Praise for
Marie Ferrarella

MAC’S BEDSIDE MANNER

“…the saucy quips will draw a laugh, and the chemistry will make you shiver. Marie Ferrarella does it again!”

—Romantic Times

IN GRAYWOLF’S HANDS

“Great romance, excellent plot, grabs you from page one.”

—Affaire de Coeur

A HUSBAND WAITING TO HAPPEN

“Ms. Ferrarella warms our hearts with her charming characters and delicious interplay.”

—Romantic Times

A MATCH FOR MORGAN

“Ms. Ferrarella creates fiery, strong-willed characters, an intense conflict and an absorbing premise no reader could possibly resist.”

—Romantic Times

IN THE FAMILY WAY

“Once again Ms. Ferrarella demonstrates a mastery of the storytelling art as she creates charming characters, witty dialogue and an emotional storyline that will tug at your heartstrings.”

—Romantic Times

ONCE A FATHER

“…the pleasure of this journey is in the getting there. Reading about warm, caring people and watching relationships mature under stessful situations is a pleasurable way to spend an afternoon. As usual, Ferrarella’s dialogue is in voice, crisp, and moves the story along without ever bogging down in the emotional angst each brings to the relationship. Once a Father is a hearty recommend for a skilled writer.”

—The Romance Reader

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my newest series and the newest family that has captured my heart. The Cavanaughs are everything we would love families to be: supportive, loyal, noble in a human way, teasingly loving and, as an added bonus, each better looking than the last.

Patrick Cavanaugh is an offshoot of the main branch, a Cavanaugh cousin who has benefited from his association with the family patriarch and former police chief, Andrew. Patrick has his dark secrets, but his past has never gotten in the way of his being an honest cop. However, even the most honorable of people can be held suspect when it’s guilt by association, and Patrick’s former partner was found to have dirty hands. It’s up to Maggi McKenna, posing as his new partner, to prove Patrick guilty or innocent, not an easy task when the subject is a loner who is basically noncommunicative. The task gets even more difficult when Maggi finds herself becoming more and more attracted to him.

I hope you find these two as interesting as I did and that you’ll come back for a prolonged visit with each of the Cavanaughs as they tell their own story. As always, thank you for reading, and I wish you love.

Internal Affair
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MARIE FERRARELLA

This RITA® Award-winning author has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide.

To the brave men and women

who put their lives on the line for us every day.

Thank you.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 1

“No!”

Every fiber of his muscular body tense and alert, Patrick Cavanaugh bolted upright in his bed, ready to fight, to protect. As adrenaline coursed through his veins, it took several moments before he realized he’d been dreaming. And it was the dream that plagued him. The one that he’d been having night after night for the past month. Ever since Ramirez had been shot right before his eyes. And killed.

Ramirez had been one step away from him.

One step away from being saved by him.

Awake now, Patrick shivered. His bedroom was cold. December in Aurora, California, tended to be bitterly cold at times. Because the dream had been so vivid, because he’d relived every second of it, his upper torso was covered with sweat, cooling him even more.

Getting back to sleep was impossible. Not now. Habit had him reaching for the pack of cigarettes on his nightstand. The pack of cigarettes that was no longer there. Not wanting anything to have a hold over him, he’d quit smoking the week after they had put Eduardo Ramirez into the ground. Twenty-two days and counting.

He sat for a moment, dragging his hand through his hair, trying to focus on the day before him. Dark thoughts hovered around him like the ghosts of years past, searching for a chink, a break in the armor he kept tightly wrapped around himself. Waiting to get to him.

Every man had his demons, he told himself. His were no bigger, no smaller than most.

It didn’t help.

Patrick swallowed a halfhearted curse. He wondered what it felt like to wake up with a smile on his face, the way he knew his sister Patience did.

No use in going there, he thought. It wasn’t anything he was about to find out. He’d always been the somber one in the family. Not without cause. Patience was the mystery, he’d decided long ago. Happy despite everything. Despite the home life they’d had growing up.

