I grabbed her arm and whispered through clenched teeth, “Be careful, Minka.”

She pulled away from me. “Or what? You’ll kill me, too?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” But I could see how someone could be pushed to the brink with her.

“Really? We both know you’d like nothing better than to-”

“Brooklyn?”

We both jumped back as Ian approached from down the hall. “Just the person I was looking for. Oh, hi, Minka.”

Minka made a sound of disgust, then took off in the opposite direction, her shoulders rigid, the heels of her hooker boots pounding the hardwood surface as she fled.

“Where’s she going?” Ian asked, frowning as he watched her stalk away.

“Straight to hell, I hope.”

We both watched as a uniformed officer stopped Minka from going any farther. After a few tense words back and forth, he escorted her into a workroom, for questioning, I assumed. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or worried, but decided to go with worried.

I turned to Ian. “What a horrible night, huh?”

“Huh?” He looked at me in complete surprise as though he hadn’t realized I was standing there. This was the charmingly befuddled Ian I knew and loved.

We’d been engaged several years ago for almost six months until I took pity on him and broke it off. Thankfully, we were still good friends and if he was being honest, he’d concede he’d never been in love with me.

He’d professed his so-called love shortly after watching me produce an exact copy of a Dubuisson binding, right down to the gilded imprinting of one of Dubuisson’s “one o’clock birds.” Ian was easily impressed, though I must admit I was damn good.

See, Pierre-Paul Dubuisson was an eighteenth-century bookbinder, the royal binder to Louis XV of France. And one of his most celebrated signature designs was that of a bird with wings extended, facing one o’clock. The “one o’clock birds.”

Only a fellow book geek would get excited about something like that, and Ian was geekier than most. I could picture our kids, scary little Poindexter types with leather-stained hands and annoying tics and constant questions. No, I’d done us all a favor by breaking up with him.