Chapter Ten
Alara
That little Charlotte saw way too much.
It was obvious she picked up on something between me and her uncle. Which, looking back, was why she’d insisted he walk me to the bookstore. Not out of some desire for him to be a chivalrous man, but because she wanted us to have some alone time.
As soon as Christopher walked out of the pawnshop to go look for Liam, she launched into a monologue about how good an uncle he was, listing his positive traits like she’d been working on it in case she got a chance to talk him up to me.
There was no way to tell a twelve-year-old that when I’d made a move on the guy, he’d pushed me away and told me that nothing could happen between us.
So I made little grunting noises and nods until she finally ran out of steam and got back to talking about books.
In just the couple of weeks since I’d seen her, not only had she finished the series she had me reading, but she’d started and completed two other series.
“Is that what you want to do someday?”
“What?”
“Write books?”
“Oh.” She pursed her lips at that. “I don’t know. I think I just like reading them.”
“Maybe you can be a librarian. Or open a bookstore. I’d come to your shop all the time.”
She took off from there, shooting off lots of ideas about what would make a great bookstore (coffee and sweet treats, of course), how it had to be cozy (I had to agree), and they would bring back midnight release parties.
Apparently, she was very disappointed when she learned they used to be a big thing but weren’t anymore.
She was such active company that for the half an hour or so she was in the shop, I’d forgotten all about the murdered woman. About the box she’d left with me for safekeeping. A box that maybe she’d been killed over.
It wasn’t until I watched Charlotte and Christopher disappear down the subway steps that her image popped up in my mind.
Not the picture from the news, that must have been taken from her social media, with such a strong filter on it that not only did she not have pores, but she practically didn’t seem to have a nose.
No, I was seeing her as she’d been in the shop that day. Gorgeous without a filter and with some texture and the kind of imperfections that only managed to make her even prettier: a slightly too pointed canine tooth, a smile that tugged more to one side than the other, and unusually elegant hands.
I remembered how nervous she’d been, how eager she was to put that box in my hands, to unburden herself of it… or to keep it safe.
No matter how many times I replayed it, I couldn’t figure out which was more likely.
Maybe it was both.
Whatever it was, it was extremely valuable to her, and she wanted to make sure it didn’t fall into someone else’s hands… but she was also relieved not to be the one to keep it safe any longer.
I flicked off the lights and slid the lock before moving through the shop, trying to remember where I’d stashed the damn box.
I usually kept that stuff up front, but behind the counter. When I started digging through my shelves, counters, and under-counter storage, I didn’t come across any boxes.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Had they actually gotten it?
I wouldn’t have noticed a little music box missing. Even one I’d promised to keep a hold on.
I mean, I did just do a deep clean.
Maybe when I’d emptied out the cabinets to give them all a good twice-yearly scrub, I’d decided to locate the box.
I wish I could claim to have the kind of memory where I had detailed recollections of every move I made every day.
Especially when it came to moving stuff around in the shop.
I was a chronic shuffler. I was forever rearranging things.
To keep displays fresh. To move creepy shit away from the front so they weren’t staring at me.
To just get rid of some restless energy that was a chronic problem when all you did was stand around and try to make some sales all day.
The box could have been moved five times in a single day for all I knew.
But I would have remembered the promise I’d made not to sell it until it sat for a while. So while I did glance at the shelves as I moved through the store, I wasn’t expecting to see it anywhere except maybe in the back somewhere.
“God, I need a better system,” I grumbled to myself as I stood in the doorway, hands on my hips, surveying the racks upon racks of unorganized crap.
It was even worse than it usually was. The break-in meant picking up everything that had hit the floor or gotten knocked over and setting it back on the shelves. With literally not a single thought to what I was doing. I’d just been annoyed about the whole situation.
With a sigh, I moved toward the closest set of shelves, going through each one. This meant I was starting to organize as I went, making the simple process that could have taken twenty minutes stretch closer to an hour.
I was losing hope.
I was starting to believe the criminals had walked away with it after all when I spotted something rectangular sitting at the very top of my shelf of cleaning supplies.