Any happiness that existed in their lives had come by way of his uncles Andrew and Brian and their families. It certainly hadn’t come via his own, at least, not from his parents, Mike and Diane.

Patience was another story. She was the reason he’d plumbed the depths of his soul and discovered that he was a protector and capable of feeling an emotion other than anger. He had to, for Patience’s sake.

Patrick narrowed his eyes, looking at the blue digital numbers. Six-thirty.

Time to get up, anyway, he thought. Time to get ready to serve and protect.

As he rose from his rumpled double bed, the sheet tangled around his leg and then fell to the floor. He didn’t bother picking it up. His whole bed looked like the scene of a battle.

And had been. Because last night, as he had almost every night since his partner’s death, he’d fought the good fight. He’d led Ramirez and the other detectives and patrolmen into the crack house. Except that somehow, Ramirez had gotten in front of him just as shots were fired and all hell broke loose.

And he’d been too late to save Ramirez.

Again.

Don’t go there, Patrick ordered himself coldly. He muttered another curse as he walked into the tiny adjacent bathroom, naked as the day he was born. He couldn’t afford to think about Ramirez, couldn’t afford to allow himself to dwell in the land of “what ifs.” The guilt was still too raw, weighed too much. Dwelling on the pain left him winded and bleeding inside.

It was the beginning of a new week and he needed to be sharp. To survive the way others before him hadn’t survived. He owed it to the department, but mostly to Patience. They had uncles and cousins, but he was the only immediate family she had. If he let this consume him, likely as not, he’d get himself killed. Leaving her alone.

Wasn’t gonna happen. Yet.

Blowing out a deep breath, Patrick wrapped his anger around himself and stepped into the shower.

The shower handle was poised on cold. He pulled it and let the water hit him full blast. Jolting him into Monday.

“New assignment, Mag?”

Depositing the frying pan into the dishwasher, she picked up the breakfast she’d prepared and placed it in front of her father. She’d been too preoccupied to hear his question. “What?”

Matthew McKenna pushed forward his coffee cup. An independent man, he lived alone now and liked his space. He liked it even more when his only daughter, his only child, dropped by before beginning her mornings. It wasn’t something he took for granted. “Today, don’t you start your new assignment?”

“Yes. Right.”

The words came out like staccato gunfire. Mary Margaret McKenna—Maggi to those she considered part of her inner circle, or 3M to those who enjoyed honing in on her no-nonsense nature—poured coffee into her father’s cup. She was bracing herself for the morning and the change of venue she was about to face.

She supposed that was why she’d stopped by this morning to make breakfast for her father. To touch base with what she considered to be her true self. Before she left that behind. Belatedly, she offered her father a smile along with cream for his coffee.

She was what she was because of her father. And because of him, in an indirect way, she had chosen the less-traveled path within her career. Patrolman Matthew McKenna had been one of Aurora’s finest until a bullet had ended his career less than six months ago. The bullet had come from one of his own men. One of those awful things that happened in the heat of battle when shots went wild. The other policeman was found dead, a victim of one of the so-called suspects’ deadly aim, or dumb luck, take your pick. But it was the service revolver in his hand that had fired the bullet which had found its way into Matthew’s hip and left him with a slight limp. And a new appreciation for life.

She had been living in San Francisco when she’d gotten the call about her father. Without any hesitation, Maggi had handed in her resignation and come home to Aurora, to stand vigil over her father in the hospital and then nurse him back to health. When she was satisfied that he was on the mend, she put in for a job on the Aurora police force. It took little to work her way up. And when a position in Internal Affairs opened up, she applied for it.

The thought of spying on her fellow police officers bothered her. The thought of rogue police officers, giving the force a bad name, bothered her more. She took the position, signing on to work undercover. She still grappled with her own decision. It was a dirty job, she’d tell herself. But someone had to do it. For now, that someone was her.

