“No one is being truthful with me,” I told Ryan, frustrated.

It was Sunday and he was lying on my couch watching football. “Chill out.”

“Someone hit me,” I reminded him. “I’m in danger.” I had gotten myself home from DeAngelo’s, then had spent the night checking my locks over and over. I had finally called and set up an appointment for the following week to install a home security system.

“If they wanted to kill you, they would have. They just wanted to knock you out for a minute.” He gave a yell as a man in tight pants leaped into the air.

I was too frazzled to even comprehend who was playing. “That’s reassuring, thanks. I feel so much better now.”

“Good.”

“What are we missing?” It kept going around and around in my head that this was about money, not drugs. “Tell me about the five grand, Ryan.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

I stared at him for a minute, but he wasn’t even looking at me. I threw my hands up in the air and told him, “I’m seriously going to give up here. I want out. None of this is my problem, and no one is telling me what I need to know.”

Ryan finally deigned to look at me. “Bai, you need to back off. It’s cool. Leave this to the cops to sort out.”

Why was that not even remotely reassuring? Uneasy, I tried to figure out this new angle. But I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even really know Ryan. Not truly. “Just like that?” I asked.

“Yeah. I think it’s better if you just ease up.” He rubbed his chin. “I couldn’t live with myself if something happened to you.”

“But you’re dead,” I joked, needing to find some humor. Ryan being serious was more unnerving than anything else up to this point.

“Yeah, and I want to be the only one who is.”

It would give me warm fuzzies if I weren’t shivering from the idea of dying. Back off. I could do that. Done. Backed all the way up. Like a big old truck.

Monday, I went over to the Jensens and greeted Christy with a smile when she opened the door, determined to put life back to normal. “Hi, how are you? How has traffic been with the showings?”

“I think we’re overpriced.” She winked. “Don’t tell Tim. He thinks the problem is that he didn’t listen to you about his office. He’s in there now and would like to finally be reasonable and clean out the clutter. Like maybe disassemble his rifle collection.” Behind her hand she murmured, “Don’t let him do too much, though, if you know what I mean. I’m still not moving.”

Great. I was being pulled into their marital dispute over moving. “Hmm,” I said. “That sounds tricky. I’m not sure how to walk that fine line.”

Christy just laughed. “Honey, just make him think he’s getting what he wants. Didn’t we talk about this before?”

Feeling monstrously uncomfortable, I glanced down at my phone when it buzzed.

Call me NOW.

Marner was getting sassy. I had texted him an hour ago and he hadn’t replied and now he was making demands? I was about to tell him to cool his jets but then he texted again.

Found out who owns the investment company. Someone named Tim Jensen, and his brother is one of our IT guys. Looks like the Peppers guy is a made up account/name. Turns out IA is already onto it. Been investigating. DeAngelo might have been onto it.

I stopped walking. What the hell? The Tim Jensen? The same Tim Jensen whose house I was in? Well, so much for backing out of this whole situation.

Christy had told me her husband owned an insurance and investment firm. But it was just a coincidence too huge to be real. Unless it wasn’t a coincidence.

Wait a minute… Officer Jensen. His first name was Caleb. Caleb Jensen. At the open house for Ryan’s listing. He had been there, and I hadn’t thought jack about it. I mentally kicked myself from here to Tuesday.

Tim was in his cluttered office, the walls loaded down with books and animal trophies and rifles. I looked at his gun closet in a whole new light. He was potentially a thief with a whole lot of weaponry. Yet I still couldn’t believe what Marner had found meant anything other than the possibility that he was helping cops with their retirement accounts. “Hi, Tim, how are you?”

He didn’t smile. “Annoyed. This house should have sold. I think I need to take your advice and clear out everything personal in this office.”

“Sure, no problem.” I had initially liked this couple, but now they just seemed indulgent and entitled. Spurred on by that feeling and the realization that he had done work for the department, or at least some of the staff, I said, “So I just figured out your brother works for the police department. I knew there was an Officer Jensen, but I didn’t realize he was your brother.”

