Page 13 of Dangerous Obsession

“What’s the matter?” She leaned to one side and glanced out at the street. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Impossible. The only ghost she had to worry about was Cliff, and he was still in prison. Or … was he? Her victim’s advocate would surely have told her otherwise.

Jeez, pull yourself together, Marigold.It’s just an envelope.

“Not a ghost, but … um … there was a … um … a giant spider.” She gave an exaggerated shiver. “You know how much they creep me out.” Her disdain for the eight-legged demons was well known among her employees.

“Do you want me to get it?” Shayna started to move around her, but Marigold stopped her with a hand on her arm.

“Not necessary—it skittered away.” She wasn’t a fan of lying, but she also wasn’t big on sharing the sordid details of her past either. “Did you need something?”

“Yeah, we don’t have a bar code in the system for trouser suits.”

“Oh, you’re right.” Marigold popped open the register drawer and slid the envelope beneath the cash tray. “It’s super easy to create one. Come on, I’ll show you.” She guided her back to the office, only glancing over her shoulder once.Yeah, me. After teaching her the process, she returned to the retail area.

Within ten minutes, there were five women strolling about the store. One with several outfits hanging over her arm approached her, and Marigold showed her to a dressing room.

“If you’d like to try anything else, just press this button and a little light will come on outside the room.” She slid the curtain shut and went off to help another customer.

For the next couple of hours, she was busy hurrying from one customer to another, back and forth from the racks to their dressing rooms. Each time she would check someone out, she would tease the exciting new collection that had just come in.

Finally, there was a lull. After gathering all of the clothing from the dressing rooms and returning them to their designated spots on the racks, she remembered the envelope in the cash drawer.

Marigold slid it out and turned it over in her hands. Nothing but that one letter printed on the front. She wedged her fingertip beneath the flap and stopped. For some inexplicable reason, there was something menacing about it, and she decided to wait until she was alone to read it. Decision made, she carried the dreaded envelope back to her office.

“How’s it going?” She rolled open the bottom desk drawer and tucked the envelope next to her purse.

“I’m just about done.” Shayna’s fingers raced across the keyboard as she spoke. “The designers for all of those pieces are still in very high demand.” She tapped the ENTER key, and the printer hummed to life. “Which means people will pay top dollar for them.” She stood, walked over to grab the fresh price tags, and held one out to her. “This is for that peach Halston dress.”

Marigold looked at the tag.

“Holy crap! Fourteen hundred dollars?” She’d expected a high number but nothing close to that. “Are you sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure. I checked three different sources, added their prices together, averaged them out, and came up with our price.” She twisted to grab the other tags. “I’m sure we could get more, but I considered our customer base and what this market can bear and decided to play it safe.”

“You’re exactly right.” Marigold handed the price tag back to her. “This is excellent work, Shayna. I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks, that means a lot to me.” Her cheeks flushed, and she smiled. “I’m going to start tagging all of those items so we can hurry up and get them on the rack.”

“Sounds good. While you’re doing that, I’ll use the laptop up front to pull together an email to send to our mailing list.”

Once Shayna was done tagging the new items, Marigold would head back to her office and work on updating their website.

Her concerns about the envelope set aside for now, she headed to the front counter and got to work.

CHAPTER FIVE

CliffBarnumlayonthe top bunk, staring up at the ceiling above him. Ankles crossed, hands beneath his head on the thin pillow, he performed his daily ritual of counting the scratch marks in the concrete. All one thousand eight hundred and ninety-two of them. One for each day in this hellhole.

Five years, two months, and seven days since he’d seen Marigold sitting in that stuffy courtroom, her nose in the air like she was suddenly somehow better than him.

He’d been shocked she actually took the stand and testified against him. Cliff had been counting on her not having the guts to go through with it. She’d surprised him a second time a few days later when she stood at the podium in the courtroom, looked him straight in the eyes, and delivered her victim impact statement without once looking at the notecards in her hands.

Minutes later, the judge sentenced Cliff to the maximum of six years. The reasons he’d cited were her “heartbreaking testimony,” the photos taken of their apartment, and the seriousness of her injuries when she arrived at the emergency room. He also put a great deal of weight on the testimonies of two people who lived in their apartment complex. They said they’d heard screams and the sound of things breaking coming from Cliff’s apartment on more than one occasion. The nail in Cliff’s coffin was the testimony of Dulce Houldcroft—a powerful senator’s daughter and the bitch friend of Marigold’s who sat next to her in the gallery every single day of his trial.

She’d testified about unusual marks and injuries she’d seen on Marigold multiple times in the past. Dulce said she was so worried that she gave her a burner phone. That had been the first time Cliff had even heard about the fucking thing.

The judge ended his statement by saying he would have sentenced him to a longer term, but the current statute only allowed for up to six years.

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