Matthew sighed, looking at her over the rim of his cup. “You know, Mag, this isn’t the kind of life your mother and I envisioned for you, dodging bullets and bad guys.”

She finished her breakfast in three bites—toast, consumed mostly on her feet. Impatience danced through her, as it always did at the start of a new assignment. She thought of it as stage fright. A little always made you perform better.

“We all make our own way in the world, remember?” Maggie dusted off her fingers over the sink. “That was what you taught me.”

Matthew shook his head. “I also taught you that there was no shame in taking the easy way, as long as it wasn’t against the law.”

Maggie laughed, partially to set him at ease. He worried too much. Just as much as she had when he had been the one to walk out the door wearing a badge. “Where’s the fun in that?”

His expression was serious. “You think it’s fun, my sitting here, wondering if you’re going to walk in through that door again?”

Maggie refused to be drawn into a serious discussion. Not this morning. The seriousness of her work was bad enough. She needed an outlet, a haven where she could laugh, where she could put down her sword and shield and just be herself.

So instead, she winked at him. “I could move back up to San Francisco, take that burden away from you.” Her grin widened as unspoken love entered her eyes. “You’re old enough to live on your own now.”

She’d moved back home to take care of him. And once he was on his feet, with the aid of a quad cane he hated, Maggi knew it was time for her to leave. But one thing after another seemed to get in the way and she remained, telling herself that she’d look for an apartment over the weekend. She’d finally moved out less than three weeks ago. But this still felt like home. She had a feeling it always would.

The somber expression refused to be teased away. “You know what I mean, Mary Margaret.”

“Oh-uh, two names. Serious stuff.” Inwardly she gritted her teeth together. She’d always hated her full name. Hearing it reminded her of eight years of dour-faced nuns looking down at her disapprovingly because she hadn’t lived up to their expectations. All except for Sister Michael. Sister Michael had tried to encourage her to let her “better side out.” She suspected that Sister Michael had probably been as much of a hellion in her day as she was accused of being in hers.

She’d turned to Sister Michael when her mother had died and she felt she couldn’t cry in front of her father. Couldn’t cry because she was all that was keeping him together.

She crossed to him now and placed her arm around his shoulders. “Dad, you know damn well that you’re my hero and I was honor-bound to grow up just like you.”

The sigh was liberally laced with guilt. “I should have married Edna,” he lamented. “She would have found a way to shave those rough edges off you.”

“No, Edna would have turned out to be the reason I ran away from home.”

Edna Grady was the woman his father had dated when she was fifteen. The widow had her cap set on marriage and would have stopped at nothing to arrive at that destination. She had a host of ideas about what their life was going to be like after the ceremony. It hadn’t included having a stepdaughter under her roof. That was when her father had balked, terminating their relationship. Maggi had been eternally grateful when he had.

Maggi paused to kiss the top of her father’s snow-white head, her heart swelling with love. He really was her rock, her pillar. “You did just fine raising me, Dad. You gave me all the right values. I’m just making sure they’re in play, that’s all. And that everyone else shares them.”

While he applauded the principle, he didn’t like the thought of his daughter risking her life every day. He vividly realized what his wife must have gone through all those years they were married and he was on the force.

He looked at her, disgruntled. “If I hadn’t been shot, you would have been married by now.”

“Divorced,” she corrected, “I would have been divorced by now.”

She firmly believed that. Maggi thought of Taylor Ramsford, the up-and-coming lawyer she’d met while working on the vice squad. He’d dazzled her with his wit, his charm, and they’d gotten engaged. But Taylor, it turned out, was not nearly the man she’d thought he was. Beneath the appealing exterior, there was nothing but a man who wanted to get ahead. A man centered on his own goals and nothing more. Marrying her had just been another goal. When she’d told him she was going home for an indefinite period of time to care for her father, he wouldn’t stand for it.

“Your place is with me,” he’d told her.

She’d known then that her place was anywhere but with him.