Reaching up, my fingers closed around the wood and pulled it down.
Sure enough, it was the box.
With a little thrill, I walked over to a shelf, setting the box down and opening it.
The twinkling music filled the quiet store. Instead of comforting, though, it was oddly eerie. Like an ice cream truck in a horror movie.
My heartbeat fluttered as I felt around inside the box, looking for some lever or something. Like this was a freaking spy movie.
In the end, the trick was much simpler than that.
The little ballerina could be pulled up to reveal a small space below. It wasn’t much. You couldn’t even get more than two fingers in the space. But when I felt around inside, I found something cold and hard hidden inside.
Snagging it awkwardly between my fingers, I drew out the little capsule-shaped piece of plastic.
I didn’t need to remove the cover on the end to know exactly what I was dealing with.
A flash drive.
She’d hidden a flash drive in the bottom of the box.
I had no idea what the pretty, young Robin Moody could have gotten herself wrapped up in, what kind of information she’d squirreled away.
But it was something worth killing for.
My fist curled around it like it was too dangerous to even let the bric-a-brac in the shop see.
I shoved the little ballerina back into place before closing the lid.
The silence in the shop was enough to make my ears buzz, to make my eardrums flutter, a disorienting sensation that had my belly flip-flopping.
I had the strangest urge to break out in song just to break up the quiet.
What was Robin hiding?
What was worth giving up her life to protect?
Well, I guess I was going to find out.
Because as soon as I grabbed Tuna, and maybe a slice of pizza on the way home, I was going to stick the drive in my laptop, and go through the contents.
Was the smart, moral, correct thing to be to turn the thing over to the cops?
Sure. But, well, you didn’t get to be related to the Costa Family without having a healthy dose of skepticism for the NYPD.
Not only because they could be ineffective, but also corrupt.
I knew for a fact that Lorenzo had several cops, detectives, and members of the forensics team on his payroll.
And, hey, I would probably turn it over.
After I found out what was on it.
I felt like I at least owed it to the Family to make sure there was nothing about their organization in it. Because that was certainly information an outsider would kill to get their hands on.
The drive suddenly felt a little too heavy in my hand.
I’d just set the box back on the shelf when there was a noise significantly worse than the sudden, sharp quiet.
A footstep.
My heart shot right up into my throat, a fist of fear strangling me immediately.
My hand shot out, reaching for something, anything I could use to defend myself.
But I was standing by a stack of old magazines, a box of tangled costume jewelry, and four old portable personal CD players.
Nothing that stood a chance against an attack.
So my only option was to run.
My body moved automatically, turning toward the edge of the shelves, ready to throw myself on the other side, put it between us, then either find a weapon or make a mad dash toward the front door.
But before I could do more than turn my toes to run, hands were slamming into my shoulders, knocking me off balance and sending me falling forward.
My arms shot out, making the drive fly from my hands, shooting off across the floor as I tried to break my fall as the cold, hard cement floor came at me with a sickening speed.
My hands landed first, the pain shooting up from my wrists so strongly that I worried something might have snapped.
A shocked gasp escaped me as my gaze frantically searched the floor, looking for the drive.
But I couldn’t see it anywhere.
Did he find it?
Take it?
Turn to run?
Even as I thought that, though, a hand closed around my hair, twisting, and tugging back so hard that I saw stars, the pain splicing across my scalp and shooting down my neck as it was pulled back at an unnatural angle.
“Where is it?”
He didn’t have it then.
Good.
I wasn’t going to let him get it.
This is the part where the average person would think that if they just gave the guy what he wanted, he would leave them alone.
I was not the average person.
I knew a lot more about how criminals operated.
He was never going to let me go.
Because I saw his face.
Granted, there wasn’t much to write home about: white, twenties, blue eyes, brown brows and lashes. His hood was up, casting part of his face in shadow and concealing his hair.
But it was enough.
And I had a working camera again.
He’d have to kill me.
So there was no way in hell, if there was any chance of me dying, that I was going to give him what he wanted first.
That said, I wasn’t going out without a fight.