Tim stayed in his chair behind his desk and stared at me. “He’s my half-brother actually. My father had a mid-life crisis. Caleb is fifteen years younger than me.”

That got me exactly nowhere. “What an interesting family.” I wasn’t sure what else to say.

“You could say that. Caleb is also a little shady. I think the term is “dirty cop.”

Now I was really off-kilter. Why would he tell me that? I just gave him a noncommittal smile.

Tim stood up. “So what do I do about everything on the desk and the walls? Can you pack it up for me?”

“Of course. I have boxes in the car.”

“Christy will go get them. Give her your keys.”

That seemed odd. But Tim seemed like an odd guy and he had been the same the first time I’d met him. “I can do it.”

“No, Christy needs something to do with herself. She’s bored.” He gave his wife a weird smile.

Christy narrowed her eyes. The tension grew and it was awkward as hell.

I decided to quickly text Marner back.

Tim Jensen is one of my clients. I’m at his house now.

“What should I do with this?” Tim asked, gesturing to photos spread out in front of him.

This was definitely a client who needed me to pick up everything and file it away myself. He was not going to lift a finger. When I came around the desk, I shoved my phone in my pocket, and stared down at the piles of papers he had. I stopped cold. “What—”

I couldn’t finish the sentence, words eluding me.

On the desk was a photo. A crime scene photo. Ryan’s car. The park. I thought for a minute that I was going to faint. The room spun and dizziness threatened to pull me under. It was taken from outside the vehicle and there was a police car in the bottom left corner, just a portion of it. The car looked forlorn in the bleak landscape of a winter woodland setting. There was blood all over the window. Everywhere. It was like someone had taken a bucket of paint and thrown it on the glass.

“Why do you have that?” I whispered, swallowing over and over, trying to hold down the nausea. I wanted to vomit.

This was what Marner had refused to show me. With good reason. It was stark and real and horrible. That was Ryan.

“My brother gave it to me. So that I could show you.” His long fingers reached out and picked up the photograph. “It’s a suicide, you can see that. Right?” He shoved the picture close to my face.

Ryan’s blood was eye level with me. “What are you doing? What’s going on?” My phone was buzzing in my pocket but I only registered that somewhere in the back of my mind. My focus was on the hypnotizing view of what had happened to my friend’s life. To his head. Oh geez, I gripped the edge of the desk.

“I’m making sure you realize that no one is going to listen to you. A scrawny redheaded home stager, of all things, who is pining for her dead friend, who was a drug user, a lover of hookers, and a loose cannon. My brother says everyone knows Conroy was impulsive, and no one was surprised when he bit it.”

I am, generally speaking, not slow on the uptake, but this was taking me more than a minute. I was both shocked to realize that Tim was in some way, somehow, involved in Ryan’s death, and seriously ticked off that I had never made the connection. Plus, I had staged his stupid, pretentious house for no apparent reason. He was most likely never intending to sell it. Dumbfounded, I actually said that out loud. “You never wanted me to stage your house?”

Tim frowned. “What? Of course I did. Why else would I call you? I mean, we’re not actually worried about you being able to point fingers. I just thought you’d like to see what really happened.”

He was making me sick from showing me these images purely for his own sadistic pleasure. I wanted to punch him in the nose or knee him in the nut sack.

Except for one little fact. The man was surrounded by guns. Including one on his desk, even though he wasn’t holding it or even reaching for it.

“I don’t know what any of this has to do with you,” I managed to say.

“You’re lying.” Tim shook his head like he was insulted that I would try that tactic. “You’ve been nosing around, going to the police station, asking questions. Looking pathetic.”

Mr. Charming. If he wanted me to go away quietly, insulting me wasn’t the way to do it. But I didn’t think he wanted me to go away quietly. Think, Bailey, you’re not an idiot. My pockets were roomy and I slipped my hands into them, trying to turn my phone on record from spatial memory. It was about a one in ten chance that I was going to be able to achieve an active recording, but I had to try. “I don’t think Ryan killed himself. I knew him well.”

Yet in the corner of my mind it niggled at me that maybe I didn’t know Ryan all that well. I’d had that very thought the day before.

