Another sob.

Jeez, this was awful. He had to say something, do something, anything so she wouldn’t feel like this.

“Do you know what the presents were? I mean, do you have some sort of a list. Because if you do, just give it to me and I’ll replace—”

She pushed back and stared at him. “They were donations, Jack. Most of them all wrapped up and ready for giving. Replacing them’s not important. Getting them back is. Understand?”

“Yes… and no.”

“Somebody’s got to find these guys—the ones who did this—and teach them a lesson… make an example of them… a very public example. Know what I mean?”

Jack fought to suppress a grin. “I think so. You mean, make it so that the next creep who gets the same idea will think twice, maybe three times before he decides to go through with it.”

“Exactly. Exactly.”

With exaggerated innocence—and still fighting a smile—he said, “And, um, just who could we be thinking of to make such an example?”

“You know damn well who,” she said, fixing him with those eyes.

“Moi?” And now he had to grin. “But I thought you didn’t approve of that sort of thing.”

“I don’t. And I never will. But just this once…”

“… you could live with it.”

“Yes.” She turned away and folded her arms across her chest. “But just this once.”

She began wandering around his living room, aimlessly tracing her fingers across the golden oak hutch, the rolltop desk where he kept his computer…

“But, Gia—”

“Please,” she said, raising her hand. “I know what you’re going to say. Please don’t start pressing me for some sort of moral and philosophical consistency between not marrying you because of what you do and then coming to you when there’s a problem that looks like it can only be solved by your kind of tactics. I’ve been battling that all morning—I mean, trying to decide whether I should even mention it to you. Even in the cab, I was ready to tell him to turn onto Fifty-ninth and forget the whole thing—”

“Oh, great,” he said, stung. “That really hurts. Since when is it that you can’t come to me for anything?”

She stopped and looked at him. “You know what I mean. How many times have I mouthed off about this ‘Repairman Jack’ thing?”

“About a million.” More like three million, he thought, but what’s a couple of million between friends?

“Right. And about how it’s stupid and dangerous and violent and dangerous and how if you don’t end up dead you’re going to wind up in jail for the rest of your life. And I haven’t changed my opinion one bit. So you can imagine how this thing must have got to me if I’m asking you to fix it.”

“All right,” he said. “I won’t say another word about it.”

“Maybe not now, but I know you will later.”

Jack raised two fingers. “I won’t. Scout’s honor.”

“I think that takes three fingers, Jack.”