Page 13 of Clever Deceit

Right. The last time I was here, when I was newly back in town, I'd had a run-in with Tony McCarthy in this very bakery. He'd made a pass at me and then gotten pushy when I turned him down, and it had led to an all-out fight and me nearly hitting him with my car when I hauled ass down the street. It had been the first time I'd seen him since he’d tried to kill me, back when we were still together and the first time I'd had any contact with him since his father had essentially paid me to leave town and not come back.

I'd come back only because my mom needed me, and seeing Tony had made me realize that I might have created even bigger trouble for both of us. He'd been friendly at first but had become combative very quickly. And he hadn't been shy with his threats.

After that, things had gone downhill quickly. I'd had threats from the cops, who refused to take me seriously when someone broke my windshield, and had opened the door one night to find Tony on my doorstep, ready to threaten me with bodily harm if I didn't do what he wanted. A few nights later, I'd been in Warren's house when it had caught fire. Then Tony had kidnapped me the moment I got out of the house and threatened me again.

Warren had saved me more times since I'd come to town than I cared to count. But he wasn't here to do it right now when I was out in the open.

Luckily, I didn't think I was going to run into Tony again in my very own bakery.

I threw an arm around Amy's shoulders. “I don't see how I could stay away, seeing as how my family owns this place,” I told her, forcing my voice into a light octave. “Besides, this place happens to have the best shortbread around.”

“You should know,” she murmured. “You've eaten your weight in it more than once.”

I giggled, mostly because she was right, and we strolled together toward the counter, each of us talking over the other as we tried to go through all the things that had happened since we'd last seen each other. Amy, as my best friend, knew just about everything when it came to my life, including what Tony had done to me, and when I told her about the house—which she'd heard about—and the nightmares—which she obviously hadn't, she gasped.

Then I told her about the squirrel.

“You're kidding,” she said quietly.

“Unfortunately not. And you'd be surprised how much a dead squirrel on your doorstep can dampen your day.”

“More than dampen it,” she replied. “That's downright horrifying. Did you call the cops?”

“Course not,” I said, pulling her to the opening of the counter with me to where I'd have better access to the cookies. “The cops are all in his pocket.”

And then I launched into the experience Warren and I had had when we tried to report Tony for shoving his way into my house and pinning me against the wall to threaten me. Warren had been there to save me on that occasion as well and had taken me right to the police department to file a report, but the officer on duty had refused to take it.

Instead, he'd laughed in our faces and told us that it didn't sound like any harm had been done.

It had been obvious right from the start that Tony and his father had paid off the local cops to keep them from making any reports, and that made sense now because looking back on my time in the hospital, when everyone had known that Tony had been beating me up, it had been the doctors asking questions.

Not the cops.

The cops had actually been pretty light on the ground, now that I thought about it. It was the doctors who were most concerned about knowing what had happened to me and why I wasn't reporting it.

It was a doctor who had told me when I was out to dinner with Warren that I shouldn't be back in town and that it was dangerous for me.

The cops, I'd learned, didn't really give a damn what happened to me.

Amy shook her head as I stopped talking, her eyes large and hard. “That son of a bitch.”

“More like son of a bastard,” I replied quickly. “I never knew his mom, but I notice she's not exactly in the picture. I'm guessing she figured out exactly who her husband was and got out as quickly as she could.”

Amy snorted, but there was no amusement in the laugh. She looked furious... and protective. “And yet here you are, coming back to town and showing them they can't scare you.”

Showing them they couldn't scare me. Well, at least I was putting on a good mask.

Before I could answer her, someone bumped me hard from behind, sending me stumbling into my best friend. I turned, frowning in surprise at someone being that rude, and saw a man in uniform.

A man in a cop's uniform.

I lifted an eyebrow at him, waiting for him to apologize for having run right into me, but he just stared back at me, his own eyebrows lifted.

“Got a problem, missy?” he sneered.

I had to fight to keep from backing away from him. I didn't know who this guy was, but the way he was sneering at me told me that he knew exactly who I was—or didn't care, which might have been even worse. What kind of cop ran right into someone like that and didn't bother to apologize or even say 'excuse me'?

The kind that knew he had every right to do whatever he wanted. Because someone had told him that this person wasn't someone to be respected.