envy, big brother?”
Jarek’s teeth glinted in a smile. “Yeah. What is yours, three inches?”
Aleksy laughed. “At least mine feels like a real gun instead of a kiddie toy.”
Jarek raised his eyebrows, but he laid the gun flat on his desk without comment.
Aleksy slid it into the clip at his back. Some cops liked an ankle holster off duty, but he’d never been able to stand walking with one. “Thanks.”
“You need a place to stay?”
Aleksy dropped his jacket over the gun to hide it. “No, I’m good. We’re only an hour or so out of Chicago. I can get home occasionally to shower and change. Besides, the fewer people who associate you with me—or me with the police—the better.”
“As long as you understand I expect to be apprised of your activity while you’re in my jurisdiction.”
Aleksy nodded to show he’d received the warning. “Understood.”
“And, Alex…yell for help if you need it.”
Aleksy grinned at his big brother. “Haven’t I always?”
“Not always,” Jarek said. “You let Tommy Dolan whip your butt in fifth grade.”
Aleksy shrugged. “Fine. You want to help?” He did a mental playback of Faye Harper’s wide eyes and unexpected spunk. “Fix things with the cream puff.”
“—can only apologize and hope you’re willing to forget about the matter,” the police chief’s cool, smooth voice said over the telephone line.
Faye’s hand tightened on the receiver. He was talking down to her. A lot of people talked down to her. Too bad for the Denkos she was getting tired of it. “Most women would have difficulty forgetting an armed intruder.”
The police chief coughed. “Actually, unless you previously communicated your desire for him to leave the property—if the yard were fenced, for example, or if signs were posted—he wouldn’t be guilty of criminal trespass. Of course, I understand your—”
“He had a gun,” Faye said.
The line was still for a moment. “A gun he was legally authorized to carry.”
She knew it was futile to argue. But still. “Your officer said only sworn law enforcement officers could carry concealed firearms.”
“Yes,” the chief said, adding very gently, “My brother Alex is a detective with the Chicago PD.”
The fight leaked out of Faye like air from a pricked balloon. What was the point of protesting? What was right was never as important as what was expedient. She should have learned that by now.
But the mocking memory of her trespasser’s hard, dark eyes dared her to say, “And what was a detective from Chicago doing on my dock?”
Another pause. “I can’t say.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
Jarek Denko was silent.
Don’t get involved, Faye told herself. You don’t want to know. She tucked the receiver under her jaw and used her left hand to massage her right wrist. Without the support of the cast, it ached when she used it too long.
“Never mind,” she said. “I won’t press charges or—or whatever it is. I don’t have time, anyway. I’m here to work.”
“Really?” the chief asked politely. Well, now that he had what he wanted—her cooperation—she supposed he felt compelled to be polite. “What kind of work do you do, Miss Harper?”
Once she would have told him with pride that she was a teacher. Now she stammered. “I, um…not work, exactly. I should have said I paint.”
“Lots of pretty scenery up here,” the chief said, still politely.
She made an agreeable noise—it seemed the fastest way to get him to leave her alone—and hoped he wouldn’t start to tell her what views she ought to paint while she was here or about his aunt/sister/cousin who used to model clay/draw her own Christmas cards/do decoupage.
He didn’t. He thanked her again formally and got off the line.
Faye drew a shaky breath and looked around her aunt’s living room, now serving as her temporary studio. Brushes stood in mayonnaise jars. Paint dried in plastic trays. Photographs—a bright sailboat slicing the horizon, a flock of birds above an inlet, a skyscape at midday—spilled across the table. The metallic strip board she’d hauled from her Chicago apartment propped against one wall, her most recent work held in place with small round magnets.
I paint.
Beautiful scenes. Bright scenes. Safe scenes.
She bit her lip, aware of a faint dissatisfaction. Maybe they did lack a little of the energy and edge that characterized her earlier work, but they were pretty. Soothing.
Lame, Jamal would have said, with a shake of his head and his wide, white grin…
The tight control she’d held over her thoughts fissured, and through the gap, bitter self-accusation swept in a flood. Don’t go there, she told herself. Do not. Go there. Don’t.
She picked up one of the trays and headed to the kitchen to rinse out the old paints in the sink. She was scrubbing burnt umber from the palette’s crevice when the doorbell rang.
Her heart began to thump. She turned off the water. She wasn’t expecting visitors. She didn’t know anyone in town, not really, and while she had left a forwarding address at the school, no one in Chicago cared where she’d gone. Mail delivery came around three and her aunt’s cottage was too far off the beaten path to attract many salesmen.
Drying her hands on a paper towel, she went to the door. A man’s tall outline blocked the afternoon sun. She squinted through the screen. Her misgiving swelled.
It was him.
Aleksy Denko.
Chapter 2
Aleksy was used to one of two reactions when he knocked on a woman’s door. Either she stalled him while the man of the house bolted down the fire escape. Or, sooner or later, she invited him in for sex. Some women did both.
Faye Harper didn’t look like she would do either one.
She hung back in the shadow of the house, her arms crossed and her body language shouting “go away.” He didn’t hold it against her. Even with Jarek’s phone call smoothing the way, he probably made her nervous.
“It’s okay,” he said with an easy grin. He could do charming. Karen used to say it was his best interview technique, though he liked to think he had a nice line in subtly threatening, too. “I’m not selling anything.”
Faye Harper didn’t smile as he’d hoped and half expected.
