jealous, because no matter how pretty I am I’ll never be able to do everything you did and I thought Mom and Dad loved you more. Even Siana loves you more! So that’s why when Jason made a pass at me, I took him up on it; because if he was looking at me, then it must be because you weren’t that great after all, and I was.”

“What happened?” Wyatt interjected quietly.

“Blair caught Jason and me kissing,” she confessed in a wretched tone. “That’s all it was, and that was the first time, but everything blew up at once and they got divorced. It’s all my fault, and I want to make it up to her.”

“You’ll have to find another way,” he said, his words matter-of-fact. “There’s no way in hell I’d set up either you or Blair as bait. If we used that plan at all, one of our female officers would masquerade as Blair. We’d never risk a civilian.”

Je

“There must be something I can do,” she said, and a tear streaked down her face. She looked pleadingly at me.

“Well, let’s see.” By this time I’d found my voice. I tapped my bottom lip with a fingernail while I thought. “You could wash my car every Saturday for the next year-after I get a car, that is. Or you could regrout my bathroom, because I really hate doing that.”

She blinked at me as if she couldn’t quite make her mind wrap itself around what I was saying. Then she giggled. In the middle of the giggle she hiccuped a sob, and that was a very strange sound combination. It startled me into my own giggle-which I’ve tried hard to stop doing because of the image thing. I’m blond; I really shouldn’t giggle.

Anyway, we ended up hugging and laughing, and she apologized five or six times, and I told her she was family and I’d choose her over Jason Carson any day because he was a lowlife bastard who made a pass at his seventeen-year-old sister-in-law and I was better off without him.

Whew. Family dramas wear me out.

Wyatt had to take Je