The police could help, and she’d call them, but truth was, she’d been had. She knew nothing more than Tomas had been charming and intelligent—and slick. Very slick.
In the bank, things went from bad to worse.
She had three accounts: a personal checking account, which she kept only a couple of hundred dollars in; her business checking account, the balance of which she wasn’t exactly sure of because Jody had been handling it, but she guessed to be at least the three thousand she’d just deposited from a particularly large sale the week before; and her savings account, which should have a few grand as well.
It didn’t. All three accounts had been wiped out. According to records, it had happened slowly, over the past month.
And she’d not noticed a thing. What kind of a fool did that make her? Her throat tightening, her eyes burning so that she could barely see on the drive home, she let herself into her condo. She needed to call the cops, make a report. . . .
It took a moment for anything else to sink in, but gradually it registered: Her place had been ransacked, carefully and purposefully. Thoroughly. Cabinets open, sofa overturned, drawers on the floor, contents scattered everywhere.
She jumped at the knock on the open door behind her. Turning, she stared into a face she recognized but didn’t know.
The man from the black truck.
He wasn’t the sort of man one forgot. She just hoped he wasn’t as dangerous as he looked. Up close now, she got a few more details. His tawny hair was on the wrong side of his last haircut. He had a tough, lean jaw and a wide, firm, unsmiling mouth. He stood tall and rangy in her doorway, dressed in casual black, though nothing about the man looked casual. Before she’d wondered what color his eyes were. Now she could see he had the sharpest green eyes she’d ever seen.
At the sight of her condo and its condition behind her, his jaw tightened, and those eyes went flat and cold. “Are you hurt?”
A killer wouldn’t ask that question, she reassured herself, and hoped she was right. “No. I’m not hurt.”
He angled his head for a better look. “Do you know what they wanted?”
“Who?” she asked.
He pierced her with those extraordinary eyes. “The men after Mario Alvarez.”
“I don’t know who that is, and I don’t know you. Look, I’ve had a really, really bad day.” Her voice was beginning to wobble, and horrified, she pushed him back a step, trying not to feel the easy strength of him beneath her fingers. With her other hand, she reached for the door, not about to let a thief, a condo wrecker, a possible murderer inside. “So if you’ll excuse me—”
Lifting an arm above her head, he slapped a palm on the wood before she could shut it in his face.
She’d had just enough of a nightmare day for that to really infuriate her. Putting both arms into it this time, she tried to muscle the door closed, but now she couldn’t budge it, or him.
He didn’t smile or try to put her at ease as he outmuscled her either. He just simply held the door open and leaned in far too close. “Look, however bad you think your day has been,” he said in an extremely quiet voice, “you’re still breathing. Remember that.”
Then, without a care to her wishes, he brushed past her, moving through her condo with easy yet edgy masculine grace. His gaze swept the living room and the mess, and at the sound of glass tinkling in her bedroom off to the left, he whipped out a gun from beneath his shirt so fast her head spun.
“Oh my God.” She covered her face, the ultimate hiding her head in the sand. “Not a gun. I can’t do this. I really can’t.”