Return to the Shadows by Angie West

far when he
set foot on your property the first time.”
    “Well, the police are investigating now.
Jones wouldn’t tell me what they planned on doing, just that a
patrol car would make the rounds past my house once each night for
the next few days. Stay inside, keep the doors locked. The usual, I
guess you could say.”
    “I just thought of something, Claire.”
    “What’s that?” I added liberal portions of
cream and sugar to my coffee cup and focused on my brother.
    “What if revenge isn’t the motive for Earl
coming back here? Or at least, what if it isn’t the only thing
motivating him?”
    “I don’t follow. What else is there?”
    “What else? Money. Who paid him to go after
you before?”
    “Well, they weren’t able to prove it, but I
think we all know who to thank for that one.”
    “John.”
    “Exactly. The worm. If you ask me, fifty
years wasn’t a long enough prison sentence for that man.”
    “He will probably be out on parole in ten
years,” Mike snorted.
    “That’s our luck lately, isn’t it?” I sighed.
“Do you really think he is still trying to get to us, Mike?”
    “I don’t know, Claire, but it’s worth looking
into, don’t you think? The prison where he’s serving his time is
not all that far away. What do you think?”
    “I think if he could be trusted to tell us
the truth, it might be worth our time. But John is a liar and has
been from day one when he was married to Megan.”
    “Maybe you’re right.”
    “I know I’m right on this, Mike. As tempting
as it might be, seeing John would accomplish nothing.”
    “Actually, it’s not all that tempting.”
    “Yeah, I don’t relish the thought of spending
my Friday night in a prison either.”
    “We still have to do something.”
    “Like what? Investigate ourselves? Amateur
sleuth work?” I shook my head. “No, let the police handle it.
That’s their job. Besides, we already know what happened. Obviously
someone made a mistake last year. Earl Atkins didn’t die at that
hospital. And apparently he is holding a grudge. But who makes a
mistake like that? The police were involved in that case too.”
    “They investigated his death as a homicide. I
remember.”
    “That’s right, but the case was closed
without ever having been solved. The best they could figure was
that Earl was killed when the other men who were in my house with
him turned on him for some unknown reason. My name was never
mentioned, thank God.”
    “What about the other one? The one you
shot.”
    “They never found him. No blood. No gun.
Nothing. But there were two other sets of prints found in the house
besides Earl’s.” I frowned.
    “No, not that. I meant the man that you shot,
where is he? Where has he been all this time?”
    “What am I, clairvoyant?”
    “Funny. But don’t you ever wonder where he
is?” Mike leaned forward anxiously.
    “No,” I was quick to assure him. “I try not
to think of him at all.”
    “What if he is a part of this thing that’s
happening now?”
    “I don’t know. And short of him knocking on
the door and announcing ‘here I am,’ I don’t see how we could ever
find that out. But we know that Earl was definitely here. As for
the third man, well, I never even saw him. So I doubt that he has
any reason to be angry with me. At least, not angry enough to want
to harm me or Ashley.”
    “Unless he was Earl’s brother. Either one of
them, half-brother, maybe. Or gay lover.”
    I very nearly choked on my coffee and quickly
shoved the mug aside. “Gay lover?” I wheezed, trying to remember if
I’d ever heard of a pair of assassins that would match that
description.
    “Okay, so maybe that is a stretch.” Mike
interrupted my thought. “But you have to consider the possibility
that the two, or three, of them were connected somehow, which would
lend itself to our motive for revenge theory.”
    “Oh!” I pressed cool fingers to my temples.
“No, I do not. You’re giving me a headache.”
    “Sorry. I’m