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An icy rush slid down her body from her forehead to her kitten heels, leaving a shivering panic in its wake. She sprinted to the kitchen. The table sat empty, its wood surface gleaming.
Fuck.
The green walls mocked her with their satin-finished cheer. Afraid her Jell-O thighs were about to dissolve, she sank down onto the hard chair. Her head hit the tabletop with a thunk.
She gave a strangled moan. “My laptop. It’s gone.”
Tony leaned against the doorframe, his hands shoved deep in his jeans pockets. “They left the big-screen, the jewelry, the artwork, but took your laptop?”
“As far as I can tell.”
It didn’t make sense—not if this was a normal break-in. She had a Harry Winston diamond pendant necklace in a glass case on her dresser. Antique typewriters that went for several hundred dollars a pop dotted the apartment. Two fur coats, gifts upon her graduation from high school and college, hung in her walk-in closet. The burglars had left all of that, but had taken the three-year-old laptop with a scratch across the cover.
“What’s on the laptop?”
Yeah. Not a normal break-in.
Bitterness ate away at the back of her throat. “All my notes. Scanned documents. Passwords for my blog. Basically my entire life.”
“Everything Bloom needs to expose you to the world. Or for Pippa to smoke out your mole at Chantal.”
“Bingo.”
Her gaze narrowed on the bulldog mug sitting next to the coffee machine. She’d never backed down from a fight when she’d lived on the other side of the harbor, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to start now that she’d managed to make something of her life.
The rat bastards were about to learn that they’d fucked with the wrong girl.
“Do you have a backup?” Tony asked.
A tiny green light blinked across the room. The white, square, wireless hard drive sat on the highest of her
kitchen bookshelves, tucked in among the cookbooks and more fashion magazines.
“Yeah, but it’s not synced. I haven’t backed up in a week. I meant to but…it hasn’t been a top priority.”
Instead, she’d been feeling sorry for herself, reliving every excruciating moment of humiliation at Anya’s wedding, worrying about her stalker succeeding next time he tried to run her over, and agonizing, horny and frustrated, over Tony’s steadfast refusal to take their attraction further than a steadfast “Not gonna happen.”
“Well, we better call it in.” Tony pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and swiped a finger across the screen.
“The police?”
“Yeah.”
“What will they be able to do?”
“We’ll find out when they get here.”
The answer to her question, Sylvie discovered several hours later, was diddly squat.
“You know, Miss Bissette, some people might interpret these events as you walking into the path of traffic, then having the bad luck to own one of the thousands of apartments burglarized in Harbor City each year. These things could be totally unrelated to your hate mail.” The doughy cop in a too-tight uniform held up his fleshy hand. “I’m not saying I’m that person but…”
“So there’s nothing you can do?” Sylvie already knew the answer but had to ask the question anyway.
He shrugged his shoulders and flipped his notebook closed. It shut with a smacking sound that boomed loud and as final as a judge’s gavel at a ruling. He stared at her front door before glancing across the room to the window that opened onto the fire escape. His jaw squared.
“Look, I’m passing this up the chain, but I’ll be honest with you. No one got killed. No one’s bloody. And even with who your dads are, you’re not high profile enough to make this B and E move up the ladder. This case is going to land at the bottom of someone’s inbox and probably never see the light of day again.” The officer nodded toward her door. “Those locks look tough, but they didn’t work. And that window there is practically an open invitation. That you made it this long without a break-in is a miracle.”
Leaving Tony standing by the couch, she walked the officer to the door with heavy steps. This outcome wasn’t unexpected, but still, a little official law enforcement help would have been nice.
