Chapter Four

      Quint knew he was staring, that Amy was flustered as she scrambled to get the phone she had dropped. Then she was standing with it in her hand, and he didn’t move. He just took in the scene in front of him.

      Amy looked for all the world like a teenager in an oversize gray sweatshirt with long sleeves that almost covered her hands. Her jeans were worn, her hair pulled back from her face in a ponytail, exposing freckles that he’d never even noticed the night before. She wasn’t wearing a hint of makeup, her dark eyes were shadowed, as if she was very tired, but that only emphasized the translucence of her skin and a type of beauty that didn’t owe a thing to artifice.

      He lifted his phone slightly as he closed the front on it. “I guess I don’t need this anymore.”

      “What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice breathless and low.

      He slipped his phone in his jacket pocket, not about to tell her he didn’t have a clue why he’d finally driven here instead of sending a messenger or letting it go until she phoned him back. Wrong thing to do, he could admit now. If she’d been provocative the night before in her ruined dress and with the mistletoe overhead, she was downright disturbing right now. “My wallet?” he finally said.

      The color in her face deepened, making the freckles stand out even more. Her tongue touched her lips quickly. “Oh, yeah, sure,” she muttered. “Shoot, I forgot. Let me get it for you.”

      She turned and went back into the apartment, and he hesitated, then followed her. As Amy crossed the room, grabbing at toys and discarded clothes, gathering them in her arms on the way, he glanced around.

      The inside was a lot more “homey” than the outside of the building. He’d circled the block twice before parking in front of a series of apartment buildings in a low-rent section of the city, buildings from the sixties, three stories, with flat roofs and not much landscaping except for a few shrubs here and there and narrow strips of what should have been green grass, but was just brown. The whole place had seemed depressing, old, poorly kept and reeking of disinterest, with just a few Christmas touches in sight.

      But in here, despite the clutter, the tiny size and obvious lack of luxury, it seemed invitingly warm. Odd, unmatched furniture crowded the space, along with a stack of laundry on a side chair, a TV on top of a low bookshelf, and a small Christmas tree decorated with popcorn garlands and colored paper chains sitting in front of a window covered by shades. It had an angel at the top.

      “Excuse the mess,” she was muttering as she dropped the things in her arms in a pile on the floor by the Christmas tree, then went into what looked like a kitchen alcove ahead and on the left. “I meant to bring the wallet to work today, but I didn’t go, and I just totally forgot about it,” she said disappearing from sight.

      It was then that he noticed the child curled up in a ball on the sofa to the left. She was a tiny thing for a two-year-old, in pink sleepers lying with her back to him. Wisps of feathery dark hair were damp and clinging to her flushed skin. “She’s sick?” he asked.

      “Teething and a bit of a cold,” Amy called from the kitchen. She appeared with a purse in her hands, setting it on a half wall between the kitchen and living area. She waved a hand at him as she opened the purse and started to rummage inside. “Sit down if you’d like,” she said as she went through her purse.

      He looked at an overstuffed chair that faced the couch, alongside a wooden rocking chair. The upholstered chair was filled with what looked like clean laundry, so he crossed to the rocking chair, sat down and looked back at Amy, who was literally turning her purse upside down to let the contents fall on the divider. “It’s here,” she muttered. “I remember seeing it.”

      He glanced from her to the child. “Is she why you didn’t come into work today?”

      “Pretty much,” she muttered, then turned with his wallet in her hand. “Success,” she said and crossed to hand it to him.

      “Thanks for finding it,” he said as he took it.

      She stood over him, tucking a strand of hair that had worked its way out of her ponytail behind her ear. “Sure, no problem.” She glanced at the child, then back at him. “Go ahead,” she said, motioning to his wallet. “Look in it. Everything’s there, including the money.”