Page 29 of Guilty as Sin

Her hand jerked on her coffee cup, spilling hot liquid over herself. She jerked her hand away and swore, and he grabbed a napkin off the counter and handed it to her without saying anything.

“I’m getting a security company in to look at the store,” she said. “I was doing it anyway. I just stepped up the priority. To install cameras, and now? To check for them, too.”

“Because of the incident yesterday,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Why only now? Surely that’s happened before. You seemed to catch it so fast. And—wait. Why a woman who hasn’t had a baby? What? I didn’t think all women got stretch marks.”

“Areolae. They look different in women who’ve had babies or not. And your breasts change in other ways.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said, “that a lingerie store owner would know so much.”

“Bra fitting. Obviously,” she added.

“And—mutt? A profiler? Do you read a lot of true crime?”

“I know a cop,” she said after a long pause.

“Usually means, ‘My boyfriend’s a cop.’ Tell me it’s not that.”

“All right. I won’t.”

“Lily.”

She breathed. She focused. Lily was the point.Exactlythe point. And the story and those pictures—those were the point, too. Whether it was all connected or not, this wasn’t about her, however close his hard thigh was to hers, however strong the hand was that held his coffee mug. However much controlled intensity she saw in his face.

“You need to take this to the police,” she said. “You need to get it on the record. This is escalation. You had stories mailed, which is one thing, and that could be a fan. But now you’ve had pictures hand-delivered, and an attempt to make contact. I hope I don’t need to tell you not to do that. Men think they can handle things, that they can confront the person, get aggressive, and it’ll end. But stalkers are the same in one way, male or female. It’s a mindset, an obsession. The second you engage, you feed it. Doesn’t matter if the attention’s positive or negative. You feed them, and you’ve just increased your risk. Don’t do it. Go to the cops. Lock your doors. Change your patterns. Consider self-defense.”

She shut up before she could say more. He was looking stunned, and no wonder. He finally said, “Did you have a boyfriend who was a cop?”

She knew how to lie. Why couldn’t she? She looked down, which had her looking at his arm. Chunky black watch. Dark hair. Corded muscle. Too much muscle for a writer. Too much awareness, too much alertness for anything but a very few, very select professions.

“If I answer,” she said, “will you answer me?”

“Yes.”

She looked into his eyes, feeling like she’d been holding her breath too long. “Then—yes.”

Not a movement in his face. “Were you married to a cop?”

She breathed. In and out. “No.”

“Are you married now?”

“No.”

He closed his eyes, opened them again, and she could swear they were bluer. She could see the black shading on his neck where he’d shaved before but hadn’t shaved today. “Your turn,” he said.

She thought for a moment. “Are you really a writer?”

“Yes.”

“What were you before? Exactly?”

His knuckles didn’t tighten on the cup. His eyes didn’t shift. The tone of his voice didn’t change.

“I was a killer.”