Andrew exhales a sigh and starts walking toward me. “Come on. You look as if you’re wilting. No wonder, considering what you’ve been through this morning. I’m sorry for how upsetting this must be, Evie.”
“I’m not wilting.” I glance at him. “Yes, I’m upset. I’m confused and angry, but I’m not wilting.”
Even I can hear the steel in my voice. Andrew stares at me for a moment, as if weighing my resolve. “Evelyn, I think—”
“Go, Andrew. Please. I want to talk to Gabe.”
“All right.” His hand falls slowly to his side, then he crosses the large office, pausing by me at the door. “I’ll be in the conference room just down the hall if you need me.”
I don’t reply. I can’t turn off my affection for my brother, no more than I can be surprised to learn that he would go so far as to hire a personal security guard to look after me without my knowledge.
I’m angry with him for that, but Gabe’s participation is the deeper pain.
We’re alone in the big room, but neither one of us makes any move to lessen the space between us. It onlyseems to grow as I study him in his stoic silence.
“How long, Gabe?”
His jaw looks tight, his gaze sober as he holds mine. “That day at the zoo. After I discovered your tire had been slashed.”
“Slashed?” My head tilts back, the word cutting through me. “I thought it was just a flat.”
“I know,” he says. “Because we made the decision not to tell you.”
“We,” I repeat. “You and my brother, working together. Making decisions about my life without bothering to include me.”
“Andrew didn’t think you could handle what I suspected was going on.”
“Which was?”
“That you were singled out deliberately. That someone had their eye on you, not only while you were at the event that day, but for a while. I couldn’t prove it. All I had to go on were my instincts.” Now, he takes a step toward me. Just one. His tongue sweeps his split lower lip, erasing the blood that’s gathering near the rising bruise of what I assume came at the end of my brother’s fist. “I didn’t know Beck and Nick were going to tap me to watch over you. I should have refused, but—”
I scoff, starting to understand. “But by then, I’d already thrown myself at you—that first night you came to the shop after the power went out, and again, after you drove me home from the zoo. Especially then.”
He scowls at me, shaking his head. “That’s exactly why I should’ve told your brother no. But the fact is, I couldn’t imagine putting your safety in anyone else’s hands.”
“It wasn’t only my safety you wanted in your hands, was it, Boy Scout?”
I don’t want to be this bitter. I can’t believe I have it in me when roughly an hour ago all I felt was numb and in shock as I sat in that hallway outside Gabe’s apartment.
“I can’t say you didn’t warn me, though, right? You told me you were always on duty. I just didn’t realize how literally you meant it.”
He curses under his breath. “The concern for your well-being all this time was justified. Those photos this morning are damn clear evidence of that.”
“Do you know who put them there?”
“No. But I’m going to find out.” He clears his throat. “Evelyn, there’s something else you should know. Someone has been watching you at the shop. There was a monitoring device installed in the utility room. A device intended for digital spying. I’m talking about access to the shop’s computers and data, your phone, possibly even the original security system. We believe it was an energy overload in the device that caused the power to go out in the boutique that one night. The good news is, that surge killed the device at the same time.”
“A spying device.” I swallow, trying to dislodge the knot of alarm that’s suddenly settled in my throat. “You mean, that’s how someone got access to the photos on my phone?”
“It’s possible, yes. Or someone took them before, possibly while your purse was out of your hands the day you came here for your meeting with Avery Ross.”
A detail leaps into my consciousness, something I saw in the hallway outside Gabe’s apartment. “My red Dior lipstick. It was in my purse that day. I thought I lostit, but now I remember it was in my purse that morning. It wasn’t there after the purse was found. Whoever took those pictures off my phone also had my lipstick. That’s what they used to write those words on the wall.” I feel sick over the next thought that invades my mind, but considering the way Katrina had been acting lately . . . “Do you think someone from L’Opale is behind all of this?”
“I’m looking into the possibility,” he admits grimly. “I’ve got background checks in process for all of the boutique employees, past and present. If anything turns up, my brother Jake will let me know. There is . . . something more, Eve.”
He pulls a crumpled photo out of his jacket pocket and holds it out to me where he stands across the room. I don’t have to move any closer to see what it shows. Gabe and me, locked in a graphic pose on top of my desk.
“This was on the wall with the others,” I murmur, just now realizing I’ve glimpsed the image earlier today. In my shock, it blurred into the overall horror of the entire display.
