“Five hundred thousand.” She went even paler, and then right before his eyes, hers rolled in her head.
“Shit.” In two strides he was at her side, crouching down, shoving her head to her knees. “Breathe. Breathe.”
“I’m . . . trying.”
“Try harder.”
At her sides her fists clenched as she panted for air through the panic attack. She wore a short denim skirt that had risen high on her thighs when she’d dropped to the floor, and an eye-popping yellow halter top that matched her high-heeled sandals. The whole getup should have been silly to his practical mind, but instead was sexy as hell. So was the bared, tanned soft skin of her back, the row of delicate bones lining her spine reminding him how long it’d been since he’d kissed his way down a woman’s back.
“I told you, this has been a very bad day.” Her breath shuddered in and out. “I couldn’t find my keys. I should have known to just pack it in right there and call it a day, but no.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Tomas in bed with Jody. A speeding ticket. And I think I broke my toe when I kicked that rat bastard’s tire. And then he stole all my money, and I can’t get into my shop, and now my house has been ransacked—” She straightened and leveled him with a tearful, hopeful expression. “I’m dreaming, aren’t I? Tell me this whole thing is just a bad dream.”
When he slowly shook his head, all hope drained out of her face. She swiped her arm beneath her nose and looked around at the utter destruction of her bedroom. Her short hair danced around her cheeks. “I don’t understand.”
No, he could see that she didn’t, but he was beginning to. “What’s your name?”
“Jade.”
“You know your boyfriend as Tomas Manning, right?”
“He’s not my boyfriend. He’s a rat bastard.”
“Yeah, well, he’s an internationally known rat bastard with more aliases than you have years on you, who has personally fenced close to ten million dollars’ worth of antiquities across the country and is now wanted in about twenty states for those crimes, as well as for murder one.”
She sat there, and her wide unpainted mouth trembled open, her drenched eyes lifting to his, confused and hurting. “Murder?” she whispered.
“Yeah, murder.”
“I don’t want to see anyone die. I can’t see anyone else die.”
He had no idea if she was crazy, or just in shock. “Count your lucky stars that you didn’t get in his way, or that you weren’t here when the goons after him couldn’t find what they wanted.” He wrapped his fingers around her slim, surprisingly toned arm. “Now get it together. We have to move before they come back here to shake some information out of you.”
“Oh my God.”
“Where’s Mario, Jade?”
“I don’t know.”
“If those guys find him first . . .” He let that hang in the air.
Her eyes flickered with fear. “There’s a woman with him. An ex-employee of mine. She stole from me, but I don’t want her to lose her life.”
“Then let’s hope she’s smart.”
“She is.” Jade put her head to her knees and gulped air. Her short hair fell forward in a shiny curtain, exposing the back of her neck in a way that made her look even more vulnerable. Her small trim body trembled, and when she turned her head to stare at him, she nibbled on her full lower lip, which looked to be made for nibbling, and he couldn’t look away. “What is it you want from Tomas—Mario?” she corrected.