Cardwell Ranch Trespasser - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,34

at hiding her emotions. She would never survive in Dee’s world. “So he didn’t say. You just got the feeling I wasn’t Dee?” She shook her head. “Yep, you’re teetering on the brink. One little push and I’m afraid you’re going over the edge. It’s going to break Dana’s heart. She really does care for you, her best friend.”

“But you’ll be there to pick up the pieces, right?”

“That’s what I came here today to tell you,” Dee said. “I’m not going anywhere. Accept it. If you don’t, I’m afraid of what it will do to you mentally. You seem so fragile as it is.”

“You’re wrong,” Hilde said. “I’m a lot stronger than I look.”

Dee didn’t expect Hilde to lunge at her with the scissors. It wasn’t much of a lunge. Her reaction was to grab Hilde’s arm and twist it. The scissors clattered to the floor to the sound of Hilde crying out in pain.

As the shop owner stumbled back, rubbing her wrist and looking scared, Dee bent down and picked up the scissors from the floor by the blades.

“If you’re going to try to kill someone, it works better if they don’t see you coming at them,” Dee said in disgust. As she placed the scissors on the counter, she studied Hilde, realizing she was much closer to the edge of insanity than she’d thought. It wouldn’t take hardly anything to push her over.

“I need to get to Bozeman,” Dee said. “I have a lunch date with Hud. I suggest you close up shop and get some rest. You might want to see someone about that wrist. I hope it’s not sprained. How will you ever explain what happened?” She laughed as she turned toward the door. She almost wished that Hilde would grab up the scissors and come for her again.

At the door, she flipped the sign to Open, unlocked the door and let herself out. When she looked back, Hilde was still standing with her back against the wall, rubbing her wrist. The look in her eyes, though, wasn’t one of fear. It was...triumph.

Dee stopped to look again, surprised and worried by what she’d glimpsed in Hilde’s eyes just then. Was it just a trick of the light through the window? She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something she was missing. Hilde kept throwing her off balance. The woman was impossible. Anyone else would have taken the hint long before now.

But when she glanced into the shop again, she saw Hilde rush to the door to lock it and put up the Closed sign. Apparently the woman had taken her advice and was going to get some rest.

* * *

HILDE WAITED UNTIL she saw Dee drive away before she carefully slid the scissors into a clean plastic bag. She was positive she’d gotten the woman’s fingerprints because Dee had picked up the scissors by the blades, holding them out as if she wanted to seem nonthreatening.

What a joke. Everything about Dee was threatening.

Once she had the scissors put away, it was all she could do not to call Colt and tell him, but he was working. She would have to wait until dinner tonight since in order for him to run Dee’s prints, he would have to do it under Hud’s radar. Hilde realized what a chance he would be taking.

Just the thought of Colt made her heart beat a little harder.

He would have a fit when she told him how she’d managed to get Dee’s prints. She’d been pretty sure that Dee would take the scissors away from her. She had hoped that Dee wouldn’t use them on her, had bet that Dee wasn’t ready to kill again. Not yet, anyway. Even if Dee would have claimed self-defense, few people would have believed it.

Well, they wouldn’t have believed it before the past few days. Now Hilde wasn’t sure what her friends thought of her. That she was mentally unbalanced? That like Dee said, she was teetering on the edge?

Wait until Dee’s prints came back. She’d see what they thought then.

What if she is Dee Anna Justice? Hilde tried to remember what Dana had told her about Dee Anna and her family. Maybe Dana’s grandparents had had a good reason for disinheriting Walter Justice and demanding that his name never be spoken again.

The thought gave her a chill. If there had been something wrong with Walter, wasn’t it possible Dee Anna had inherited it?

“No, she’s not Dee Ana Justice,” she said to herself now. “And