LITMIR.BIZ

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everybody gets what they deserve.”

      “Give her an opportunity to change fate.”

      There was a long pause. “We could be making a terrible mistake. We could be punished.”

      “It won’t be noticed.”

      “You want to take that risk?”

      “Look at it this way. Either everything turns out the same again, or she has a chance to change her destiny.”

       Chapter Two

      In the moment between sleep and waking, Sara remembered hearing voices. Talking about her.

      What was it they’d been saying?

      She scrabbled to get a sense of the conversation. They’d come to take her to a place that was warm and safe. Where all her troubles would vanish like mist evaporating in the heat of the sun.

      Then they’d changed their minds. Or one of them had. When the other had objected, the first one had persuaded him to go along.

      Him? Were they men? They had sounded both gentle and commanding. If that was possible.

      Before she could decide, she jerked awake. She was in her car. On her way to the hospital?

      Could that be right?

      Hazy memories swam through her mind, and she struggled to make them come clear.

      The last thing she recalled was the car skidding down a long hill on a snow-slick road and crashing into a truck, but that couldn’t be true.

      She looked around at tall trees with new green leaves, filtering bright sunlight. Below them were blooming azaleas and carefully planted beds of bright annuals—impatiens and begonias.

      Not winter. Spring.

      But the snowstorm had seemed so real. Obviously she’d dreamed it.

      Disoriented, she struggled to remember why she was here and what she was doing.

      Recollections surfaced as she focused on a huge white house with a circular brick drive and Doric columns holding up the two-story front porch. Tara in Howard County, Maryland, she’d called it. Conveniently situated between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

      She knew the inside layout of the mansion. Six bedrooms. Six bathrooms. A great room and a kitchen as big as the modest home where she’d grown up. This house was too big for any one family, as far as she was concerned. It was the kind of ostentatious property people bought when they wanted you to know how well they were doing.

      It was also way out of her price range, but she wasn’t planning to buy it. She’d been hired to stage the place for an important client, a rush job that had kept her here from early in the morning until early afternoon. Real-estate agent Pam Reynolds was paying extra because she had a live one on the hook.

      Sara had worked feverishly to get the property ready, using two of the college students who helped her out part-time when she needed to move big pieces of furniture.

      After they’d left, she’d climbed into her car to catch a few minutes of sleep before Pam arrived.

      She blinked, still feeling like her brain wasn’t quite engaging with reality. The images and emotions from the vivid dream simply wouldn’t go away. It wasn’t just that she’d been driving through a snowstorm. She’d been on the way to the hospital—because she was having a baby.

      A baby! Oh, please. She wasn’t even dating anyone. And she wasn’t the type for one-night stands.

      Somehow her unconscious mind must have conjured up that scenario from an old movie or TV show.

      But now it was time to get back to the real world.

      She pulled down the sun visor and looked at her face in the mirror, fluffing her shoulder-length blond hair a little. Then she stroked on a little lip gloss. She had just slipped the tube back into her purse when a silver Mercedes pulled up in the circular driveway, and Pam got out.

      She was tall and fit, with a halo of ash-blond hair, and was wearing a tailored pantsuit today.

      Smiling, she came over to Sara’s car. “Are we all set?”

      “I think so,” Sara answered, hoping it was true.

      “Thanks for the rush job. I appreciate it.”

      Sara climbed out and shut the door, then, as she stood beside the car, she looked down at her body, expecting to see the swollen belly and big breasts that had been the hallmarks of her advanced pregnancy. Instead she was lithe and slim in jeans, a yellow T-shirt and tennis shoes. Her work clothes.

      She should get out of here before Pam’s high-priced client arrived.

      Her breath caught. No. She needed to stay because this was the day…

      The thought trailed off in confusion again as she tried to remember what was so important.

      “Let’s take a look,” Pam was saying. “I always love to see your work. Did you use that antique armoire that I admired so much?”

      “I think so.”

      Pam peered at her. “You look a little…pale. Are you feeling okay?”

      “A little sleep deprived, I guess.”

      “Sorry I got you up so early.”

      “It’s okay.”

      Pam wiped her palm on a pants leg in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. “I’m glad you’re here. Since that murder last week, I’ve felt kind of spooked, staying in a vacant house by myself.”

      Murder? Sara scrambled to dredge up what Pam was referring to, then remembered that a woman real-estate agent had been raped and murdered in an empty house where she’d been waiting to meet a client. The man had showed up and taken advantage of the isolated location. So far the cops had no leads, and it seemed all of the women in the local real-estate business were on edge.

      Sara had thought about that when she’d been working at this three-acre property early in the morning. But Peter and Brad had been here most of the time. They’d only left a little while ago—and taken her truck back to the warehouse space where she stored the furniture and knickknacks she used in her work.

      The real-estate agent hurried up the front steps and stepped into the house.

      Sara followed more slowly, marveling at how much easier it was to walk without all the extra weight of advanced pregnancy. She’d forgotten how it felt not to be dragging around the equivalent of a couple of gallon jugs of water.

      No, wait. Had she really been pregnant? She was still having trouble sorting reality from…what?

      Not a dream. More like a different reality.

      When Pam glanced back, Sara hurried to catch up. Inside, her gaze swept over the work that she’d completed this morning, starting with the antique side table that she’d centered along one wall of the large foyer. On the polished surface sat a whimsical elephant lamp and one of the orchids that she kept in the greenhouse in the back of a friend’s garage. They were easy to grow, bloomed for months and always added a touch of elegance.

      On the wall was an ornate mirror that she’d patched up with spackling compound and refinished herself.

      Finding and fixing up pieces that would work as part of the rooms she furnished was both her skill and her pleasure.

      “The elephant’s a nice touch,” Pam remarked. “Garage sale or auction?”

      “Garage sale. The base was coming off, but I superglued it back together. Love that stuff.”

      Pam headed for the kitchen where Sara had used Dansk Kobenstyle casseroles, tall glass jars of preserved herbs and red-and-white-checkered dish towel accents. The round table was set with more garage-sale plates and goblets. The centerpiece

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