She gave her father a quick hug. “You know you’re the only man for me.”

He patted her hand affectionately. The day she was born, his partner had expressed his regret that his wife hadn’t given birth to a son. Maggi was worth a hundred sons to him, and he told her so.

“Not that I’m not flattered, Mag, but I’m not going to live forever.”

“Sure you are.” She walked over to pick up her service revolver and holster from the bookcase in the family room where she’d left it. “And I don’t need a man to survive. No woman this day and age does.” She spared him a tolerant glance. “Catch up to the times, Dad.”

He thought of his late wife. Maggi looked just like Annie had at her age. She’d had a way of making him feel that the sun rose and set around him without sacrificing a shred of her own independence. She’d been a rare woman. As was his daughter. He hoped to God that she’d find a man worthy of her someday.

“’Fraid it’s too late. No new tricks for me. I’m the old-fashioned type, no changing that.”

“Don’t change a hair for me,” she teased. Glancing at her watch, she knew she had to hit the road or risk getting stuck in ungodly traffic. She strapped on her holster, taking care to position the revolver to minimize the bulge it created. It was wreaking havoc on the linings of her jackets. “I’ve gotta go, Dad. Have a good day.”

He nodded. It was time he got to work as well. To pass the time while he’d been convalescing, he’d taken to writing down some of his more interesting cases. Now he was at it in earnest, looking to crack the publishing world with a fictionalized novel.

Matthew rose from the table, walking Maggi to the front door. “Would I be threatening some chain of command if I told you to have the same?”

Have a good day. That wasn’t possible, she thought. Her new assignment was taking her back undercover. Not to any seedy streets where the enemy was clearly defined the way her old job had been, but into the bowels of the homicide and burglary division of the Aurora force. She felt this was more dangerous. Because there were reputations at stake, and desperate people with a great deal to lose did desperate things when their backs were up against the wall.

Was Detective Patrick Cavanaugh a desperate man? Was that what had led him to betray the oath he’d taken the day he’d been sworn into the department? Had it been desperation or greed that had made him turn his back on his promise to serve and protect and made him serve only himself, protect only his own back?

Not your concern, Mag, she told herself. She wasn’t judge and jury, she was only the investigator. Her job was to gather all the information she could and let someone else make the proper determination.

If that meant putting herself in front of a charging bull, well, she’d known this wasn’t going to be a picnic when she’d signed on to help rid the force of dirty cops.

She frowned, thinking of what her superior had told her about Cavanaugh. The detective had a list of honors a mile long and he was braver than the day was long, but he was as hard as titanium to crack. And as friendly as a shark coming off a month-long hunger strike. The dark-haired, scowling detective went through partners the way most people went through paper towels. The only one who had managed to survive had been Eduardo Ramirez. Until the day he was shot. Ramirez had managed to last two years with Cavanaugh. According to what she’d read in his file, that was quite a record.

Detective First Class Patrick Cavanaugh was the product of a long blue line. His late father had been a cop, one of his uncles had been the chief of police and he was the nephew of the current chief of detectives. Not to mention that he had over half a dozen cousins on the force at the present time. Possibly covering his back. In any case, she knew extreme caution was going to have to be exercised. There could be a lot of toes involved.

She was Daniel, entering the lion’s den, and all the lions were related.

But then, she’d always loved a challenge.

Maggi flashed a smile at her father, meant to put him at ease. “I’ll see you tonight.”

He watched as she slipped on her jacket, watched the weapon disappear beneath the navy blue fabric. “I’ll hold you to that.”

She winked and kissed his cheek before leaving. “Count on it.”

He did.

The call had reached him before he ever made it to the precinct. An overly curious jogger had seen something glistening in the river, catching the first rays of the dull morning sun. It turned out to be the sunroof of a sports car. An all but submerged sports car. He’d called in his find immediately.

A BMW sports car had gone over the railing and found its final resting place in the dark waters below. Patrick told dispatch he was on it and changed his direction, driving toward the river.

