Lethal Love novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Behind the Curtain

I kept sewing.

I don't know how.

My foot stayed on the pedal, and the needle went on chattering down the lining seam, and I didn't look at the back room.

The curtain over the back-room doorway was an old flowered bedsheet Gran had hung in 1985.

It stopped four inches short of the floor.

"You're up late," Dom said.

"Seventy-two hours. I've got eleven left."

"I know. I counted."

He shut the door behind him and turned the lock himself.

He came across the shop slowly and stood beside the dress form, looking at the gown.

The high collar. The bare back. The forty silk buttons down the spine, each one smaller than my pinky nail.

He put one finger out toward the buttons and stopped short of touching them.

"It's beautiful," he said.

"It's not finished."

"It's still beautiful."

He turned and looked at me.

His eyes were red-rimmed, and he hadn't shaved, and his black shirt had a coffee stain on the cuff.

"We've been to every hospital in four boroughs," he said. "Every friend she has. Every bar she goes to. Her father's house, twice."

"And?"

"And nothing." He watched me. "Has she called you?"

"Why would Oakley Halsted call me?"

"Because she's scared, and you're the only person she knows who's never hurt anybody."

I took my foot off the pedal.

The machine stopped.

The shop went very quiet, with just the radio, low, playing something with strings.

Somewhere behind the bedsheet, a garment bag rustled.

He didn't look at the curtain.

He didn't have to.

"No," I said. "She hasn't called me."

He came closer.

He came around the end of the machine table until he was standing right over me.

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