“Funny though, that he never once mentioned you, according to Caleb. It wasn’t until much later that I realized you were hung up on him, after Christy told me about your little chat about ghosts. Hiring you really was a coincidence. My friend Bill used you to stage his condo. But anyway I can assure you, Ryan wasn’t hung up on you, according to my brother.”

Now he was just trying to rattle me. “Why would Ryan talk to his co-worker about a friend? That’s just stupid. Why does it matter anyway?”

“Because of you, and that other detective’s crush on you, shit is getting stirred up that wasn’t supposed to be stirred up. Connections made, questions asked. Now your friend knows that I’m the one who’s committing fraud, stealing from the pensions of the guys’ using my services, while my brother creates false patrolmen and other staff members.” He gestured with his hands. “Classic shell game. Look over here while I do something over there. But I know the the cops are on to us, and in this case, my brother is going to have to take the fall. I am going to throw him under the proverbial bus.”

Pieces fell into place. I was furious I had been so dumb. Why did people commit crimes? Money, revenge, jealousy. Very rarely anything else. I should have followed the money from the beginning. “So why am I here?” I was pretty sure I knew why, but I needed to hear it said out loud before I completely and totally lost my cool.

“Because I wanted my house staged. And I thought you deserved to know the truth.”

“But I’m not going to prison for murder.” A female voice came from behind me.

Shut the front door. I hadn’t seen that one coming either. I swiveled around to see Christy standing in the doorway pointing a gun at me. What. The. Hell. She was wearing a blouse, for crying out loud. She had children, who I sincerely hoped were at daycare or summer camp. School hadn’t started yet. She seemed normal. I had confided in her. Oh crap, I had told her Ryan was a ghost. They must have thought I was coming unhinged or something. Well, that made three of us.

Tim swore. “Christy, knock it off.” He sounded more annoyed than anything.

I wasn’t sure what the heck was going on, but I had to ask. “So you killed Ryan?” I asked. My voice trembled, but I got the words out. My palms were sweating and I wanted to throw up. “Tim wasn’t there?”

“Of course not. Do you think a cop was going to go to a secluded location with Tim? Hardly.” She used her left hand to gesture to her chest. “On the other hand, I’m very persuasive. Plus Ryan was swallowing Vicodin like nobody’s business that day.”

Equally as charming as her husband, with her callous disregard for Ryan’s life. “So you murdered an innocent man over money? A few thousand dollars? That makes you a vile human being.” The horror and reality of the situation had fallen over me. I was going to die unless I did something immediately, and I was no savvy chick. If Ryan hadn’t been able to protect himself, how could I?

“It’s actually more like half a million dollars, really, over the last three years. But we never meant for it to get so out of hand, and truthfully, your friend was suicidal. He felt guilty over popping pills and the fact that he was cheating on his girlfriend with me.”

“Total lie,” Ryan said behind me. “I never cheated on Hannah.”

I was grateful for his presence, but I wasn’t sure it was going to do me any good in this circumstance. He was powerless without a body.

“And technically, he did pull the trigger. It’s easy to be suggestive with someone who is high as a kite.”

I couldn’t hear this. I didn’t want to know or picture those horrible, senseless final moments for Ryan. I turned to Tim, wanting to appeal to whatever compassion he had. He was pointing a gun at me as well.

“If you’re going to shoot me, just do it,” I told Tim. “I don’t need to hear your ridiculous justifications or your gloating.”

“No one is going to shoot you.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Christy said.

It was then I realized that Tim wasn’t only pointing the gun at me, he was watching his wife carefully. I started to think maybe she was the more dangerous of the two.

“This is fun,” she added. “You probably thought it was some huge conspiracy, like a mob hit, or drug dealers, or a pimp. And yet it was just so simple. Just a dirty cop.”

From somewhere deep inside me, the anger that these idiots, these self-important jerks, had been behind the murder of Ryan, boiled over and made me bold enough to say, “Blah, blah, blah. You just love to hear yourself talk, don’t you?”

Tim actually laughed. “True. So you have met my wife.”

