Assumed Identity(46)
She was talking unsolved crime, extending that protective maternal shield to include him in her fierce compassion. But the stroke of her fingers across his skin was eliciting something far more sensual than anything he’d feel for somebody’s mother. And he hadn’t been thinking about the clue he’d inadvertently revealed about his blank slate of a life. He hadn’t been thinking, period.
“Robin,” he prompted, trying to convince them both that that endearment and any mention of his past had been slips of the tongue and nothing more. His body was still warm, his concentration still misfiring, after holding her. He didn’t need her to keep putting her hands on him, touching him the way a pretty woman touched a normal man. If he was smart, he’d put some distance between them. Jake pulled her hands from his hair and face and retreated to the door, ostensibly checking to make sure no one else was in the building. “What’s going on? You didn’t get locked in by accident, did you?”
“I don’t think so.” She swiped the tears from her face and picked up a bulky, plain white business envelope. “I mean, at first, I thought my staff had forgotten I was still here. But I got this in the mail today. There was no message like the others.”
“Others?”
Robin handed him the envelope and backed away as though its touch repulsed her. Then she nodded toward the stack of papers on the corner of her desk. “I’ve gotten something every day, ever since that article about my attack was in the paper. Phone calls, too. I reported them to Detective Montgomery. But he said until the creep actually does something, there’s not much KCPD can do.”
“Do you think Houseman is behind this?”
“I don’t know. He calls me every day, saying it’s urgent we talk, but it has to be in person. At least he identifies himself. I keep putting him off.”
She hugged her arms around her waist as Jake picked up one letter and unfolded it. “Son of a...”
It was a photocopy of Robin, a blurry image taken of her pushing Emma in her stroller on the sidewalk outside the shop. Robin’s face had been x’ed out with a marker and a cryptic message had been scribbled across the bottom. You don’t deserve her.
“Are they all like this?”
“Variations on the same theme. I’m an unfit mother. I deserved what happened to me. He’s coming to take my baby away.” Her gaze fixated on the envelope Jake still held. “There aren’t any words in that one, but I get the message loud and clear. He can get to us. He has gotten to us.”
He opened the envelope to find shredded bits of soiled yellow yarn inside. The frayed strands were of the narrowest skein— The remnants of a baby’s knit cap? “Is this Emma’s?”
The tiny cap hadn’t just unraveled and gotten dirty. Someone had taken scissors or a knife to it. Someone who’d been very, very angry. “She was wearing it the night of the attack. I wondered why I couldn’t find it afterward. He must have taken it as a souvenir. I thought an attempted rape was frightening enough, but this...this scares me.” She moved back to the bassinet to watch her daughter sleep. “I thought he’d locked me in the fridge room tonight so that he could kidnap her. I don’t know how he got in. I was running late, but there should have been someone else here, waiting for us in the parking lot.” She spun around as a new concern hit her and hurried toward the door. “Are they all right? Did anyone else get hurt?”
Jake grabbed her arm before she could get by him and blocked her exit. Before she could voice a protest, he placed the envelope back in her hand and released her. “They all left.”
“They left?”
“Ten minutes after closing, your parking lot was empty.”
“You were watching. But...” She seemed to be having a tough time processing that she’d been abandoned by her employees. Shaking her head, she returned the envelope with Emma’s cap to her desk. “It must have been a miscommunication. Mark thought Leon was waiting for us—Leon thought Mark was.”
“One of them could have locked you in and then driven away.”
“I refuse to believe that.” Would she refuse to believe her employee was selling pictures that could have been of her or Emma? “Everyone here cares about my daughter. We celebrated her arrival. They all want to take care of her when she’s here. They wouldn’t put her in danger. What would be their motive for the assault and these threats?”
“You said you suspected someone was cooking the books.”