Page 5 of Paranoid

“Let’s get out of here,” Rachel said, and didn’t wait for a response. She wasn’t going to wait for Lila or risk getting hurt. Rounding the staircase, she started for the main door. If she had to she’d walk back to her house, alone in the dark. Another spray of pellets. Sparks flying, firecrackers sounding like real shots.

“I’m coming,” Violet said. “Oh, man, my leg—ow! Shit! Ow! Stop it!”

This was crazy. With her free hand, Rachel grabbed Violet’s arm. “Hurry,” she said, but all of a sudden they were under attack, guns going off, rounds fired, sparks flaming, strings of lit firecrackers booming and leaving smoke behind. “Move it!” she yelled to Violet as another burst of pellets screamed past, one pellet grazing her shoulder, another hitting her cheek and stinging. “Damn it.”

Another barrage.

She didn’t think twice, just shot back, moving toward the door.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

The firecrackers and gunshots echoed through the building.

“Aaaagh!” A male voice cried out. “What the hell? Oh, Jesus! I—I’ve been hit!”

Luke?

She froze. Something in his tone.

Violet screamed, a shrill, horrified sound.

Rachel turned to see her brother in the gloom. His face ashen, his eyes wide, blood staining the front of his shirt.

His knees gave out.

He fell to the floor and Violet’s screams tore through the building.

Rachel dropped the gun.

CHAPTER 1

Edgewater, Oregon

Now

“Why not?” Violet Sperry poured herself another glass of wine and sank back into the thick pillows on the bed. She posed the question to her small dog, Honey, a silky Cavalier King Charles spaniel who was watching her from her doggy bed as Violet finished off the bottle. As if the dog could understand. But it was better than talking to yourself. At least she thought so. Or was it just as crazy to talk to the dog? She’d left one window open a crack, and a soft spring breeze was lifting the curtains as it swept into the room and brought with it the scent of honeysuckle, which blended with the heady aroma of the Merlot.

She swirled the glass and smiled at the glorious purple liquid before taking a satisfying sip of the oh-so-smooth wine. This would be her last glass. No matter what. She would not head downstairs and open another bottle. No, no, no. She set the empty one behind the lamp on her bedside table. She’d get rid of it—the “evidence”—tomorrow before Leonard returned.

Leonard.

Her husband of over fifteen years.

Once a slim athlete with a quick smile and thick brown hair, Leonard had been a man with a future when she’d met him, a man who was going to take on the world. He’d swept her off her feet and, really, he’d been the reason she’d moved past the trauma of the night of Luke Hollander’s death. She’d been there twenty years ago. She’d seen him die. God, it was awful. She should never have gone to that damned cannery. She’d snuck out that night just to score points with Luke Hollander. Had she really intended to tell him that she was in love with him? He would have laughed her right out of that horrid old building. She hadn’t been the only one with a major crush on Rachel Gaston’s brother, or half brother or whatever he’d been.

Water under the bridge. Or maybe under the pier where that awful dilapidated building had been built.

Thankfully, it was all a long, long time ago.

And in the interim, she’d met Leonard, the man with all of his dreams.

None of which had panned out.

Yeah, they’d moved to Seattle, where he’d been intent on becoming an artist and had even bought into an art gallery, but that endeavor with its lofty ideals, pardon the pun, had been temporary. Of course. As had her stab at being a singer for a garage band that had never made it out of back alley pubs.

It hadn’t worked out. For either of them.

After a couple of years Leonard had readily, no, almost eagerly, tossed away his dreams and moved back here to their hometown of Edgewater, where he’d taken a job with his father at the furniture store. There had been talk of him being a partner in the business, and eventually taking over Sperry’s Fine Furnishings, but so far that hadn’t panned out. His father was still in the store every day, looking over Leonard’s shoulder as he tried his best to sell end tables, lamps, and side chairs to the stingy losers who still lived here.