LITMIR.BIZ

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always letting me off the hook. Have I told you lately that you’ve been fantastic?”

      “Um…no?” This close, she could see tiny flecks of amber in the depths of his gray-green eyes. She stared, fascinated.

      “Thank you, Angie.” He reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder. His thumb grazed the sensitive skin of her collarbone as he gave her a quick, light squeeze before moving away. “You want to watch a movie?”

      She frowned, unsettled by the small contact and the fact that she could still feel the heat of his hand.

      This was Michael, after all.

      He glanced over his shoulder, waiting for her answer. The ring of a cell phone cut through the room.

      “That’s mine,” Angie said, crossing to where she’d dumped her handbag at the far end of the dining table. She checked the caller ID but didn’t recognize the number. “Angela Bartlett speaking.”

      “Angie, it’s Tess.”

      “Oh. Hey.” Angie frowned. Tess was a fellow tenant in the Stradbroke building, and while they were friends, it was unusual for her to call like this. “How are things?”

      “I’ve got some bad news. There’s been a break-in at the Stradbroke. A whole bunch of studios have been trashed.”

      “What?” Cold shock washed through her. “How bad is it?”

      “I have no idea how bad yours is, but mine’s a wreck. They stole my computer, my iPod, even my freakin’ kettle, can you believe that? And they trashed all of my latest canvases.”

      Angie could hear the quiver in Tess’s voice. She was a tough nut. If she was teary, things must be pretty bad. Angie closed her eyes. If they had somehow managed to get into her safe, she was completely screwed. She had two sets of rings in there waiting for delivery, and she’d recently received a shipment of gold. Not to mention the thousands and thousands of dollars’ worth of gems.

      “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said.

      “I’ll be here. Surrounded by all this crap.”

      Angie ended the call and scooped up her bag.

      “What’s wrong?” Michael took a step toward her.

      “There’s been a break-in at the studio. Mine and a bunch of others have been trashed.” She fumbled in her handbag for her keys. Her hands were shaking so much it took a couple of attempts to get a grip on them.

      This could be the end of her business.

      “Has someone called the police? How bad is it?”

      “I don’t know. I need to go….” She started to leave, her thoughts racing ahead of her.

      “Angie.”

      Michael’s hand caught her arm as she was opening the front door. “Drive carefully, okay? Any damage has already been done, so you speeding there isn’t going to change anything.” His voice was calm and steady. Grounding.

      She took a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right.”

      “Keep us in the loop, okay?”

      “I will.” She gave him a small, grateful smile before exiting the house.

      The moment she was in the car all her worries rose to the surface again but she resisted the impulse to floor it, Michael’s words still echoing in her mind. There was no point adding a speeding fine—or worse—to tonight’s woes. Whatever they might be.

      She found a parking spot around the corner from the building and ran the half block to the entrance. Her footsteps sounded loud in the stairwell as she climbed to the fifth floor. She could see evidence of the break-in as she climbed—graffiti and broken glass—and there was more when she arrived on her floor. Glass glinted on the tiles in the corridor, and every door along this side hung open drunkenly, regardless of the security measures the individual tenants had in place. A couple of police officers stood at the far end of the corridor, talking. One of them started walking toward her the moment they saw her.

      “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, miss. This is a crime scene.”

      “I’m a tenant—studio twenty-three. My neighbor told me my space has been broken into.”

      The policeman consulted his notebook. “Number twenty-three. That makes you Angela Bartlett.”

      “That’s right.”

      “You can go in to assess the damage and tell us what’s missing, but I need you to not touch anything until our crime-scene people have finished collecting evidence.”

      “Okay. Sure. Whatever you want, I just need to see my studio.”

      She was aware of the anxious pounding of her heart as she followed him around the corner. She could see her door hanging open.

      “They hit every studio?” she asked, her gaze darting left and right as she inspected the damage to her neighbors’ spaces as they passed. What she saw only increased the anxiety tightening her chest—smashed furniture, toppled bookcases.

      “On this level, yeah. Downstairs they were a bit more discriminating.” The cop halted. “Okay, here we are. Remember, no touching anything until the team’s been through.”

      She nodded, her gaze fixed on the doorway. She sent up a prayer to the universe.

      Please let them have not broken into the safe.

      She stepped over the threshold.

      The first thing she registered was the black paint sprayed across the wall, a huge, furious four-letter word six feet high. Paint had dribbled down to the floor, which was covered with broken glass from the framed artwork they had torn off the walls. The mid-century sideboard that had housed her books and keepsakes had been tipped over, spilling its contents, and her table and chairs had been smashed.

      Her gaze zeroed in on the safe. Relief pounded through her as she saw that while the dull gray metal was scarred and pitted around the locking mechanism and it had been dragged a few feet from its position in the corner, the door remained closed.

      “Oh, thank God,” she said, closing her eyes for a brief second.

      That was one disaster averted, at least. She turned to inspect the rest of her space and sucked in a dismayed breath when she saw her workbench. The intruders had sprayed black paint over all her tools—the leather hammer she’d used for more than ten years, her vernier caliper, her flexi-drive drill, all the drill bits and mops and burrs… Again, she reached out but caught herself in time.

      Angry tears burned at the back of her eyes. She didn’t understand why anyone would be so destructive. She was a stranger to the intruders, yet they had made a concerted effort to maliciously destroy her creative space.

      Her phone rang. She pulled it from her bag. Michael’s number showed on the screen.

      “Everything okay?” he asked the moment she took the call.

      “Yes and no. They didn’t get into my safe, which would have pretty much been the end of my business. But they’ve absolutely trashed everything else they could get their hands on. Including my tools.”

      “Shit. I’m really sorry, Angie.”

      “Yeah. Me, too. Stupid assholes.”

      “I take it you’re insured?”

      “Yeah, but I think it’s mostly going to be cleaning up, not replacing stuff. Apart from what’s in the safe, most of the things I had here have value only for me, you know. They’re hardly worth claiming on insurance.”

      “Anything I can do?”

      Despite the situation, his offer warmed her. Suddenly she didn’t feel quite so alone or overwhelmed.

      “Thanks, but there’s nothing anyone

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