Read Online Nightmare in Shining Armor by Tamar Myers - Free Book Online

younger, I allowed the pushers to get me just to the edge of hysteria before I fought back. By now experience has taught me that it is less stressful, and far more effective, to resist the moment I feel I’m being compromised. If I’d only paid attention to my cat, I would have learned this far earlier in the game.
    â€œThis sounds like a threat,” I said calmly.
    â€œThreat?” Barb jabbed the off button on the miniature recorder. “Look here, Mrs. Timberlake, I’m just trying to do my job with as little interference as possible. You want your lawyer? Fine. But I’m warning you—”
    I stood. The pain in my ankle was excruciating, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t let it show.
    â€œThis interview is over.”
    Barb blinked. “As you wish.”
    â€œTerrific! Because I also wish you would leave my house.”
    â€œNo can do. Not until I finish my job. First I need to speak to Mrs. Crawford.”

8
    G reg and Wynnell were in the kitchen sipping hot chocolate and eating cheese straws. On the stove a pot of fresh peanuts was boiling merrily. Under normal circumstances I would have plopped a deck of cards on the table and the three of us would have had a rousing game of Up and Down the Ladder. Alas, it was far from a normal evening. I had a throbbing ankle, and there were at least five people in my bedroom upstairs, one of whom was as dead as last Sunday’s roast. Wynnell, to tell you the truth, didn’t look a whole lot healthier.
    She jumped when she saw me. “Abby!”
    By contrast, Greg set his mug down casually. “How’d it go?”
    â€œThe woman is a witch,” I said kindly. “She gets you to buddy up to her—insists you call her Barb—but the whole time she’s waiting to pounce on you like a hen on a June bug.”
    Wynnell sipped noisily from her cup. “Were you cooperative, Abby?”
    â€œUntil she pushed me too far. Thank heavens I’d taken that Xanax.”
    Greg pulled me lightly into his lap. “Barb’s new in the department. She has a different way of doing things.”
    Wynnell scowled. “Is she a Yankee? I didn’t hear an accent.”
    â€œBarb’s from California— Southern California—but she was born and raised in Raleigh. Anyway, she’s pretty good at what she does.”
    â€œSays who?”
    â€œEveryone, I guess. Sure, there was a little resistance when we first heard a woman was joining the department, but then we gradually warmed up to the idea.”
    â€œI bet y’all did. Some of y’all might even have overheated.”
    Greg chuckled. “Well, you can’t deny she’s a looker.”
    â€œLook, but don’t touch.” I slipped into a chair of my own.
    â€œHey, you’re not jealous, are you?”
    â€œNot on your life.” I took a sip from his mug. “Wynnell, she wants to talk to you next.”
    Wynnell blanched, her black brows standing out like clumps of wet driftwood on a white sand beach. She was in the middle of swallowing, and apparently some of the liquid went down the wrong pipe.
    â€œNow?” she gasped.
    I leaned over and gave her a good hard slap on the back. “I’m afraid so.”
    â€œBut I don’t know anything. I was—well, I was, uh—”
    â€œPassed out on my guest bed the entire evening?”
    â€œAbby!” Greg said sternly. He gave Wynnell the thumbs-up sign. “Hey. You’ve got nothing to worry about, right?”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œSo just tell her the truth.”
    â€œWhich she’ll twist into a braid of a thousand strands,” I mumbled.
    â€œAbby!”
    â€œBut it’s true! She took everything I said the wrong way.”
    â€œAbby, you’re acting like a child.”
    â€œI am not!”
    â€œBut you are.”
    I turned to Wynnell. “Am I?”
    â€œIf the shoe fits,” she said and took a loud