Even before he’d closed his cell phone, he’d been struck by the similarity of the case. Fifteen years ago, his aunt Rose’s car was discovered nose down in the very same river. All the Cavanaughs had gathered at Uncle Andrew’s house, trying to comfort his uncle and the others—Shaw, Callie, the twins—Clay and Teri—and Rayne. It was the only time he had seen his uncle come close to breaking down. Aunt Rose’s body wasn’t inside the car when it was fished out. Or in the river when they dragged it. Uncle Andrew refused to believe that she was dead, even when his father told him to move on with his life.

Patrick had been in the room when his father had said that to Andrew. They didn’t realize he was there at first, but he was, just shy of the doorway. There was something there between the two men, something he hadn’t seen before or since, something they never allowed to come out, except for that one time. His uncle came close to striking his father, then held himself in check at the last minute.

But then, his father had a way of getting under people’s skins and rubbing them raw. It was what held him back. And turned him into a bitter drunk in his off hours. He never showed up for work under the influence, but the minute he was off duty, he went straight for a bottle. It was as if he was trying to drown something inside him that refused to die.

The tension between his father and his uncle that day had been so thick they might have come to blows if Uncle Andrew hadn’t seen him standing there just then. The next minute, Uncle Andrew left, saying he wanted to go to the river to see what he could do to help find her. Uncle Brian went with him.

Eventually, everyone stopped believing that she was still alive, but he knew that Uncle Andrew never gave up hope. His uncle still believed his wife was alive, even to this day.

Hope was a strange thing, Patrick mused as he turned down the winding highway that fed on to the road by the river. It kept some people going, against all odds. He thought of his mother. Hope tortured others needlessly. His mother had stayed with his father until the day he died, hoping he would change. His father never had.

Patrick blocked the thoughts from his mind. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. It was time for him to be a detective.

When he arrived at the site, there were ten or so curious passersby milling around the area, craning their necks for a view. They were held back by three patrolman who had been summoned to the scene. A bright yellow tape stretched across the area close to the retrieved vehicle, proclaiming it a crime scene.

He was really getting to hate the color yellow.

Exiting his car, Patrick nodded absently at the patrolmen and strode toward the recently fished out sports car. Except for a smashed left front light, the car seemed none the worse for wear. The driver’s side door was hanging open, allowing him a view of the young woman inside. She was stretched out across her seat, her body tilted toward the passenger side. She was twenty, maybe twenty-one and had been very pretty before the water had stolen her last breath and filled her lungs, sealing the look of panic on her face.

He judged the woman in the trim navy suit bending over her to be a little older, though he wasn’t sure by just how much. He didn’t recognize her. Someone new in the coroner’s office, he imagined. She looked a little young to be a doctor.

Or maybe he was just feeling old.

Patrick took a step back, partially turning toward the nearest patrolman. “Who’s that?”

The officer glanced over his shoulder. “Detective McKenna. Says she’s with you.”

Irritation was close to the surface this morning. Okay, who the hell was playing games and why? “Nobody’s with me,” Patrick retorted tersely.

He thought he heard the patrolman mutter, “You said it, I didn’t,” but his attention was focused on the blonde kneeling beside the vehicle.

Crossing to her quickly, he wasted no time with preambles and niceties. He didn’t like having his crime scene interfered with. “I thought I was assigned to this case.”

Maggi raised her eyes from what she was doing. The male voice was stern, definitely territorial. From what she’d been told, she’d expected nothing less. From her vantage point, six-three looked even taller than it ordinarily might have.

Patrick Cavanaugh.

Show time.

He was more formidable looking than his photograph, she thought. Also better looking. But that was neither here nor there. She was interested in beauty of the soul, not face or body. If she was, Maggi noted absently, someone might have said she’d hit the jackpot.

They’d said that Lucifer had been the most beautiful of the archangels.

“You are,” Maggi replied mildly.

