Stranger in My House (A Murder In Texas) by Mari Manning

loose to suit Miss Bea’s moral sensibilities, but they weren’t creeping into bedrooms or waving knives in people’s faces.
    “You are out of line,” Kirby said.
    Miss Bea reared back as if punched. “How could you even say such a thing to me?”
    From far off, the macaw screeched. “She’s here, she’s here. Hell’s bells.” Miss Bea’s eyes darted toward the parlor, and Kirby, tired of trying to fight with an unbalanced woman, fled.

Chapter Eight
    Seth peeled open one eye. How long had he been sleeping?
    He patted the bedside table, searched blindly for his phone. Numbers blinked at him like warning lights—12:08 a.m.
    After a day like yesterday, he could sleep for a year. First the shooting and finding Miss Bea’s rifle. Then Frankie’s personality transplant and the confrontation in the barn. She was not Frankie, because that would mean he wanted Frankie, and that was impossible.
    From the unhappy look on doppel-Frankie’s face when she dragged herself into the house this evening, tomorrow promised to be another long one filled with lots of interruptions and little ranching.
    A door banged.
    Pulling on sweatpants, he shuffled to the window. The quarter moon cast a pale, ghostly glow over the yard, illuminating a choppy sea of gravel and a horseless paddock and beyond, where shadows converged, the opaque night. Nothing stirred.
    A faint sound drifted up from the barnyard. Seth craned his neck, but the barn was set back too far. Sometimes coyotes came down from the ridge to sniff after the horses. He slid his feet into a pair of sneakers, wrestled his Colt from its hiding place under the floorboards, and hit the steps.
    He emerged from the coach house to cries and banging. In front of the barn, a pale shape fluttered. Inside, Old Tom neighed. Seth cocked his gun. Then he uncocked it.
    It was Frankie, or rather, doppel-Frankie. Her fisted hands pounded on the barn door. “Let me out, let me out, let me out.” Desperation lined her voice. Her long hair was tangled, her feet bare. A very unsexy Rangers tee hung to her knees.
    “Frankie? What are you doing?”
    “I have to go home. Let me out.” She banged again. Old Tom whinnied.
    “Frankie. It’s me. Seth. You are home. This is your home.”
    She turned. Her eyes were sightless pools.
    Shit. She was sleepwalking.
    He’d been disgusted when Miss Bea began to mix sleeping pills in Frankie’s dinner. Disgusted until Frankie started sleeping for ten, twelve, sometimes fourteen hours a night. It was noon or one o’clock before she would emerge from the house and head in his direction. So he’d gone along with it.
    He rested a finger on Frankie’s shoulder. “Frankie. Wake up.”
    She raised her head. Dark brown eyes, vulnerable and honest and sad, gazed up at him. “If you leave me alone, I’ll be gone soon.”
    This was not Frankie Swallow. No way in hell.
    “Okay.” He reached across the narrow space between them and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
    “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said.
    “I don’t?”
    “I can take care of myself.”
    Disappointment bloomed in his chest. “I don’t mind. Let’s get you back to bed.”
    “Bed.” She sank to the ground, curled up, and closed her eyes.
    He crouched beside her. “Come on, baby. Wake up.” No point calling her Frankie. It was not her name.
    The dirt near her feet was mottled. Blood? He slipped his hand around a slim ankle and examined her sole. Bits of gravel poked from the pink flesh.
    He scooped her up. Her body was cold, and he tightened his arms, holding doppel-Frankie against him, warming her with his body. She shifted, pressing her nose into his chest. Desire roared through him.
    “They must have given you too much.”
    Miss Bea had not been happy to see doppel-Frankie awake yesterday morning. She’d probably upped the dosage. Witch.
    The house was a labyrinth. He’d never find her room. He could wake up Brittany or Miss Bea, but he didn’t want to let her