Danielle Steel - The Apartment

“Is he okay?” Claire asked cautiously. She had very infrequent contact with her father. They had so little to say to each other.

“I hope so,” Sarah said quietly, and changed the subject, as they walked to baggage claim to get their bags. Sarah had been as tireless as her daughter on the trip, and as anxious to get to work. In a few months, Claire wanted to hire an assistant, possibly before the Las Vegas trade show, but they didn’t need one yet. The two women were more than willing to do all the work, and even some of the heavy lifting, literally, when their samples came in. Both of them were hard workers with a lot of energy. And they chatted animatedly, feeding each other ideas, on the cab ride back to the apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. They had been gone for four days, and it felt like a month, but their business was off to a great start.

—

At the end of February, on the late-night shift, Lieutenant O’Rourke called Sasha at the hospital. The message said it was urgent, and she was instantly afraid that something had happened to Valentina. They hadn’t spoken to each other, or seen each other, in two months by then, for the first time in their life. Even when they traveled, or Sasha had been in medical school, they had never let more than a few days go by without talking. The silence between them had been brutal, and painful for both of them.

She called the lieutenant with a shaking hand and waited with bated breath for what he had to tell her. As always, he was blunt.

“We got him. Apparently Jean-Pierre cheated someone in an arms deal, and shaved off a bigger commission than they’d agreed on, and delivered second-rate goods. Payback time. They had him killed. Thanks to one of our informants, we got the guy who did it, and the French have the man who ordered it. They won’t extradite him to us, but they’ll try him in France. We have the killer here. He’s in custody, and we’re keeping him. I don’t think they were ever after your sister. But we couldn’t know. We had to play it safe, for both of you. We’ll release her in the morning, and you can take off your contact lenses and grow your hair.” He laughed. More important, they were safe now. “I’ll pull my guys off tonight, if you want.” Sasha had gotten used to them. There was a rotation of eight men who had been protecting her. They were nice to everyone in the apartment, helped wherever they could, and were friendly to the nurses at work.

“We’re going to miss them,” Sasha said kindly, and he laughed.

“So will your sister. But that’s a whole other story. She’s a handful,” he commented, and Sasha wondered what she’d been up to. “A handful” was an understatement, as she knew too well. It was her bad behavior and dangerous choices that had gotten them into this mess and put their lives at risk for the past two months. Sasha thanked him and called Alex in neonatal ICU as soon as she hung up.

“They got the killer,” she said, exhaling audibly, and Alex closed his eyes. He had never been so stressed in his life, worrying about her. Even the undercover cops with her around the clock didn’t completely reassure him.

“Thank God.”

Ten minutes later the two men on duty that night came to say goodbye to her. Lieutenant O’Rourke had already called them and relieved them of duty. Sasha thanked and hugged them both, and they left. The nightmare was over, as swiftly as it had begun. And she sent both her parents a text to tell them. After that, it was up to Valentina to contact them, to apologize for what she’d put them all through, but she probably wouldn’t, if she knew her sister. Valentina never apologized for anything.

But if she got involved with someone unsavory again, Sasha was going to tell her that she couldn’t see her anymore. She had made the decision in the past two months. She couldn’t do that to herself, or Alex now. She had seen what a toll it took on him. He had said nothing to his parents, so as not to worry them, but that was hard on him too, since they were very close, and they would have been terrified for him and Sasha, and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. No one in their family had been involved with a nuclear arms dealer, or a hit in an assassination. Valentina had gone way over the line this time—she’d come close to it before, just not to this degree. In this instance, she had inadvertently put her twin at risk too, although Sasha was sure she had never considered the possibility of that when she got involved with Jean-Pierre and closed her eyes to what he was doing. His dangerous lifestyle was written all over him. But Valentina liked all the luxury that went with it. And Sasha found it interesting that the two fabulously rich, lavishly generous men they’d come into contact with recently, Jean-Pierre and George, were high-level criminals. Sasha was grateful and happy with Alex on a much more human scale. If Valentina wanted a decent life, she’d have to find someone like him, which Sasha knew she’d find boring.

Valentina had developed dangerous tastes and habits and connections with her modeling career. Not everyone used it that way, but Valentina did. It was a high price to pay for expensive thrills. And Jean-Pierre’s fleet of bodyguards and armed thugs should have warned her about what he was.

She and Alex went home from the hospital together that night and talked about it. They were both sobered by the experience, and relieved that the drama was over.

When Valentina called her in the morning, tears sprang to Sasha’s eyes when she heard her. In spite of the trouble she had caused, for everyone, and for Sasha specifically, they were still twins, with an unseverable bond between them.

“I missed you so much,” Sasha breathed into the phone, as tears rolled down her cheeks. “We were all so worried about you.”

“So was I,” Valentina said flippantly. “Shit, they sent me to a monastery in Arizona. Not even a dude ranch with cute boys, except for the cops they sent with me. A monastery with priests and nuns. I had to wear a habit, and work in the vegetable garden. Some days I was sorry the guy didn’t shoot me.” As expected, she didn’t say a word about Sasha, and the trouble she’d caused her.

“I’d love to see you in a nun’s habit.” Sasha laughed at her and wiped the tears off her face.

“Don’t count on it. Besides, I have to give it back when I leave. They think it’s magic or something.”

“They probably don’t want you turning it into a miniskirt, and wearing it with no underwear and high heels.” Her twin was capable of it, as they both knew.

“I wish I’d thought of that. I’ve been wearing sandals that give me calluses and blisters. My feet are a mess.” It was all she could say after two months of hiding from a killer. But she sounded in good spirits, and was thrilled to be coming back to New York. “They’re flying me back today,” she said nonchalantly, as though she were coming back from a magazine shoot for Vogue.

“I can’t wait to see you,” Sasha said with feeling. “It was hard not being able to call you.”

“I know. It was for me too,” Valentina admitted. “Are you working today?”

“Not till tonight.” They talked for a few more minutes and hung up.

—

Claire and her mother were going over spreadsheets later that afternoon, sitting on the couch. Abby was packing in her room, which she had been doing for weeks, when she wasn’t writing. Charlie was lying in a patch of sunlight near the window, and Morgan had just come in with groceries, when the doorbell rang, and Sasha opened it, and Valentina was standing there in all her glory, in a short black leather skirt, a red sweater, and thigh-high boots with stiletto heels. The two sisters flew into each other’s arms in a crushing embrace, and then Valentina let out a scream, as she looked at her twin.