Assumed Identity(40)
She pulled her sweater more tightly around her neck and hugged her arms at her waist. “Are the boutonnieres for the Vanderham second wedding finished?”
“Packaged and ready for delivery in the morning. Along with two dozen small sprays and the biggest altar piece I’ve ever put together. Tacky and too much, but if it makes the client happy, who am I to complain?” Frowning, he took a step into the cold room. “Are you okay? You look a little pale. Are you thinking about the assault again?”
Was there a moment in the week since her attack that she hadn’t? She slipped her hand into her apron pocket, feeling today’s latest threat burning against her fingers. But her personal problems weren’t Mark’s concern—or anyone else’s, apparently, according to the police’s inability to act on a few prank calls and messages. So she pasted on a reassuring smile. “No. I didn’t realize it was nine o’clock. Is everything locked up?”
“You bet.” Mark inclined his head toward the workrooms in the back. “We’re all getting ready to head out so we can get an early start on tomorrow’s setup. I think Linda and Christine are going out for coffee, but the rest of us are heading home. You should do the same.”
“I know.” Since the assault nearly a week earlier, she’d taken every safety precaution she knew to heart—especially since that first drunken phone call had turned into some sort of anonymous hate mail campaign. Every day there’d been something new in her bills and correspondence at the shop. And each letter, sent from a Kansas City post office with no return address, had grown more disturbing by the day.
The Rose Red Rapist didn’t make mistakes and would come back to finish what he’d started.
A single woman had no business adopting a child.
Emma would be taken from her and Robin would be punished for abandoning her the night of the attack.
Abandon? As if she’d been given a choice.
At one point she’d considered digging out Bill Houseman’s card and calling him to find out if he was behind the terror campaign. He’d claimed to be related to Emma, and this could be his sick effort to get her to reverse the adoption so he could take custody of the baby. But how could the attempted rape be related to a legal claim? Besides, a call to Robin’s attorney had assured her that the adoption was legitimate and airtight, and there was nothing requiring her to have any contact with the birth parents who’d surrendered their rights to Emma.
The motive might not be clear, but the message was unmistakable. Some nut job had fixated on Robin and Emma, and it was up to her to maintain a vigilance that would keep her, and everyone around her, safe.
She pulled herself from her thoughts and smiled her thanks to Mark. “Will you make sure that no one leaves by themselves?”
“Sure. I’ll ask Leon to move the van and secure the loading dock, too.”
“Thanks.” Even though she’d be making the rounds herself to make sure everything was locked up tight before she left, it was reassuring to have a second pair of eyes checking the security of the place. “I need a few minutes to get things back in order here and pack up Emma. Then we’ll be leaving, too.”
Mark let the door close behind him and joined her in the middle of the tall, metal shelves that lined the room. “What are you doing?”
She exhaled a weary sigh that clouded around her face. “Old-fashioned inventory, counting out the flowers we have in stock one at a time.”
“Sounds tedious. Want some help?”
Robin smiled and shook her head. “It’s nearly done. Besides, you’ve been talking about those late dinner plans of yours all day long. You need to skedaddle.”
“My date can wait,” he volunteered.
She waved off the offer and picked up one of the long, narrow boxes she’d set on the floor. “At first I thought maybe a couple of orders hadn’t been logged in. But then you showed me your records and I realized we were just encoding entries differently.” She laid the box on a matching stack and opened the lid. “Now I’m thinking the number error is coming from the distributor’s end. We were shorted two stems in each of these boxes. If that’s been going on the entire time I was gone, that adds up to over two thousand dollars.”
“I’ll call them and ask what’s going on. Get them to adjust the billing.” Mark thumbed over his shoulder. “In the meantime, if you won’t be too much longer, I promised Shirley I’d walk her to her car.”