“Yeah, let’s get the fuck out of here.” He turned and began to mess around with a red lever to the right of the elevator door above us, which I hadn’t had a hope of reaching. He grunted, and I gasped when he snapped the red metal bar off and jammed it between the elevator doors. Sweat ran down his cheeks as he strained and the metal lever began to bend, but the elevator doors cracked open, thank God, letting in some light. I shoved my phone back in my pocket and couldn’t stop staring at the metal rope suspending the car because another piece of wire unraveled. The elevator jolted to the left. RJ grabbed me and kept me from sliding away.
“Doesn’t feel like those brakes engaged, does it?” I asked, with a horrible little laugh I couldn’t hold in.
“Come here,” he said, and when I glanced up, I nearly cried to see the doors open enough for me to fit through; it would be a squeeze for him, though. He lifted me as if I weighed nothing, and I scrabbled in a panic to grab on to the doors. He shoved my ass, and I scraped my belly but ended up mostly out of the elevator shaft. I got my right foot on the floor and launched myself through into the room on the other side, tears streaming down my face.
I sat up and turned around in time to see RJ’s hands on the floor, and he pulled himself up in a painfully slow process. There was a terriblethwangingnoise and an awful screeching, and I crawled forward to grab RJ’s arms. I braced my feet on either side of the open doors and tugged with all my strength, and between the two of us, we hauled him onto the floor out of the shaft. There was a loudthudand crash that sounded like a car wreck. The floor shook. He wasn’t quite so cocky when he was lying beside me on the dirty tiles. Insatiable curiosity sank its claws into me, and I crawled back over with my phone out and stared down the shaft, taking in the disaster at the bottom.
“Someone tried to kill me!” I glanced wildly back at him.
He nodded. “Yep.”
I started to laugh, and he shushed me, taking his gun out of the holster as he lay there catching his breath. He tapped the weapon against his chest.
“I’m never getting into another elevator in my whole entire life,” I muttered.
He sat up and tugged me away from the ledge. “You’re all right,” he grumbled, but it sounded more like a threat, and the awful expression on his face had me cringing. He shushed me and stood. I stared at his hand as he offered it to me. In the end, I let him help me to my feet. It took me a second to be steady and get my knees to agree to supporting me.
“Where are the stairs?” he asked, voice a low rumble in the empty room.
“This way,” I said, going straight ahead. The lights were on in the entire floor, which was a mirror image of all the other ones in the building, and I took him to the stairwell at the back that gave access to all the levels. On the way up to my shop I noted that each door we passed was open. “I always keep them closed and locked,” I said, pointing at one wide-open door.
RJ nodded. “Keep your voice down,” he whispered.
Every hair on my body stood on end. Did he think someone was still here who might hurt us?
The second we entered the back of the shop I let out a sob because I couldn’t help it.
The first thing I noticed was the stone tile that hid the safe was thrown to the side and the door for the minivault was open. I stumbled over and stared down into the empty hole and my eyes burned with the need to shed tears. I went to the cabinet set into the wall where I stored completed pieces—it was more like a gun safe with a heavy-duty lock on the front—but it was open, too.
All the drawers were empty.
I ran to my worktable and ducked down, but the boxes I stored underneath that held raw materials were missing. I’d never been as careful with the unworked gems as I should be, and I’d had a couple go missing over the years, but—“Everything is gone!”
I ran out front, not sure why I still had any hope, but all the displays were naked. I shook my head and hugged my arms around my body. “It’s all gone. I don’t have anything.” The words came out as a sob. “Oh God, I don’t have anything. What will I tell Madam Winters?” My heart lurched. “My money is gone. Even my fucking tools are gone.” I hung my head.
“What about insurance?” RJ asked as he came out with his gun still in hand.
I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “That might be enough to let me get some supplies and start over, but I’ll have to file a police report and go through an entire process. It could take months if not longer. I’ll have to rebuild my stock from scratch. In the meantime, my business will be at a standstill.” My stomach rebelled and I raced for the bathroom off my workroom and spent a few minutes on my knees bartering with God as my gut threatened to send everything up.
A gentle hand on my neck had me glancing back at RJ. I couldn’t help it. The tears escaped. “My sister is getting an engineering degree. I pay for it. My parents are a fucking mess. They borrow at least a hundred grand from me every year—each, mind you—and have since my business started making money. I support all of them.”
He shrugged. “So, they learn to manage their money and leave you out of it.”
Frantic, I shook my head. “You don’t understand. Dad’s an addict. He hasn’t held a job since I was ten. Mom’s okay, but she’s always moving to a new state wherethings will be betterand starting over. She’s only got five left before she’s gotta admit she’s the problem.”
He brushed my hair back off my forehead, and I stilled as his rough, warm fingertips grazed my skin. “What do you get out of all this? I mean, I understand helping your sister, if your parents are that untrustworthy, but what good to you is the rest of it?”
I stared around the tiny bathroom and grimaced. Someone had even removed the painting of Queen Elizabeth’s crown that I’d had on the wall. “Peace of mind, I suppose.”
“You get used.”
I scowled at him. “You don’t know me. Don’t judge me.”
He sat back on his haunches and rested his gun across his knee. A range of emotions flashed across his face, but he ended with boredom. “Where do you keep the security footage?”
It took my brain cells a few seconds to be useful, but then I straightened. “It’s backed up on the cloud.” I tugged my phone out of my pocket. “Come on. Let’s go see if they stole all my stools.”
It turned out everything that wasn’t nailed down, and a few things that were, had been removed, so we sat on the floor with our backs pressed against the wall in my workroom, and he sifted through the footage from tonight with me. It was frustrating.
