them all down and tucked the note in her pocket.
October turned into November, and as the date for Michel’s fashion show drew near, the gossip about her broken contracts refused to die. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the phony stories she’d planted at the end of the summer about her relationship with Jake were continuing to damage her. The gossips said Fleur Savagar was nothing more than a washed-up fashion model trying to start a business on her back. None of the clients she’d been pursuing had signed with her, and each night she fell asleep only to jolt awake a few hours later and listen to the sound of Jake’s typewriter. In the morning, she used her key to check on him, and after a while, it became difficult to tell which of them was the more haggard.
She spent the day before Michel’s show at the hotel, scurrying between technicians and the carpenters setting up the runway. She drove everyone crazy with her insistence on security passes and guards at the door. Even Kissy lost patience with her, but everything rested on Michel’s collection, and Alexi had less than twenty-four hours to do his worst. Fleur called Michel at the Astoria factory to make sure the guards were doing their job.
“Every time I look out, they’re where they’re supposed to be,” he said.
As he hung up, she had to remind herself to breathe. She’d hired the best security company in the state. Now she had to trust them to do their job.
Willie Bonaday burped and reached into his uniform pocket for a roll of Tums. Sometimes he chewed them one after another to help pass the time until the daytime shift took over. He’d been working this job for a month now, and tonight was the last night. Willie thought it was a lot of trouble to go to for a bunch of dresses, but as long as he got his paycheck, he minded his own business.
Four of them worked each shift, and they had the place sealed up tighter than a drum. Willie sat just inside the front door of the old Astoria factory, while his partner, Andy, was at the back and two of the younger men were outside the workshop doors on the second floor where the dresses were locked up. In the morning, the boys on the day shift would accompany the big dress racks on the drive to the hotel. By evening, the job would be over.
A couple of years back, Willie had guarded Reggie Jackson. That was the kind of job he liked. When him and his brother-in-law were sitting around watching the Giants, he wanted to shoot the bull about guarding Reggie Jackson, not a bunch of dresses. Willie picked up the
The man driving the van turned into an alley across the street without even glancing at the factory. He didn’t have to. He’d driven by every night for the past week, each time in a different vehicle, and he knew exactly what he’d see. He knew about Willie, although he didn’t know his name, and he knew about the guard at the back entrance and the locked room on the second floor with the guards stationed outside. He knew about the day shift that would arrive in a few hours, and the dim interior lights kept on in the factory at night. Only the lights were important to him.
The warehouse across the street from the factory had been abandoned for years, and the rusty padlock at the back gave easily beneath the jaws of the bolt cutters. He pulled an equipment case from the van. It was heavy, but the weight didn’t bother him. When he was safely inside the warehouse, he switched on his flashlight and shone it at the floor as he walked toward the front of the building. The flashlight annoyed him. Its beam of light spread out in a smear-no clear boundaries, no precision. It was sloppy light.
Light was his specialty. Pure beams of pencil-slim light. Coherent light that didn’t spread out in undisciplined pools like a flashlight beam.
He spent nearly an hour setting up. Normally it didn’t take so long, but he’d been forced to modify his equipment with a high-powered telescope, and the mounting was difficult. He didn’t mind, though, because he liked challenges, especially ones that paid so well.
When he’d finished setting up, he cleaned his hands on the rag he carried with him and then wiped a circle in the dirty glass of the warehouse window. He took his time sighting and focusing the telescope, making certain everything was exactly the way he wanted it. He could pick out each of the tiny lead plug centers without any difficulty. They were clearer to him than if he’d been standing in the middle of that second-story room.
When he was ready, he gently pulled the switch on the laser, directing the pure beam of ruby-red light right at the lead plug that was farthest away. The plug needed only a hundred and sixty-five degrees of heat to melt, and within seconds he could see that the hot ruby light of the laser had done its work. He picked out the next plug, and it, too, dissolved under the force of the pencil-thin beam of light. In a matter of minutes, all the lead plugs had melted, and the heads of the automatic fire sprinkler system were spraying water over the racks of dresses.
Satisfied, the man packed up his equipment and left the warehouse.
Fleur
Chapter 24
The doorbell woke her. She squinted at her clock and wondered if florists delivered white roses at six in the morning but decided she wasn’t getting up to find out. She stuck her head under the pillow and dozed off. Out of nowhere, someone jerked the pillow away. She screamed and bolted upright in bed.
Jake towered above her in jeans and a zippered sweatshirt that he’d thrown on over his bare chest. His hair was shaggy, his jaw unshaven, and his eyes had an empty, haunted look. “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you answer the door?”
Fleur grabbed the pillow out of his hands and hit him in the stomach. “It’s six-thirty in the morning!”
“You run at six o’clock! Where were you?”
“
He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked sulky. “How was I supposed to know you were sleeping? When I didn’t see you from my window, I thought something was wrong.”
She couldn’t postpone this day any longer, and she kicked away the covers. He didn’t even pretend not to notice that her gown was bunched around her thighs. She stretched out to switch on the bedside light and deliberately rearranged her legs like a girl in a mattress ad, with her toes pointed and her arches delicately curved. Considering all the problems lying ahead of her today, it wasn’t the greatest reflection on her character that she needed to make sure Jake Koranda got a great view of her legs.
“I’ll make breakfast,” he said abruptly.
She took a quick shower, then slipped into jeans and an old ski sweater. Jake glanced up at her from the eggs he was cracking into a skillet. Standing over her stove, he looked taller than ever, with his shoulders straining the seams of his sweatshirt in a way that was aggressively and indisputably male. It took a moment for her head to semi-clear. “How did you get in? I double-checked the doors before I went to bed last night.”
“You want your eggs scrambled or fried?”
“Jake…”
“I can’t chitchat and make breakfast at the same time. You could help, you know, instead of standing there like the Queen of England. Although you’re a lot better-looking.”
A typically male evasive action, but she let him get away with it because she was hungry. She pitched in with toast and orange juice, then poured the coffee. Once they settled at the table, however, she attacked. “You got to my office manager again. Riata made you a duplicate of her key.”
He loaded up his fork.
“Admit it,” she said. “There’s no other way you could have gotten in.”
“How come you put more butter on your toast than mine?”
“Riata has a key. I have a key. Michel has a key. That’s it. If I fire her, it’ll be on your conscience.”
“You’re not firing her.” He traded his toast for hers. “Your brother gave me a duplicate key a few nights after the dinner party. He told me what your father’s been up to. Michel is worried about you, and I can’t say I’m exactly happy knowing that bastard has you in his crosshairs. When you didn’t go out to run this morning, I was afraid he’d
