Page 40 of Finding Amanda

She jerked away. "I'm publishing it. If Gabriel comes after me . . . no, he won't come after me. He's not violent."

Mark rested his forearms on his knees again and squeezed his hands together. She studied his biceps, bulging beneath the T-shirt, his forearms as they lay across his knees. She'd always loved those arms, and until recently, she'd felt safe in them. But now, being with him felt anything but safe.

He smacked his hands on his legs. "Not violent. Right. Whatever. Can you write down those names for me? Chris andI are going to do some checking, see if we can find a link between you and Sheppard."

"Don't you think getting Chris involved is a little over-the-top?"

He grabbed Madi's sketch pad and a purple crayon off the coffee table and held them out to her. "Please?"

She took the paper and crayon and wrote down the names of everyone she thought might have known she would be in New York. There weren't that many. Her agent, her editor, her roommate, and a woman on the conference committee she'd emailed once.

Why was Mark willing to spend so much time investigating these people? Probably for her daughters' sake. If only she could believe he was doing it out of love for her. With a yank, she tore the sheet off the notepad and handed it to him. "Here you go."

He glanced at the list, folded it, and slid it into his jeans' pocket. "Thanks. I know you're not convinced, but the safest course is to assume he'll do whatever he must to protect himself."

"That's crazy?—"

"So I got my gun out of the safe deposit box for you."

She gasped. "What? No way. I don't want your gun. I don't even know how to use it."

"I'll teach you."

"Absolutely not. You know how I feel about guns around the girls."

"If you keep it where they won't see it?—"

"Then it'll be so well-hidden, it'll be useless. No. I'm not having a gun in this house."

Mark studied her with pursed lips. They stared at each other before he finally shrugged. "Fine." He walked to the dining room table, where he'd dropped a sack earlier in the evening. "I anticipated that and bought you a few cans of pepper spray."

Pepper spray. She flashed back to when they'd first met. He'd bought her pepper spray back then, too. She felt her lips slip into an unbelieving smirk.

Walking back to the couch, he continued. "Worse case, if the girls get ahold of it, they only hurt their eyes. I didn't get the ones that look like perfume or lipstick because I thought that might be more enticing to them." He handed her a black spray can. "You remember how to use it?"

"It's not that complicated."

"You're right. Just point and shoot."

"You're crazy."

"The thing is," he continued as though she hadn't spoken, “this guy is arrogant, and arrogance lends itself to overconfidence. You should have time. He's not going to start with violence."

"You talk like you know him."

"I have good instincts. Anyway, it should give you plenty of time to grab the spray. I got three. I thought you could carry one on you, have one somewhere downstairs, and keep one in your bedroom."

"I don't know?—"

"This isn't optional, Amanda. Tomorrow I have?—"

"Wait a minute! What do you mean this isn't optional? You can't make me carry pepper spray."

His eyebrows rose, then relaxed. Turning toward the rack by the door, he continued. "This black coat—this is the one you wear most of the time, right?"

It was. She vacillated between nodding and throwing something at him. He grabbed the coat off the hook and carried it to the couch, laid it across the back near her and opened it up. He stuck his hand in the inside pocket. "Perfect." He slipped the pepper spray in the pocket.

"What if I'm not wearing my coat?"

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