“Perfectly.”
“Good,” Leana said. “So, if there’s nothing more, I have to return this outfit to the boutique on the first floor. Before I was ambushed by your group of investors, I told the manager she’d have it back within the hour.” She clicked her tongue. “And to think you said it was going to be just the two of us this morning.”
“I thought it was going to be,” he said truthfully. “Seeing them here was as much a surprise to you as it was to me.” He nodded at the brooch. “What are you going to do with that?”
Leana lifted her lapel and looked down at the dazzling swirl of diamonds. “Oh, this? This is going to be charged to you. So is the suit. J’adore Dior. The car’s nice, Louis, and I appreciate it. But now that we’ve come to a mutual understanding about why I’m really here, I think you’ll agree they’re worth it when my father learns that the car, the suit and this brooch came from you.”
As she moved past him, she leaned into him. “You want me to play dirty? It comes at a cost. But you can afford it. See you.”
On the drive back to her apartment, Leana allowed herself a well-deserved smile. She had been put on the spot and she handled herself well. She doubted whether her sister could have done better.
After finding a rare parking space along Fifth, she grabbed the roses off the seat beside her and raced up the five flights of stairs to her apartment-stopping abruptly when she saw the man waiting outside her apartment door.
He turned to her.
“Leana Redman?” he said.
Leana took a step back down the stairs, ready to bolt if he tried something. She did not give her name. “How did you get up here?” she asked.
The man was short, wiry and had blond spiky hair. He nodded past her, motioning down the stairs. “The door was open.”
“What do you want?”
“If you’re Leana Redman, I got a package for you-but you need to sign first.”
He thrust out a clipboard with some papers on it and Leana noticed for the first time the gift-wrapped package that was at his feet. Still wary, she signed where she was told and took the package when he handed it to her.
The man didn’t move. Instead, he just looked at her and waited with his hands on his hips. He attempted what she supposed was a smile.
Leana got the hint and moved past him. “Sorry,” she said. “My purse is inside. Could you give me a minute?”
She unlocked her apartment door and closed it when she went inside. She dropped the roses and the package onto a counter top, and reached for her purse on a side table. She removed a twenty, went back to the door and handed it to the man. “Thanks,” she said, and shut the door in his face. She locked it twice and dead bolted it once. He gave her the creeps.
The box was heavy for its size.
As she crossed the room to her bed, she shook it. Something heavy inside shifted. She couldn’t imagine what it was or who it was from. Not Louis again…
She sat at the foot of her bed, curled her legs around her and began removing the pink wrapping paper. When she opened the box, a scent of her favorite perfume drifted to her-the perfume Michael gave her yesterday as a gift. Smiling, she removed sheet upon sheet of red tissue paper, not stopping until she had gripped the object that was at the bottom of the box.
For a moment, she froze. The object was a gun.
Leana released it, the coolness of the metal lingering like a poison on her palm and fingertips.
Inside was a note.
Miss Redman:
I’ve been asked to watch you for some time now and I must say that it’s going to be a shame to kill you. Never have I seen such a remarkably beautiful young woman. This morning, while you were sitting in your new car, I had to still an urge to press against your back the very gun that’s inside this box and take you home with me. I can only imagine how exquisite your legs would feel around my back, can only dream how sweet our love-making would be.
But that won’t be. My job is to kill you. Allow me to apologize now. When I take your life, it won’t be with pleasure.
And that is why I’m giving you an opportunity-take the gun, press it against your temple and pull the trigger. It will weigh much less heavily on my mind knowing you had the good sense to take your own life and I can guarantee you that it will be far less painful, especially since I've been paid to make certain it's painful. Sometimes, when people don’t take my advice, I can become quite…brutal.
It really is a perfect day for a suicide, wouldn’t you say? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the gun is loaded. Please make the right decision, Miss Redman. Someone as pretty as you should be spared as much pain as possible.
I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make your decision. Any time after that and you’re fair game. Oh, and please don’t do anything foolish like telling someone about this. If you do, I’ll know-and neither of us wants that.
Leana crumpled the note and dropped it in the box.
Her breathing was uneven.
Perspiration shimmered on her forehead.
Eric was behind this. She was sure of it.
She looked at the phone. She should call Mario and tell him everything. But she couldn’t. If she did, there was no doubt that somehow this man would find out.
She felt suddenly and entirely alone. There was fear, but it was a different kind of fear from the fear she felt when Eric beat her. She knew then that he wouldn’t kill her. She knew now that he wanted her dead.
She looked at her watch and saw that it was getting late. She wondered where Michael was. She wondered if he had already come by and found her gone.
Her head was spinning.
I’m giving you twenty-four hours to make your decision. Any time after that and you’re fair game.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
From the Mercedes’ cool interior, the three men watched Michael Archer walk down the busy sidewalk, watched him shift a bag of groceries from one arm to the other, and watched him stop to say hello to an elderly woman pushing a rusty shopping cart.
Only after he entered the brick tenement on Avenue B did they make their move.
One by one, they stepped out of the car. Doors opened, clicked shut. Two men were tall and muscular, their dark hair slicked back into shiny ponytails. The other man was slightly older, wiser-looking, with short graying hair and pale skin-the glass of his silver spectacles flashed white in the hazy, early-morning sun.
His name was Ethan Cain, he was an international assassin and he had been hired yesterday morning by Stephano Santiago. While he hadn’t met Santiago in person, the $125,000 Santiago deposited into Cain’s Swiss bank account was perhaps the only introduction he would ever need.
His instructions were simple-remind Michael Archer that in one week a certain gambling debt was due. Use whatever force is necessary.
Cain had his own ideas about that.
Although he was American, he had lived the better part of his life in Paris and spoke in French to the two men beside him. “Archer’s apartment is on the sixth floor. Try not to kill him.”
They crossed the street and entered the building. Inside it was dark and musty. The air smelled of alcohol and cigarette smoke. Cain glanced down both ends of a long corridor, saw peeling wallpaper, a cat urinating in a shadowy corner, a woman stepping half-naked into her apartment. He also saw two stairwells and a service elevator. He gave his men their instructions.
When they separated, it was Cain who took the elevator. As he rose in the rattling iron cage to Michael Archer’s apartment, he reached inside his black leather jacket and felt the gun he concealed there earlier. Its steely coolness sent a rush of anticipation up his spine and he wondered if Archer would give him an excuse to use it.
He hoped so. It had been a week since he’d taken a life.
They met on the sixth floor. In one of the apartments, someone was playing a stereo so loudly that the walls and floor literally vibrated with the sounds of heavy metal music. This pleased Cain. It was a sign to let him know that Archer was in his apartment. Earlier, he had given the man playing the music five hundred dollars to be a lookout.