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T ess

“You are not Sheriff Reynolds’ wife, and I want you out of my shop,” I said, reaching for the baseball bat I kept behind the counter.

“You can’t have him!” she shouted. “I’m the only one who’s good for him. Once I get rid of that horrible woman he married?—”

“She’s not horrible! She volunteers at the library!”

I’d learned that yelling completely irrelevant details at an attacker sometimes caught them off guard.

Three guesses how I’d learned that .

It worked this time, too. She stopped walking and stared at me with a puzzled look on her face, her head cocked to the side in what I thought of, since Pickles, as the puggy head tilt.

“What are you talking about?”

I held my bat up to show her. “Nothing. Listen, I have a boyfriend. Jack Shepherd. The guy you left the threatening voice mail messages for.”

She circled to the left, and I could see from her tense muscles she was preparing to rush me. “Those weren’t threats. They were gentle warnings.”

“Okay. Sure. Consider this a gentle warning from me: get out of my shop, and I won’t hurt you with this bat.”

“It’s too late for that!” Her eyes were wild, and her pupils were dilated. Maybe she was on drugs?

She glared at me. “I had to kill Quark. He was going to fight Paul for the alpha spot. I had to take him out. After I get rid of you and that useless Vicki, Paul and I can be together. Forever.”

Her voice turned sing-songy. “Forever and ever and ever. Just like we always dreamed about.”

One thing I’d learned in my true crime and psychology reading was that damaging a delusional person’s fantasies could turn dangerous, fast. So, I wasn’t about to tell her Sheriff Reynolds wanted nothing to do with her.

But I had a question on a different topic. “Kay, are you a member of NACOS?”

She did the head tilt thing again. “What?”

“Does the name Barstow mean anything to you?”

“The town in California?”

“What? No. General Barstow.”

She shook her head. “No. And quit stalling. I need to kill you now so I can get on with my day.”

She said that like I’d say, oh, sure, don’t want to hold you up, just kill me now .

I clutched the bat tighter. “Kay?—”

She leaped clear over my counter and wrenched the bat away from me.

That’s when I saw my life flash before my eyes. “Kay! Please, I don’t have anything to do with Sheriff Reynolds!”

“Then why did he go to your house?” she screamed, so much frustrated anger in her voice it made me shake.

“Because that’s where you killed his deputy!” I screamed right back. And then, before she could rip my throat out, I closed my eyes and blasted her right in the face with the pepper spray I also kept beneath my counter.

By the time I heard sirens, I’d put on my box-opening gloves and wrapped Kay up in so much duct tape she was never getting free. I’d also poured water over her eyes to flush them out, because I wasn’t a monster. Then I unlocked my door, made a few phone calls, and settled in to wait. When Jack burst through the door right in front of Susan, I was sitting on my counter, watching Kay struggle and resisting the urge to kick her in the ribs.

Okay. I wasn’t a monster, but I maybe had a few monster-ish tendencies. She had tried to kill me, after all.

Jack strode straight over to me, lifted me into his arms, and hugged the breath out of me, and then Sheriff Reynolds rushed into the shop.

“Jack. Jack! Can’t breathe!”

“Don’t care,” he said into my hair, and then he kissed me as if he’d almost lost me.

When I realized he had almost lost me, I kissed him back, ignoring Susan, the stalker, and even Sheriff Reynolds for a minute.

After that, it was all about the details.

Susan and Andy took Kay into custody, since it would be a conflict of interest for Reynolds to do it.

Reynolds apologized to me and thanked me, over and over, until I signaled Jack to steer him out of the shop and get rid of him by promising we’d come to a barbecue soon and look at his sports memorabilia.

When Jack came back in, I was cleaning up. Kay the stalker had knocked some things off the shelves when she attacked me.

“I ought to send her a bill,” I said darkly.

“I’m sure Reynolds would pay it,” Jack said. “He’s so thankful you caught her. She was threatening to kill his wife next.”

“I know.” I put the broom aside and sighed. “Life’s too short for all that drama, you know? Why couldn’t Kay just find somebody new and leave Reynolds alone?”

Jack stared at me as if I’d started speaking an alien language.

“Jack?”

“You’re right,” he said slowly. “Life’s too short. Tess, can you wait here at the shop? It’s four-thirty, and I need to make a couple of phone calls.”

“Well, I was planning to close up now. You have your truck here, so you don’t need me to drive, and?—”

“Thirty minutes! Thanks! Don’t go anywhere.” He kissed me, hard, and hugged me. And then he raced out to his truck, but he didn’t drive away, he just picked up his phone.

Shrugging, I started cleaning again. I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but thirty minutes wasn’t very long. If it made him happy for me to wait, I’d do it.

I put the CLOSED sign on the door, though.

I’d had enough excitement for one day.

Fifteen minutes later, cars started streaming into my parking lot. When I walked out to the porch to see what in the world was going on, Jack ran up the stairs, kissed me again, and went back inside the shop. I followed him in, only to see him haul the ladder out and set it up directly beneath the disco ball.

“Jack! What are you doing?”

He looked at me and pointed to the earplugs in his ears. “Can’t hear you,” he shouted.

I held my hands over my ears, just in case, and watched in astonishment while he lifted the heavy ball off its hook, carried it carefully down the ladder, and walked out the door with it.

“Oh! Don’t get rid of it, Jack! I can sell that to a magical items collector.”

But he carried it over to his truck, which now sat in the middle of dozens of cars, with more driving into the parking lot every minute. There were even cars parking on the shoulders of the road and people walking from there toward the shop.

Two men—were those the Petersons?—were helping Jack put together an odd metal-framed tripod-looking thing in the bed of his truck. When they accomplished that, they carefully hung the disco ball from a hook at its apex.

I just stood and stared, my mouth hanging open, while what looked like most of the population of Dead End arrived at my pawnshop.

Then my Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike showed up and parked right in front of me on the sidewalk, since there wasn’t any other room for his truck, and Shelley jumped out and raced over to Jack.

“IS IT TIME? IS IT TIME, JACK?”

Jack smiled at me with his heart in his eyes. “It’s time, Shelley.”

He reached over and switched on the disco ball.

And then hundreds of Dead Enders did the Chicken Dance right there in my parking lot.