Maybe Dottie Ann had seen what Sam had not; that Lizzie would grow into the beauty before him, that even as a child the barely teenage girl had something Dottie Ann never would. Quality. Character. Heart.
“I’ll read the letters and start doing some research.” Maybe Lizzie was right to be concerned. After his wife had run away from home like a petulant teenager, leaving her husband and her eight-year-old daughter behind, Charlie hadn’t exactly been the best judge of women. His heart had been broken and he’d pretty much given up. Some of his girlfriends in those early single-father years would’ve given Dottie Ann a run for her money, and Monica Yates had been among the worst.
“When can I start painting?” Lizzie surveyed his office, mentally dissecting the room.
“This weekend,” he said. The office would be pretty much deserted, so he wouldn’t have to worry about subjecting his employees and clients to paint fumes. By then he’d have all the information Lizzie wanted. He’d hand over the info, she’d slap some paint on the walls, and they could part ways one more time.
She placed a huge and heavy purse on her shoulder, thanked him, and then turned to leave his office. Near the closed door she stopped and turned, pinning calculating eyes on him. Hell, she had Charlie’s eyes, and they saw too much. Always had. Did she see too much now?
“You’ll call me if you find anything before Saturday?”
“Yes. I have all your information.” Address, phone number, cell number.
She nodded. “If I don’t hear from you before then, I’ll see you Saturday morning. Sevenish?”
“In the morning?”
She laughed, and it was nice. Lizzie had a real, unfettered, no-holds-barred laugh. “Yes, in the morning. Too early for you? You have big plans Friday night?”
“No plans,” he said. Though he did like to sleep in on the weekends, if he wasn’t working a case.
“Interesting,” she said, rocking back on her heels a bit. “Sam Travers with no plans for Friday night. My, my, how the world has changed.”
He ignored the bait. “Sevenish it is.”
Maybe if he hadn’t been so strangely intent on Lizzie, he would’ve realized sooner that something was wrong. In the outer office a voice was raised. A door slammed.
And then something crashed. Lizzie’s head snapped around.
Sam rushed to the door and instinctively placed Lizzie behind him. Raised voices in the front office joined yet another crashing, crackling noise. He reached for the semiautomatic he wore in a leather shoulder holster.
“A gun?” Lizzie sounded surprised. She shouldn’t have. Maybe his jacket was cut to hide the fact that he was armed, but she knew what he did for a living. He found people and uncovered secrets. Most people wanted their secrets to remain buried, and now and then they got upset when he dug them up.
“Stay here,” he ordered, but it was too late. He heard quick footsteps in the hallway, as well as his receptionist Marilyn’s crisp order for the man to stop. Sam looked down at Lizzie, hoping she minded better than she had as a child. “Get under the desk.”
“Are you joking?” she asked.
“I don’t joke.” He gave Lizzie a gentle shove that sent her reeling back, and with a sigh she obeyed his order and turned for the desk.
Sam opened the door, the gun in his hand down and casually concealed behind his thigh. He didn’t intend to use it; hadn’t actually shot at anyone for years. But there was no threat like a confidently wielded firearm. “What’s all the commotion?” he asked calmly, his eyes pinned on the man who was striding toward Sam’s office with a baseball bat clutched in one hand.
Jim Skinner, who’d tried to scam an insurance company after “falling” in a chain store in a new upscale shopping center, had not been happy with Sam’s photographs and testimony. You’d think a man who was pretending to be laid up with life-altering injuries would know better than to take his girlfriend out dancing, but some guys weren’t bright.
“You meddling son of a bitch,” Skinner mumbled.
Sam maintained a calm voice. “I was only doing my job, man. Take it easy.”
“Take it easy? How can you tell me to take it easy?”
He raised the baseball bat, and Sam made an easy, smooth move that revealed his weapon. At the sight of the sleek semiautomatic, Skinner went still. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to think he could take on an armed man with a bat. “Big man with a gun,” he said softly. “Not that I’m surprised, you lowlife. I’ll bet there are hundreds of people in Birmingham alone that want you dead. You sleep with that thing?”
“Yep.”
Frustrated, Skinner raised his bat and took aim at the hallway wall.
“Stop!”
Sam and Skinner both went still at the sound of Lizzie’s commanding voice.
He was going to kill her. Hadn’t he told her to hide under the desk? She was just like her father. If anything happened to her…
“Who are you?” Skinner asked, obviously annoyed. His eyes flitted from Sam to Lizzie and back again. “Is this your girlfriend?”
“Good heavens, no. I’m the painter,” Lizzie said. “If you put a hole in that wall I’m going to have to patch it, and trust me, that’s not a fun job. Have you ever tried to patch a big hole in the wall? Little holes are no big deal, a bit of putty and sanding and you’re good. But you can never really get a big hole to look right again, no matter what you do.”
“He ruined my life,” Skinner said, his focus on Lizzie. “If I’d gotten that money, my girl wouldn’t have left, and I could’ve paid all my bills and started over. No one would’ve been hurt. These big companies have all kinds of money, and I just wanted a little bit. They never would’ve missed it.”
Lizzie snorted. She was so close behind Sam he could feel her body heat; she all but pressed up against him, glancing around his body to speak to the intruder. He made sure she remained behind him, shielded as much as was possible, given the circumstances.
As usual, she spoke her mind. “If your girl left over money, then she didn’t love you and you’re well rid of her. You look like a healthy, intelligent guy, so I’m sure if you try hard enough you can find a legal way to pay your bills.”
Marilyn and Danny crept up behind Skinner. No one else was in the office this afternoon, just one receptionist and one investigator taking care of paperwork. In the distance, sirens sounded. Marilyn had surely called the police as soon as she’d realized there was going to be trouble.
Skinner heard the sirens grow closer, too, and he panicked. Sam could see the fear on his face. “I don’t want to go to jail.”
“Then you’d better run,” Lizzie said.
Marilyn hung back while Danny took a silent step closer to the man with the baseball bat.
“You all saw me, you’ll report me and I’ll end up in jail. I’m already in enough trouble, thanks to you. I don’t need this.”
Lizzie gave another snort followed by a soft “Well, duh. You’d better run fast and far.”
A panicked Skinner lifted his bat into a threatening position and rushed forward. Sam raised his gun. Danny ran.
And Lizzie slipped her hand around Sam’s body and fired a Taser C2. A purple Taser C2, Sam couldn’t help but note. The small identifying papers flew from the cartridge. The probes found their target—midbody, perfect shot.
Skinner dropped to the ground. He let loose the bat and shook uncontrollably, making noises that spoke volumes about the misery he was in as electric volts worked through his body. He twitched and cursed and drooled. The sirens were now right outside the