Christy’s face twisted into an expression of fury. “This isn’t funny.”

It wasn’t, but that fact became more real and urgent when Tim came around the desk. I hadn’t thought he was the one to worry about. He grabbed my wrist. Hard. I can say with all honestly that before this, I’d never been aware of being in danger. Even when I got knocked out at DeAngelo’s, I hadn’t known it was coming. There had been no time for fear. Once I had skidded on the highway during a snowstorm and hit the railing before sputtering to a stop, unharmed, but to this point it had been the scariest moment of my life. I didn’t know what to do with this, which was equally dangerous and not looking to be over in the blink of an eye. It was so terrifying it almost felt improbable. As ridiculous as Ryan being a ghost. Yet there he was, cursing behind me like an angry sailor. And I was going to die.

“No, it’s not funny,” I told Tim. “But what I don’t understand is why you felt the need to drag me into this in the first place. I never would have figured this out on my own.”

“Crazy people do crazy things.” Tim gave me a smile. “How’s that for your philosophical nugget of the day?”

Not exactly anything I was going to stitch on a sampler. “What now?”

“You are going to die of smoke inhalation when I burn this house to the ground,” Christy said.

Didn’t see that one coming either. “Uh…”

“This is bullshit,” Ryan said. “There is no way that I was killed by these idiots. I must have done myself in to get away from all the stupid.”

Wait, so now while I was facing death, he was going to claim suicide? It seemed a little irrelevant at the moment.

And the Jensen’s plan was idiotic. If it were me, I’d make it look like my home stager had accidentally shot herself packing up guns, not realizing one was loaded.

“Are you just going to go along with this?” I asked Tim, trying to appeal to his sense of justice. He might be a greedy thief, but was probably not a murderer.

“I choose my battles with Christy,” was all he said, giving me a shrug.

Nice. “Why would I be dead in your house while no one else is here? How are you going to explain arson? The fire investigators will know. This house is huge. In the amount of time it would take to trap me behind flames, I could have escaped ten times. I mean, presumably you have smoke detectors. Also, I would never commit suicide in a stranger’s house. That’s just dumb.” It was. I figured it was worth it to point out the severe flaws in their plan before they carried it out. Maybe it would cause them to hesitate and I could figure out an escape.

Or it might make them just shoot me. Either way, I had to take a chance, and you know, sometimes you just had to make people aware they were lunatics.

“She’s right,” Christy said.

“For a smart man, you haven’t really thought this through.” He hadn’t. I was both surprised and relieved. “But then again, Christy admitted to me she’s no rocket scientist.”

I was being too mouthy, but I figured I had to go down with a fight. I wasn’t going to talk a lunatic into anything, and Christy liked to think she was so persuasive. Let her see I knew full well she was more beauty than brains.

“Bailey, you need to shut up,” Ryan said.

Since he wasn’t giving me any solutions, I resented that. “What do you want me to do?” I demanded.

But Tim thought I was talking to him. “Take a bullet then, like your buddy did.” And then he aimed a gun right at me. “Or duck.”

Right then, without warning, Ryan came at Tim. Where I would have expected his body to just pass through Tim’s, he actually managed to shove the gun. He had found his ability to move an object. Holy moly. Tim stumbled, the gun pointing downward. I took the opportunity to grab a stapler off the desk and hurl it at him.

Spinning, I also snagged a taxidermied animal off an end table, intending to smack Christy in the pie hole with it. But she was gone. She was running down the hallway to her kitchen. I had no idea why, nor did I give a damn. I headed for the front door just as a shot rang out. I screamed and ducked, but the bullet went through the open office door and I had already turned right. I threw open the front door and went careening down the steps onto the grass and almost choked on my relief when I saw a squad car pulling into the driveway. I had no idea why they were there, but I was going to launch myself behind their protection.

Officers stepped out, one detaining me, while the other proceeded into the house. I was babbling, trying to explain that I was in danger, when Marner pulled into the drive behind him. He got out and jogged over, telling the officer, “I’ve got this. Call for backup.”