Because she didn’t like the psychological advantage her position gave him, she rose to her feet, patently ignoring the extended hand he offered her. Ground rules had to be established immediately. She was her own person.

“Then what are you doing here?” Patrick demanded.

With the ease of someone slipping on a glove, she slid into the role she’d been assigned. Once upon a time, before the lure of the badge had gotten her, she’d entertained the idea of becoming an actress. Working undercover allowed her to combine both her loves.

“I guess they didn’t tell you.”

He had a crime scene to take charge of, he didn’t have time for guessing games initiated by fluffy blondes compromising his crime scene. “Tell me what?”

“That I’m your new partner.”

Chapter 2

“The hell you are.”

Patrick glared at this woman who looked as if she would be more at home on some runway in Paris, modeling the latest in impractical lingerie than standing beside a waterlogged corpse, pretending to look for clues.

“Yes,” Maggi replied with a smile. “The hell I am.”

No one had notified him. He hated having things sprung on him without warning. In his experience, most surprises turned out bad.

“Since when?”

“Since this morning. Last night, actually,” she corrected, “but it was too late to get started then.”

He couldn’t believe that someone actually believed that he and this woman could work together. He found working with another man difficult enough; working with a woman with all her accompanying quirks and baggage was out of the question.

“By whose authority?” he demanded.

“Captain Reynolds.” She gave him the name of his direct superior, although the pairing had not originated with Reynolds. The order had come from John Halliday, the man in charge of Internal Affairs. A fair, honest man, if not the easiest to work with, Halliday had found a subtle way of getting her in so that not even Reynolds knew the true purpose behind her becoming Cavanaugh’s new partner. “He said you wouldn’t be thrilled.”

Patrick’s frown deepened. He knew why Reynolds hadn’t said anything. It was because the captain didn’t care for confrontations from within. Well, he couldn’t just slide this blonde under his door and expect things to go well from there.

“Captain Reynolds has a gift for understatement.” His voice was brittle. “I haven’t seen you around.”

His icy blue eyes seemed to go right through her. She could see why others might find him intimidating. “I’ve been there. Around,” she clarified when he continued to stare at her. She shrugged casually. “I can’t help it if you haven’t noticed me.”

Oh, he would have noticed her, Patrick thought. A woman who looked the way she did was hard to miss. She was the kind that made heads turn and married men stop to rethink their choice in a life partner. He wasn’t given to socializing, but he would have noticed her.

Something didn’t feel right, though. “How long have you been a detective?” Patrick asked.

“Three months.”

Three months. A novice. What the hell was the captain thinking? Even a man as photo-op oriented as Reynolds had to know this was a bad idea. This woman needed training, aging, and that just wasn’t his line.

Patrick waved her away. “Tell Captain Reynolds I don’t do baby-sitting.”

“I don’t think that’ll matter to him,” she told him crisply. “He doesn’t have any school-aged children.” She indicated the vehicle next to her. “Now, why don’t we just make the best of this and get back to work?”

Patrick looked at her sharply, about to make his rejection plainer since she seemed to have trouble assimilating it, when her words echoed in his brain. “We?”

“We,” she repeated. There was more than ten inches difference between them in height. Maggi drew herself up as far as she could, refusing to appear cowed. “You’ve got to know that working with you isn’t exactly my idea of being on a picnic.”

His eyes were flat as he regarded her. “Then why do it?”

Halliday had told her to blend in, to stay quiet and gather as much information as possible about Cavanaugh and his dealings. The less attention drawn to herself, the better. But from what she’d managed to piece together about him, a man like Cavanaugh didn’t respect sheep. He sheared them and went on. What he respected was someone who’d stand up to him, who’d go toe-to-toe without flinching. That kind of a person stood a chance of finding out something useful. Someone who blended in didn’t.

Maggi had her battle plan laid out. “Because I go where they send me and I always follow orders.”

His eyes pinned her to the spot. “Always?”

