She kicked off her shoes, leaving them by the door leading into the garage. The house was unusually cold, so she immediately went to her thermostat and turned on the heater.

She heard the ducts working and smelled the summer dust being burned out of the system. She considered another glass of wine by her fireplace. Maybe curl up to a good book.

A breeze tickled the hair on her arms when she moved into her living room to turn on her gas fireplace. The curtains on one side of the room blew inward. She didn’t remember leaving a window open. But that explained the artic temps inside.

She moved to the window to close it and something sharp cut the bottom of her foot.

“Ouch,” she cried out, looking down.

The carpet covering her tile floor was covered in glass. The foot she’d unknowingly stepped into the glass started to bleed.

Shannon stepped back on impulse, into another shard with her other heel. From there, she hobbled on the uncut parts of both feet until she sat on her sofa. Both of her feet were bleeding, the right had a decent shard sticking out of the arch. She removed the glass with her fingertips, wincing at the pain. She needed to cover it quickly or ruin the rug she stood on.

On tiptoes, she carefully made her way into the kitchen, where she grabbed the paper towels to sop up the mess.

Shannon paused and looked into the living room. Her midcentury home had many of the original windows from when it was built, hence why there were shards of glass instead of chunks that didn’t cause as much damage when stepped on. That thought was followed with a more obvious one.

How had the window broken in the first place?

Wadding the paper towels on her feet, she slid back into her shoes, ignoring the pain it caused, and walked back into her living room. She pushed back the curtain to see a hole with lots of jagged pieces sticking out.

Her first thought was a ball . . . maybe the neighborhood kids had been playing outside during the day.

She turned a full circle, searching the room for what she was sure would be a white leather ball hiding under a chair or table.

It wasn’t.

Instead of an innocent ball, she found one of the decorative rocks from her front yard resting against the wall in the back of the room.

Someone had broken the window on purpose.

She looked at the hole again. It was too small for someone to have crawled through.

But that didn’t stop Shannon from looking around the house.

Satisfied that no one was inside and that nothing had been taken, Shannon returned to her living room and considered her options. Instead of the police, where a report would be filed, a squad car would show up at her door, and the media would return, Shannon called Lori.

“You made it home?” Lori said when she answered.

“I did. To an unwelcome surprise. Is Reed home yet?”

“He just walked in the door. Is everything all right?”

She glanced at her foot, knew she’d need a couple of stitches before the night was over.

“Not really.”

“Definitely not an accident,” Reed declared after doing a complete search inside and outside her house.

Lori sat next to Shannon on the couch, her arm over her shoulders. Now that the adrenaline was starting to drop, the pain in her foot was getting worse.

“I didn’t think so.”

“A side window suggests whoever did this was hiding from the street view. Your neighbor’s house doesn’t have a direct line of sight. And you’ve obviously stopped setting your alarm when you leave.”

Shannon had been lax on the security system in the past year. That would change after this.

“Who would do this?” Lori asked.

Only one name came to her head. “Corrie.”

“Victor’s ex?”

Shannon nodded. “She’s left me several messages, all pretty angry that Victor and I are together.”

“Threatening?”

“Not directly. Just bitchy. Reminded me of high school.”

“You can file a police report,” Reed suggested.

“And add fuel to the tabloids? No. She’s a scorned woman, barely an adult. She’s searching for attention, and I don’t want to give it to her.”

“She broke a window,” Lori reminded her.

“I bet that’s the last of it. This is a cowardly adolescent act.”

“Don’t underestimate her because of her age,” Reed said. “Younger people have done worse.”

Shannon heard the wisdom in Reed’s words. “If I file a report, and they bring her in for questioning, then what? She gets attention and seeks more? How likely is this vandalism going to be linked to her outside of an eyewitness?”

Reed was once a detective before he went into private security. He knew the system better than anyone.

“Not likely.”

“Did you keep the messages on your phone?” Lori asked.

“No.” She held up a hand before Lori could continue. “I will from here on out.”

“Good. All of them.”

Reed removed his cell phone from his pocket and started snapping pictures of the room. “In case we need them later,” he told her.

Shannon removed the pressure she was giving to the bottom of her right foot and peeked under the paper towel.

Lori saw it and stood. “Okay, that’s it. We’re going to the hospital. Honey . . . can you?”

Reed turned to them, saw the problem, and moved to scoop Shannon up in his arms.

“I can manage.”

Reed didn’t listen. “I’m sure you can.”

He walked her out to her garage and into the passenger seat of her car. Lori followed with her purse and house keys.

“I’ll stay here until one of my guys can come with some plywood and close this up. I’ll meet you,” he told his wife.

They kissed and Lori slid behind the wheel.

As they backed out of the driveway, Shannon turned to her friend. “Thank you for doing this.”

“You don’t have to thank us.”

“I know.”

“You do have to promise me something,” Lori said as she turned the corner.

“What?”

“Anything else, from a doormat kicked out of place or a heavy breather on the phone, you tell us.”

“I will.”

“Does Victor know about Corrie’s phone calls?”

Shannon watched the lights going by. “I told him about the first one. He called her and told her to let it go.”

“She didn’t.”

“No, she got him to talk to her, which is what she wanted.”

“And you didn’t tell him about the other calls?”

“No. And I don’t want him hearing about this until after he’s home. Which is another reason I didn’t want to call the police.”

“Fine. I get it. But anything more serious, and he’s brought up to date on everything.”

“You sound like your husband.”

“No.” Lori turned into the ER parking lot. “He sounds a lot like me.”

Chapter Thirty

Shannon wore flats and a long dress to hide them when she joined Lori Friday evening.

The rest of the week was free of broken windows or a need to go to the hospital. She’d had a couple of brief conversations with Victor, brief mainly because of the time difference and his work schedule. But when they couldn’t talk, they sent flirty texts to say they were thinking about each other.

The tabloids seemed to have moved on to bigger stories, and Corrie was MIA.

Shannon’s theory about letting it all blow over was working out.

Unlike the charity event Shannon had attended with Victor, this was a formal cocktail party for a lot of Lori’s lawyer-type friends, set up as a fundraiser for one of her colleagues who was moving into the political arena.

It was the kind of event that Shannon knew well and Reed avoided if he could.

She and Lori mingled with the crowd, listened intently to the rhetoric, and spoke in hushed tones when no one was listening.

Shannon felt the weight of men staring at her and often had to thank them politely for their offers of seeing them socially and then promptly tell them she was involved.

“Where were all these men last year?” Shannon whispered to Lori at the midpoint of the event.

“Here. But you weren’t putting out the available vibe.”

“I’m not available.”

Lori glanced over the heads of the people standing around them. “More than you were last year.”

There was some truth to that.

Lori’s smile dropped and her eyes narrowed in across the room. “What the . . . ?”

Shannon felt her skin warm, and she turned to find the source of the heat.

Paul.

“Did you know he was coming?”

“Of course not.”

Shannon lifted her chin, felt a familiar and unwelcome lump in her throat at the sight of him. Tall and charismatic. The man parted the sea of people by just walking past.

“I can head him off,” Lori offered.

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s in the past. We’re both adults.”

Lori didn’t seem convinced. “He’s staring at you.”

Shannon looked away. “I can see that.”

Lori moved in front of Shannon, blocking his path. “He’s a rabbit hole not worth following.”

“I know that.”