Then there was the door to his apartment. As the man had entered on cue with those coming from the roof, the door had been thrown open and had crashed against the wall. But Rickard had an eye for details, and thinking back, he couldn’t remember any sign that the latch had been broken loose. He hadn’t thrown the locks, but a key was still needed from the outside. That or a lock pick, but that had been conspicuous by its absence as well.

One more point was troubling him, but that was something to be considered later.

“I believe you, honey,” he said. He slowly released her wrists, transferred his fingers to her hands and patted them gently. Beneath her sunglasses she was blinking very fast. He caught flashes of her blue eyes like strobes going off.

“You do?”

“Of course, babe. I love you, don’t I?”

“I love you too. It’s just that . . . well . . .”

“What is it?”

“The way you killed those men . . .”

“I was lucky.” He smiled at her. “No. That isn’t true. There was something very precious to me that I just had to protect. You, babe. I didn’t think about my own life. I just didn’t want them hurting you. Given that kind of motivation, no one could have stood in my way.”

Up until now she’d been as pale as death, and now color pinpricked her cheeks. But she wasn’t flattered. She had picked up on his lies. And by the way she withdrew her hands from under his fingers, she knew that he knew it too.

“Now, babe, I’ve been thinking. We can’t go to the police over this. I don’t trust them to find the people responsible for sending those men. Others might come. We have to get out of here first. Go somewhere safe.”

Alisha nodded at him, even though by the trembling of her jaw she was buying none of it.

“What I want you to do is go to the restroom back there. You need to freshen yourself up. Fix your hair and makeup. You’re so pretty other people can’t help looking at you, but I don’t want them to see your tears.”

He made a play of searching his pockets. His hands came out empty. “I must have left my phone in the car. Here,” he said, reaching for her purse, “give me yours. I need to make a couple of calls, find us somewhere safe until we can figure this thing out.”

He took out her phone and passed the purse back to her. Alisha stared at the phone like it was a lifeline.

“Go on now.” Rickard nodded toward the back corner of the building. “Go make yourself pretty again.”