Flawless(84)

It was trickier than stealing a phone, but she managed to make it appear that she was trying to remove a spot, when in reality she was rubbing the paper into the indentations with the paperweight. A faint impression began to emerge on the paper, and she began to use the pencil to capture what had been written.

She almost couldn’t believe her eyes when something legible began to appear.

It was an address, but she couldn’t quite make it out. At first she thought it said Forty-Second Street.

The Theater District?

Then she realized that the number was a forty-seven. The address was on Forthy-Seventh Street near Fifth Avenue.

The Diamond District. And to the best of her knowledge, it was a store that hadn’t been hit as yet, not by the water-gun-wielding thieves—or by the killers.

She fumbled, reaching into her pocket for her phone. She dialed Craig, but the call went straight to voice mail.

The same thing happened when she tried Mike’s phone.

She knew there were at least four policemen and one FBI agent in the pub, but still...

As she sat there, Declan came over and told her to go home. “Have your agent take you—and make sure he stays with you.”

She looked at her brother. “Declan, this is getting too scary. What about you and Danny and Kevin? I’m beginning to be afraid for all of us.”

Should she tell him what she’d just found?

That could put him in danger, too.

Or it could mean nothing. Maybe some idiot had been writing down the address of a place to buy a ring for his fiancée.

Somehow she doubted that.

“Don’t worry. Debbie’s already gone, and the rest of us are going home soon. Danny, Kevin, myself and Mary Kathleen, the four of us will go to my place. We’ll be a little tight, but we’ll be fine,” he assured her.

“How long?” she murmured. “How long can we do this? How can you run a business when you’re worried all the time that something awful’s going to happen?”

“Something has to give. And,” he reminded her, “I’m good at taking care of myself.”

It was true, she knew. When they’d been kids, Declan had been able to win them all the toys they wanted at every street fair. Even then, he could shoot with precision. And nowadays he had both a gun permit and the gun to go with it.

She nodded.

He grinned. “I’d make you come, too, except I think you’re in even better hands.”

“Marty Salinger?” she asked him, surprised.

“The FBI,” he said, smiling.

She knew he meant Craig. And that he assumed Craig himself would join her as soon as possible.

So much for brothers being overprotective. All three of hers seemed to think that whatever was going on between her and Craig was fine and dandy. They liked him. Really liked him.

What wasn’t to like?

Still...

She found it a little perplexing that they’d never once so much as questioned his intentions.

“Okay,” she said. “Maybe I should go to the hospital. Julie might want to go home.”

“No need. She’s settled in there for the night,” he told her.

“How do you know?”

“She called Danny.”

“Oh,” Kieran murmured. She rose to go, but Declan took her arm to stop her.

“Whatever that kid tells you, do it, okay? He had to go through some pretty major training to be where he is, so you listen to him, okay? Stay safe, Kieran. Please.”

“Of course,” she said.

She collected everything from the table, glad that Declan was too distracted to notice what she’d really been doing. She tucked the rubbing into her pocket, then found Marty and asked to go home. As they passed the table where she’d been sitting with Jimmy, she bent down and pretended to find his phone on the floor.

“Someone will be missing that,” Marty said.

“Yeah, but at least I know this guy. I’ll get it back to him tomorrow. He’s in almost every day.”

Marty just nodded.

She took a deep breath and said, “I can’t reach Craig.”

“He’s going through a lot, I imagine. He shot a man. That’s a lot of red tape,” Marty said.

“I really need to reach him,” she said.

“What is it? Can you tell me?” he asked. “I’m not Craig, but I am FBI.”

She hesitated, then told him what she’d found and how scared she was starting to feel. He nodded and pulled out his phone. The next thing she knew, she was talking to assistant director Eagan.

Eagan thanked her and told her to go home. “I’ll send men to that address, and we’ll see if anything is going on.”

“Better?” Marty asked her when she hung up and handed him back his phone.

“Much.”

“Give me a minute. I want to take a look at the street,” he said. “Stay inside. That’s a cop in the corner there. I’ll come back in for you in a minute or two.”

She agreed, and a minute later, as promised, Marty was back. He told her to follow him, then did his best to shield her with his own body as they went to the car.

He was equally careful when they got out in front of her apartment.

The minute they hit the sidewalk, the karaoke club bombarded them with an Adele number sung slightly too high.