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She was touched, so she glared at him. “Alexi won’t hurt me physically. Michel should know that. He wants me alive and suffering. Don’t you have enough of your own problems right now?”
“I don’t like what he’s doing.”
She retrieved her toast. “I’m not exactly crazy about it myself.”
They ate in silence for a while. Jake took a sip of coffee. “You don’t usually wear jeans and sneakers to work. What’s up?”
“I’m riding with the dress racks over to the hotel. The men aren’t due here for an hour, and it’s going to be a long day.” She regarded him pointedly. “That’s why I wanted to sleep in this morning. Besides, I couldn’t leave while all this was in the house.” She made a vague gesture toward her living room.
Jake had already spotted the rows of metal racks bearing garments draped in black plastic. “Do you want to tell me about it or should I guess?”
“You know Michel’s showing his collection today.”
“And those are the pieces?”
She nodded and told him about the factory in Astoria and the phone call she’d received at four that morning. “The security people aren’t exactly sure how the sprinkler system was set off, but all the dresses hanging on the racks in the workroom were waterlogged.”
He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Everything in the workroom was thrift shop stuff,” she said. “Kissy, Simon, Charlie, and I made the switch last night after Michel and all the seamstresses went home.” She tried to feel some sense of satisfaction for having outwitted Alexi, but she’d only have to start worrying again as soon as this was over. She rose and walked toward the phone. “I have to call Michel so he doesn’t have a heart attack if he stops at the factory this morning.”
He came up out of his chair. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me Michel doesn’t know you moved his dresses over here?”
“It’s not his problem. I’m the one who chopped up the Bugatti, and I’m the one Alexi’s after. Michel has enough to worry about.”
Jake shot out from behind the table. “Suppose Alexi sent one of his thugs here? What would you have done then?”
“The factory was crawling with guards. Alexi had no reason to suspect the samples were here.”
“You know what your problem is? You don’t think!” As he came toward her, the pocket of his sweatshirt hit the edge of the counter, and she heard a loud thunk. For the first time she noticed that one side of the garment hung down farther than the other. He immediately shoved his hand in the pocket.
She set the receiver back on its hook. “What do you have?”
“What do you mean?”
Something prickled at the base of her spine. “In your pocket. What is it?”
“Pocket? My keys.”
“What else?”
He shrugged. “A twenty-two automatic.”
She looked at him blankly. “A what?”
“A gun.”
“Are you crazy?” She charged toward him. “You brought a gun in here! In my house? Do you think this is one of your movies?”
His gaze was steady and unrepentant. “No apologies. I didn’t know what I’d find when I walked in.”
Out of nowhere, she found herself thinking about a little girl with yellow ducks on her shirt and a massacre. A creeping fear she absolutely did not want to let in pummeled at the door of her consciousness.
“Stay here while I throw on some clothes,” he said as he left the kitchen.
Every instinct she possessed told her that Jake could never have taken part in an atrocity, not even in the middle of a war. But her brain wasn’t as easily persuaded. She wished she’d never let him back into her life. Even with everything she knew about him, she was once again letting him burrow under her defenses.
By the time he reappeared, the white roses had arrived.
