"Your Lithuanians are here, big man. Oh, I forgot-" Quinn turned around and grinned at him. "Did you get your book autographed the other night? It was a shame you had to rush out like that. Urgent city business?"

A muscle twitched at the corner of Tim's lips. "Get the fuck out of my face," he said.

Audie didn't mind waiting for Griffin, because she was used to it. She knew that if she wanted Griffin to be somewhere at noon, she told him eleven, then she could count on him by twelve-fifteen. He always blamed his Jamaican upbringing for this affliction, explaining that when you live in a country that's stifling hot and you're hungry and have no job to go to, there's no point in rushing.

Besides, he'd always saved his speed for the soccer field.

At least she had a nice booth by the window and she could sip her iced tea and watch the Rush Street lunch crowd from her air-conditioned perch. She could let her mind wander.

That night last year when she found her tires slashed after a soccer game, she figured it was just random vandalism. When the dead flowers came, she shrugged it off. And at first, she thought the letters were a joke as well-weird, annoying, and sometimes a little creepy, but just a prank. For more than a year she'd ignored Griffin 's pleas that she get the police involved.

Well, now the letters truly scared her. And she was angry that they'd invaded her life, made her worry, made her wrack her brain trying to figure out who in the world would want to hurt her.

Her stomach churned. Her head hurt. She felt very alone.

She knew the list of suspects she gave to Quinn was a waste of time. Will Dalton? He was an absentminded professor type-intelligent and wickedly funny but completely benign. The only thing that ever riled him was his belief that the American family had been destroyed by commercial television. Outside that topic, Audie never encountered a bit of passion in the man.

Darren Billings? He wasn't literate enough to write those notes. The letters just dripped with sarcasm, something he couldn't spell, let alone convey.

Kyle Singer was smart enough. Certainly snide enough. But he had no reason to send those letters-he couldn't have cared less for Audie and immediately had found someone else to escort to public functions. She'd been nothing to him but a distraction for the rumormongers.

Russell Ketchum was already ruled out. And Griffin was not even a possibility.

And Tim Burke. God, she wished he'd stop bugging her, but she doubted it was him. The letters didn't sound like Tim. His talent lay in putting a super-duper spin on just anything and everything! Audie could see Tim writing the press release for the grand reopening of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, but not those letters.

How pitiful that list looked when she put it in writing-six men in ten years, and yes, she'd left out a few nearly anonymous encounters she'd rather forget. But that list was the truth. It was fact. And if her love life was baseball, she'd have mighty lame stats: Six at bats. Six errors. Maybe a couple blooper singles but definitely no homers, no stolen bases, and no runs batted in.

Audie took a sip of her iced tea and sighed. She supposed she'd seen something she wanted in each of those men-wit in Will Dalton, an amazing body in Darren Billings, determination in Russell Ketchum, savvy intelligence in Kyle Singer, charm in Tim Burke, and a good heart and a killer smile in Griffin.

And she supposed some of them found something worthwhile in her, but it never seemed right enough. It never amounted to anything special.

Audie felt her stomach clench with dread. Realistically, if it wasn't one of those men, then who else could it be?

It could be her brother.

Oh, God, Drew. Why?

Audie stared out the window wistfully. No, she and Drew weren't exactly close, and she didn't especially admire her brother for his moral fortitude. But she never thought of him as a cruel person or an evil person.

Besides, why in the world would Drew do something like this? What would it accomplish? If he had something to say, why didn't he just come right out and say it?

Helen's will had stipulated that if Audie quit the column after the current contract expired, she had two choices-she could either give it to Drew or sell the rights and split the profits with him fifty-fifty.

Audie knew that Drew would never want the responsibility of the column. All his life, he'd avoided work like it was a flesh-eating disease. So was he trying to force her to sell so he could get his hands on half the assets? Was he that desperate for money these days? And if so, why didn't he just tell her what he needed?

Her brain hurt just trying to sort this out. Her heart hurt at the idea that her brother would do this to her.

Audie was startled out of her thoughts by the sudden appearance of Griffin 's face, his nose and lips squished up against the window glass.

"You're so strange," she mouthed to him, laughing, watching as he jogged into the door of the restaurant.

He was there in a flash, depositing a kiss on her cheek before he slid into the opposite side of the booth, his laptop slung over his shoulder and his smile brightening the whole room. He held something in his hand.

"The UPS guy brought this." He reached over the table and handed Audie a package the size of a hardback novel.

She stared at the return address-Detective Stacey Quinn.

"Since it came from him and it wasn't ticking, I figured it was safe enough." Griffin was grinning. "You going to open it?"

Audie just stared at the plain brown paper package. What in the world would he be sending her? She hadn't seen him in a week. Stanny-O had been with her instead, explaining that Quinn was busy wrapping up other work while interviewing suspects in her case. Right.

She knew very well what had happened-she'd thrown herself at Quinn, made a fool of herself, practically begged the man to put his hands up her dress. She'd scared him off.

Maybe he was sending her some kind of self-help book-Nympho to Nun in Ten Easy Steps or Promiscuous No More.

"Audie? You going to open it?"

She looked up at Griffin and blinked. "Yeah. Sure."

Her fingers tore at the outside wrapping to reveal a simple white gift box. She set it down on the table and pulled off the top, exposing a layer of white tissue paper. She looked up at Griffin, frowning.

"Don't look at me. Go on, girl."

Audie peeled back the tissue, to see what looked like handkerchiefs-pressed white linen hankies trimmed with delicate lace.

"Good Lord," Audie muttered, and Griffin leaned across the table to get a better look.

"Wow. Those are pretty. Aren't you going to read the note?"

Audie picked up the piece of folded stationery and read: "So you don't ruin all your panty hose. Quinn."

She chuckled, surprised, to say the least. She picked up one of the hankies and held it in her hand-it was soft, feather-light, and feminine. It was lightly starched and ironed into a neat square with razor-sharp edges. She raised it to her nose and breathed in a soft scent, lavender maybe? Just then she saw Griffin 's hand inside the box.

"I counted eleven in here, so there's an even dozen. I think they're really old, Audie, antique even. Look at the lace-it's handmade."

"How would you know, Griffin?" Audie laughed and tossed the hankie back in the box, replacing the lid.

"Because I spend half my life haunting consignment stores and antique shops, that's how. This is a really nice gift."

"Yeah." She pushed the box to the side and took a gulp of her iced tea. Her heart was pounding. Her eyes were stinging.

Why would Quinn send her such a personal gift? They hardly knew each other! And why was she on the verge of tears?