“Two doors down from where I found you.” He’d found me with Abraham. The memory came rushing back. My tears welled up and spilled over.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” He reached in his breast pocket and thrust his white linen handkerchief into my hand. Then he stood and began to pace.

I was about to thank him for the handkerchief when he said, “You’d better sit all the way up or you’ll likely drown yourself.”

“Oh, be quiet.” Then I blew my nose and dabbed away the tears, determined not to cry anymore in front of this insensitive jerk. I sat straighter and folded my arms tightly around my chest-and realized with alarm that the book I’d been hiding was gone.

I jumped off the couch. “Where’s my-”

“Looking for this?” He held up the black leather-bound Faust, clutching it with a white dust cloth.

“That’s mine,” I blurted.

“Yours?”

“What I mean is, it’s not yours.”

“It’s not?”

“It belongs to the Winslow collection. Abraham gave it to me.”

“Gave it to you?”

I clenched my fists. “Stop repeating my words.”

“Repeating?” He pursed his lips in a smirk.

I no longer cared that he was sexy and smelled good. He was too incredibly annoying.

I took a deep breath. “Abraham gave the book to me for safekeeping.”

“Of course he did.”

“You don’t need to be sarcastic,” I said, glaring at him. “He really did give it to me.”

He grunted. “Right.”

“Who the hell are you?”

He carefully placed the book down on the side counter. “We’ll get to that.”

“We’ll get to it right now or I’m leaving.” I swept my hair back from my face and said, “Why am I even talking to you? I’m out of here.”

He stepped in front of me. “You’re not going anywhere. The police arrived just moments ago and they’ll want to question you.”

“Fine. I want to talk to them, too.”

“You won’t have long to wait. They’re upstairs handling the crowd right now. They’ll be down shortly to survey the murder scene and then they’ll have a little talk with you.”