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"I'll do my best," she told him, knowing he knew better. She knew better. If she could manage to think of another direction to go in this, then she would make the call or the visit or send the e-mail. As she told him, this was her life, and she wasn't giving up. Texting the number after hanging up, she stared at the phone, rubbed her brow, then made a quick note of the information Robert had given her before adding it to the file she was keeping.
Disregarding Nik's orders, she made a few other calls, but the information Robert had given her couldn't be confirmed by the few sources she had to talk to whom she could rely on. That left her with yet more dangling threads to this. Threads she would have to pick at later, she thought as she hung up the phone an hour later.
The rest of the day was spent like most others. Mikayla worked on the dresses in the back, kept several fitting appointments, and even managed to sell two more of her own designs before closing time came.
As she and Deirdre were standing at the register counter waiting for Nik, an explosion shattered the quiet of the store.
Glass rained into the shop as the mannequins standing in front of the window toppled over, knocking a rack of dresses to the floor and leaving Mikayla to stare at it all in shock as the sound of tires squealing seemed to echo around her. Deirdre was screaming something. Cursing was more like it, as Mikayla stared in shock at the destruction.
"That was a fucking gunshot!" Deirdre screamed at her. "My God, Mikayla!"
"Call the police, Deirdre." Mikayla felt almost numb inside. She couldn't have avoided the shot if it had been for her. She would have been dead. But it wasn't her they were after this time. It was her store. Her livelihood. Her 112
security.
Someone was trying to frighten her, trying to force her into backing off. She pulled her cell phone from her purse and pulled up the address book and Nik's number.
"Mikayla? I'm on my way to pick you up," he answered immediately.
"I might be a while leaving," she told him. "Someone just shot into the shop and destroyed the front window. I have to call Dad to get this boarded up for the night. I can catch a ride--"
"I'm on my way." The line disconnected.
As Deirdre stood over the rack of dresses that had fallen, Mikayla watched as she pushed in her father's number and called him. Just as with Nik, she had no more than gotten the explanation out than he had hung up with a terse, "We're on our way." Which of course meant the whole family was arriving.
At least the window would be boarded up quickly, she thought wearily. She hadn't moved from the counter. She had no intention of moving.
"Go home, Deirdre." Mikayla stared at her friend as she looked at the pile of clothing helplessly once more.
Deirdre's head snapped up, her expression disbelieving as she turned back to Mikayla. "Do what?" she asked incredulously.
"Go home. Dad and Nik will be here soon. Don't bother coming back in for a while."
It wasn't a brick thrown at the window. This wasn't spray paint on the glass. That had been a bullet, and Deirdre could very well have been in the way of it.
"Like hell," Deirdre snapped as she stalked back to the counter. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll be damned if some jackass is going to run me off."
"You'd rather one of them kill you?" she asked her friend point-blank. "That was a bullet."
"No fucking shit," Deirdre yelled back at her, her hands going to her hips. "And I saw the car they were in and got part of the plate number. Fuck 'em." Rage was glittering in her green eyes. "I'm not going anywhere."
The end of her sentence was punctuated by the hard, furious throb of the Harley as it jumped the sidewalk and came to a hard stop.
Mikayla watched as Nik jumped from his seat and through the opening where the window had been and strode quickly to her.
He'd done that so smoothly, she thought inanely. Stepped up on the seat, those long legs stepping onto the window frame, and in the shop he came. As though he owned the place.
"Are you okay?" His hands gripped her shoulders, his eyes, no longer frozen but burning with rage, going over her quickly. "Dammit, Mikayla. I told you to let me take care of this."
Mikayla felt herself shaking then. She was gripping his forearms as though they were a lifeline.
"That makes twice since Eddie's murder," she whispered shakily as she stared up at him. "What do they say about the third time?" A charm?
"It's okay, baby." He pulled her against him, his hand at the back of her head, pressing her to his chest as he sheltered her with his harder, stronger body. "God, baby, 113
you have to stop pushing buttons here. Let me handle this." It hit her fully then. If he hadn't been supporting her she may well have fallen to the floor in hysterics. Someone had shot at her again. What if that bullet actually hit her the next time?
Nik could feel the rage tearing through him as he looked past Mikayla to the other girl.
