Steal Me by Lauren Layne Page A

right?”
    “Yup,” Vin said before turning back to Anth. “Dude, seriously, you haven’t been answering your phone.”
    “Because I turn it off when I’m in a meeting,” Anthony said. To avoid interruptions like this.
    But his irritation faded quickly into a sliver of fear as he realized that his younger brother wasn’t often disposed toward phone calls, much less drop-bys.
    “Is everything okay?” Anthony was already pulling his phone out of the desk drawer where he’d placed it after Ray had shown up. “Mom, Dad—”
    “They’re fine. It’s Maggie.”
    Anth’s head shot up, his eyes pinning his brother with a lethal stare. “What’s wrong? Is she okay? What—”
    Vin held up a hand, his eyes narrowing slightly, perhaps in puzzlement over Anthony’s fiercer than usual reaction.
    “She’s okay.”
    Anthony blew out a breath of relief.
    “Who’s Maggie?” Ray asked.
    “Smiley’s ex-wife,” Anthony muttered.
    Upon realizing this was police business, and not family business, Ray’s gaze sharpened on Vincent. “There’s been a development?”
    Vin nodded once, then held up a plastic bag containing a single envelope.
    Anth held out his hand.
    There was no return address. There rarely was, not when you actually wished for one.
    “Margaret Hansen,” he read aloud. His eyes lifted to Vin. “Maggie.”
    His brother’s expression was grim. “Keep reading.”
    Anthony did and saw a name even more familiar, “c/o Captain Moretti.”
    “What the hell,” he muttered.
    “It came to my home address,” Vincent said. “Either the guy got the wrong Moretti or he’s fucking with us in an even bigger way; letting us know he knows about our little family cop legacy. I dunno.”
    “How do you know it has anything to do with Smiley?” Ray asked.
    Vin jerked his chin in the direction of the bag, just as Anthony flipped the envelope over. Sealing the envelope was a single, simple, yellow smiley-face sticker.
    “What is wrong with this fucker?” Ray asked. “What’s with the creepy sticker? I used to get one of those on the top of my long division homework.”
    “Could be a copycat,” Vin said.
    “Could be,” Anthony said as Ray gave a halfhearted shrug. The silence in the room spoke volumes though…nobody thought it was a copycat. Copycats rarely cared this much unless money was at stake. This wasn’t about money. It was personal.
    It was about Margaret .
    “Why not just send it straight to her?” Ray asked.
    “Maybe he doesn’t know where she lives,” Vin added.
    Anthony gave him a look. “He’s gone through the trouble of finding your address. Best we can tell, he figured out where she works. He could have followed her home.”
    The men were silent again. If Smiley— Eddie —had gone this far, he probably had followed her home. The thought made Anthony’s stomach turn, not just with anger, but with something far worse: fear .
    Smiley hadn’t proved dangerous, but Eddie Hansen very well could be if he wasn’t over his ex-wife. Even the most harmless of men could turn lethal over a woman. The stats about your spouse being the most likely to kill you were sadly true.
    Anthony rubbed a hand over his face. “You brought this straight here?”
    Vin nodded.
    “We’ll need to send it to evidence, but anything going through the postal system…”
    “We’ll find dozens of prints,” Ray concluded. “What about the postmark?”
    “Eighty-third and Columbus,” Vin said. “I checked.”
    “Think he lives around there, or think he’s sticking with the same neighborhood where his hits are?”
    “Probably the latter,” Anthony said, opening his desk drawer and pulling out a pair of gloves so he could handle the letter without adding his own prints to the mix.
    He carefully opened the bag and pulled out the letter, mentally willing it to give up any clues as to what the hell sort of game Smiley was playing.
    “We’ll need Ms. Walker to open it,” Ray said, sounding annoyed. “The