See No Evil by Gayle Roper Page B

everything was normal made all the difference. With a sigh that was a combination of relief and fatigue, I slid down and pulled up the covers. I was asleep in seconds.
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    I was up at eight the next morning, down at the police station by nine, and down in my basement workshop by ten. Lucy and Meg left to run errands, and I sewed. If I was lucky, I’d have almost everything done today. The rug should be down by then, assuming the cops were finished, and I could run to the model and work before the development became deserted. I was not staying there alone ever again.
    Praise music rang from my boom box, and I sang along, almost drowning out the muted roar of the sewing machine. In a momentary pause of both the machine and the CD, a muffled, “Anna, open this door,” sounded.
    What in the world?
    â€œAnna!” A fist beat rhythmically on the front door.
    The music started again and I lunged for the off switch.
    â€œAnna, come on!” The doorbell rang and rang, and knocking continued unabated.
    I hurried upstairs. It sounded like Gray, but why was he banging on my door in the middle of the day?
    I caught sight of myself in the mirror in the front hall. Yikes! I quickly combed my hair with my fingers and stuffed it back in the red rubber band I found in my shorts’ pocket.
    â€œAnna!”
    â€œI’m coming! I’m coming!”
    I threw the door open to find Gray, today wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, looking like an August thundercloud about to hurl lightning bolts at anyone within range. He had the day’s Amhearst News in his hands.
    He stalked into the house. “Look at this!” He shoved the paper at her.
    Staring at me from the front page above the fold was a picture of Ken Ryder, looking stricken. Standing beside him, hand on his shoulder, was Gray, and standing beside Gray, looking heartbroken, was me.
    â€œKen Ryder, husband of victim Dorothy Ryder, being comforted by friends Grayson Edwards and Anna Volente,” read the caption beneath.
    â€œI didn’t even know the picture had been taken,” I said. “That reporter must have done it.”
    Next to the picture were my head sketches of the red-shirted man. Beneath his picture were the words: “Do you know this man? Wanted for questioning in the murder of Dorothy Ryder.”
    I put my forefinger on the face of the red-shirted man. “The drawings reproduced well.”
    â€œThat’s not the only likeness that reproduced well,” Gray muttered. He dragged a hand through his hair.
    I stared at him. “What?”
    He pointed to my face, then to the caption beneath.
    I went cold all over. “He knows who we are.”

FIVE
    D ar Jones was not a happy man, but he also wasn’t a particularly worried one. He just hated that the job hadn’t gone perfectly. He prided himself in being the best hands-on for-hire killer in New Jersey, maybe the whole Northeast. Maybe the entire country.
    He wasn’t one of those prima donnas the movies were fixated on, the guys who used rifles and scopes and elaborate scenarios. He was a good, basic craftsman. Hire him, and your intended target went down quickly and cleanly. No prints. No clues. No DNA. No nothing but a dead body, done up close and personal so there was never any doubt.
    So this time a woman saw him. Granted it irked him. After two weeks of casing the development, he knew that everyone was gone way before seven. Last night was the very first night someone other than the Ryder woman was there at that hour. Who could have guessed?
    But so what? It wasn’t like the woman in the window was a threat or anything. He hadn’t looked like himself. So what if she saw the man with the light brown hair and the bushy mustache? She’d never finger him, not in a million years.
    He ran his hand back over his naturally black, poker-straight hair and smiled to himself as he looked out his oversized window at the Atlantic Ocean rolling