“He has a gun in there!” I shrieked at all of them, just to make sure they weren’t running into a psycho insurance man ambush.

“What the hell is going on?” Marner demanded, running his eyes over me.

“Tim shot at me. Or actually, maybe it was Christy. I don’t know!” I wanted to burst into tears but I bit my lip hard so I wouldn’t give in.

Marner swore. “I’ll kill that guy.”

“How did you know to come here?” He was dragging me over to his car, and I let him, wanting away from that house of horrors. I briefly wondered where Ryan was, but I figured they couldn’t hurt him anyway.

“You called me. That was a great idea. I couldn’t hear everything, it was too muffled. But I knew something was wrong and you had already texted me you were here.” Marner opened the passenger door to his car and helped me in. “That guy has stolen a freaking massive amount of money. Internal Affairs contacted the FBI weeks ago. This is their territory. Wait here.”

He had his gun out of his holster and he went toward the house. I resisted the urge to scream and prevent him from doing his job. Instead I leaned back and attempted to release my shoulders from their position up near my ears. I was still holding the dead animal Tim had had stuffed. Glancing down into my lap I felt my stomach rebel at the view of the former living creature staring up at me with glass eyes. Just the icing on the bizarre cake.

Ryan appeared next to me. “Nice otter.”

“Is that what this is?” I tossed it in the back seat. “Yuck. Thanks for saving me.”

“Mostly you saved yourself, but I’m glad I could help.” Ryan closed his eyes briefly then gave me an agonized glance. “I screwed up my life, didn’t I?”

I was still reeling from my near-death experience so I didn’t sugarcoat it. “I think you did make some questionable choices.”

“I was letting him pay me to keep quiet about the money. I had found out the week before totally by accident.” Ryan rubbed his chin. “I’m not a nice guy, you know that?”

That made my heart hurt. “I think you’re a guy who has known a lot of love, and not a lot of hardship. You let yourself get a little greedy. Sadly, in the end, the only one it hurt was you. So there’s no point in beating yourself up now.”

“Marner wouldn’t have done that. He would have blown the whistle.”

I stayed silent because I thought there was a high probability of that being true.

It didn’t matter anyway, because Ryan disappeared when Marner returned and got in the car. His jaw worked as he looked at me.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah. The wife shot the husband. Clipped him on the arm when she doubled back around and aimed through the garden window.”

“Seriously?” My jaw dropped. “They’re both nuts!”

“Yep. Nutty as fruitcakes. The scene is secure, but I need to take you down to the station for questioning.”

“Okay.” I gestured to the backseat, needing a moment of levity. “What about the otter?”

Marner glanced behind him and swore. “That’s messed up.” He gripped the steering wheel after he started the car but he didn’t drive.

“Are you okay?” I wasn’t sure if he was upset about the shady dealings Ryan had been involved in, or something else.

“Jesus, Bailey, that scared the hell out of me. I thought…”

“Thought what?”

“That something was going to happen to you.”

I swallowed. “Me too.”

He tapped his forearm, where his Celtic cross tattoo was. “This tat is for Ryan. Don’t make me have to ink another cross on the other arm.”

My throat tightened. That touched me. “I don’t want to be a cross on your arm either. Thanks for being there.”

“Yeah. No problem.” But he wasn’t looking at me. The mask was back in place. He had retreated and I had the sinking feeling that this might be the end of me and Marner before we’d ever even truly gotten started.

I searched for some levity, a way to reach him, make him less dour. “I wonder if I can still bill Tim and Christy for the last hour?”

“Not funny.”

But it kind of was. “What happened to DeAngelo?” I asked, wondering if his death was at all related to this.

“Complications from diabetes. His girlfriend said his insulin was missing.”

I shuddered, images of DeAngelo searching desperately in the fridge for the insulin that should have been there flashing through my head. “That’s not funny at all.”

“Nope.”

I wanted to say something profound, or to express to Marner how I felt about him, given the fragility of life. But my emotions were too jumbled. I settled for, “I’ll go to the funeral with you, okay?”

Marner didn’t speak. But his hand left the wheel and found mine. He held it tightly for the whole drive.