Abandon - Meg Cabot [26]
I was already slipping into a glass coffin of my very own.
But somehow I still found a way to assure the jeweler, in a stammering voice, that the necklace was a family heirloom, thank you very much. And that my mother was, in fact, waiting for me in the car outside and that I needed to go meet her right now. Though I was actually more frightened at the idea of walking outside that store and possibly running into him than I was at staying inside with the extremely irritable jeweler.
That’s when I heard the bells on the shop door tinkle behind me, indicating that someone was coming in.
My heart sank. No. Please, no.
“I don’t believe you,” the jeweler said flatly. “In fact, just so you know, my assistant is on the phone in the back with the police right now. They’re on the way. So your mother — if she is waiting outside, which I sincerely doubt, since you’ve clearly stolen this — can come inside and join us, if she cares to, and watch you being arrested for grand theft.”
Except that my mother was never given the opportunity to do so. Because John stepped forward.
And the walls of the shop seemed to turn the color of blood before my eyes.
“Excuse me,” John said in his deep voice, which sounded completely out of place in such a small, upscale boutique. He looked completely out of place in it, already so menacing because of his size but even more so now because of the black leather jacket and jeans he was wearing.
I thought I was going to pass out. What was he doing there? Had he come to take me back because I’d broken the rules? Was that why the stone in my necklace had turned black, to warn me?
The jeweler glanced over at him, annoyed. “My assistant will be with you in a moment, sir,” he said.
“No, thank you,” John said, as if he were refusing an offer of peanuts on a plane. “Let go of her.”
The jeweler’s eyes widened slightly. But he didn’t let go of me.
“Excuse me,” the jeweler said, looking indignant. “But are you acquainted with this young lady? Because she —”
That’s when John — not looking angry, or annoyed, or anything at all, really — reached across the counter and took hold of the hand the jeweler was using to hold me captive in his shop, as if John were feeling for his pulse.
But John wasn’t feeling for the jeweler’s pulse. That wasn’t what he was doing at all.
The jeweler gave a little gasp. His mouth fell open. Some of the coldness went out of his eyes. Instead, they filled with fear.
I didn’t know — then — what John was doing. My mind was still reeling over the fact that he was there at all.
But I recognized, in a way the jeweler clearly hadn’t, the dangerous set of his jaw and the determined look in his eyes.
And the anxiety that washed over me had nothing to do anymore with my own safety.
“John,” I said. I’d pried the pendant from the older man’s clenched fingers and was already backing away from the counter. I couldn’t take my gaze from the jeweler’s face. It had drained of all color. “Please. Whatever you’re doing. Don’t. It’s all right. Really.”
It wasn’t all right. It was obvious that it wasn’t all right.
But this turned out to be the correct thing to say, since John — after throwing an agitated glance in my direction as if to gauge the truth of my statement — let go of the jeweler’s wrist.
As soon as he did this, the old man took another gasping breath and then staggered back, clutching at his heart.
He wasn’t the only one. I was clutching at my own heart after the look of stinging reproach John flung me a second later…just before the jeweler’s assistant appeared in the back doorway and said, “Okay, Mr. Curry, the police are on their way — oh, my God! ”
Then — coward that I am — I pivoted and ran blindly from the store, the bells on the door tinkling behind me.
But what else was I going to do? Stick around until the cops showed up?
I sprinted straight to my mom’s waiting car.
“Pierce,” Mom said, lowering her cell phone and looking surprised as I collapsed, shaking all over, into the passenger