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“What bothers me is why they grabbed you in the first place. If they’re looking to add you to a human trafficking ring, you’d bring a high price with that hair.” He glanced her way, his lips turning upward in a wry grin.
“All the more reason to dye my hair dirt brown. Or, better yet, cotton candy pink.”
“It’s your hair. You can die it any color you want.” He shot a glance at her. “Me, personally, I like its natural color.”
“Thank you.” Breely glanced his way. “My grandmother had red hair like mine. She let me brush it when I was a little girl. It already had gray streaks in it. By the time she turned seventy, it was a stunning shade of white. When I’m seventy, I hope my hair is that exact same shade.”
“And you’ll still have sexy hair,” he said, still grinning.
The heat returned to her cheeks, making them burn. Breely pressed her cool palms to her skin, refusing to look at Moe the Flirt.
He turned onto the street with her apartment building and drove into the parking lot, coming to a stop.
Breely quickly opened her door. “Thank you for bringing me home.” She dropped to the ground and hurried toward the front entry. When Breely reached for the door handle, her fingers were brushed gently to the side.
Moe’s strong, capable fingers wrapped around the knob and pulled the door open.
Breely led the way up a set of stairs and down a long hallway to stop at her door. When she started to shove her key into the lock, barely applying any pressure, the door swung open. The doorjamb and the door itself were splintered.
Breely automatically recoiled backward several steps. “I locked it this morning,” she whispered.
“Locks don’t always work against crowbars. Get out your cell phone,” he commanded as he bent to pull a knife out of a scabbard strapped to his ankle. “Call 911.”
Breely keyed the numbers to place the call.
She had just punched the send button when Moe leaned close and said, “Stay here.”
Breely’s heart leaped into her throat. “What are you going to do?”
“If someone is in there, I’m not waiting for him to get out and run.”
She didn’t have time to respond as the dispatcher came on.
With Moe entering a potentially dangerous situation and a dispatcher in her ear, Breely fought the urge to race in after him. Instead, she relayed the information about the break-in at her apartment.
Once she had given the address and was assured a unit was on the way, Breely ended the call, pushed the door open wider and gasped.
Chapter 3
Moe moved quickly and silently through the apartment, his knife held in front of him, his ears straining for the slightest sounds.
Whoever had been, or was still, in Bea’s apartment had trashed everything so completely that Moe doubted anything could be salvaged.
Couch seat cushions had been ripped down the middle as if someone with a knife as sharp as Moe’s had stabbed the fabric and the foam inside several times. The back and frame had suffered a similar attack.
Side tables lay in splintered pieces across the living room floor, and the glass coffee table was nothing more than shards strewn across the once cream-colored carpet.
Plants lay on their sides, the pots upended and black soil ground into the rug.
The damage was regretful but didn’t occupy Moe’s consciousness as much as searching for danger and neutralizing it before it neutralized him or Bea.
A thorough search of the living room, kitchen, pantry and coat closets yielded the usual items found in such places; only all had been consigned to the walls or floors. Bags of flour and sugar had been punctured, their contents spewed like a dusting of snow and ice crystals across counters and floors.
Nobody lurked in the dark places at the front of the apartment.
Moe slipped deeper into the disaster, turning down a short hallway. A door on the right hung open, leading into a bathroom. A white shower curtain hung in tatters, gaping holes slashed through the fabric, the curtain rod bent almost in half, dangling from one mount on the wall. Shampoo and cleaning fluids made the floor slick.
Small plastic containers of makeup lay crushed amid the pools of liquid. No one hid behind what was left of the shower curtain or in the tight confines of the linen cabinet.