She met his stare head-on, his blue eyes against her own green. “Always.”

Well, knowing Reynolds, that didn’t exactly surprise him. He wondered if she was someone’s daughter, someone’s niece. Someone Reynolds owed a favor to. You never knew when you had to call a favor in, especially when you had your eye on the political arena, the way Reynolds did.

“Terrific.” He looked at her without attempting to hide his disgust. “A by-the-book, wet-behind-the-ears rookie.”

She was far from a rookie, but this wasn’t the time to get into that. For now, she left him with his assumptions. “Guess that’s just your cross to bear,” she quipped, turning her attention back to the victim.

He was accustomed to people withdrawing from him, to avoiding him whenever possible. This was something a little different. He wondered if stupidity guided her, or if she had some kind of different agenda. “You’ve got a smart mouth.”

“Goes with my smart brain.” Deciding that the corpse wasn’t going anywhere, Maggi looked at the man whose soul she was going to have to crawl into. “I graduated top of my class from the academy.”

If that was meant to impress him, she’d fallen short of her mark, he thought. He couldn’t stomach newly minted detectives, spouting rhetoric and theories they’d picked up out of the safe pages of some textbook. “There’s a whole world of difference between a classroom and what you find outside of it.”

“I know.” It was going to be slow going, finding his good side. From what she’d gleaned, he might not even have one. But she felt he’d be less antagonistic if he felt she had some sort of experience. “I was in Vice in San Francisco.”

His eyes slid over her, taking full measure, seeing beneath the jacket and matching trousers. It took more than fabric to disguise her shape. She’d probably made one hell of a decoy. “Stopping it or starting it?”

Her grin was quick, lethal. “Now who’s got the smart mouth?”

He looked away. “Difference being, I don’t shoot mine off.”

The wind kept insisting on playing with her hair. She pushed it away from her face, only to have it revisit less than a beat later. “I’ll remember that. See? Learning already.”

Annoyed, Patrick knew there was nothing he could do about the situation right now. If he ordered her away, he had a feeling she wouldn’t retreat. He didn’t want to go into a power struggle in front of the patrolmen. No one had to tell him that behind the sexy, engaging smile was a woman who’d gotten her way most of her life. You only had to look at her to know that.

He could wait. All that mattered was the end result. He didn’t want a partner. He wanted to work alone. It required less effort, less coordination. And less would go wrong that way.

Patrick sighed. “Well, I need to learn something about you.”

His eyes were intense, a light shade of blue that seemed almost liquid. She wondered if they could be warm on occasion, or if they always looked as if they were dissecting you. “Fire away.”

“Your name. What is it?”

She realized that she’d skipped that small detail. She put her hand out now. “Margaret McKenna. My friends call me Maggi.”

He made no effort to take her hand and she dropped it at her side. “What do people who aren’t your friends call you?”

“The repeatable ones are McKenna, or 3M.”

Despite himself, he was drawn in. “3M? Like the tape?”

Her gaze was unwavering. “No, because my full name is Mary Margaret McKenna.”

He could see that the revelation pained her. She didn’t like her name. That was fair enough—it didn’t suit her. She didn’t look like a Mary Margaret. Mary Margarets were subdued, given to shy smiles. Unless he missed his guess, the last time this woman had been subdued had probably been shortly before birth.

He laughed, his expression remaining unaffected. “Sounds like you should be starring in an off-Broadway revival of Finian’s Rainbow.”

Surprise nudged at her. She wouldn’t have thought he’d know something like that. “You like musicals?”

“My sister does.” Patrick stopped abruptly, realizing he’d broken his own rule about getting personal with strangers. And he meant for this woman to be a stranger. He didn’t intend for her to remain in his company any longer than it took to get back to the station and confront Reynolds about his misguided, worse-than-usual choice of partners for him. “I work alone.”

“So I was told.” She’d also been told other things. Like the fact that he was a highly decorated cop who’d never been a team player. Now they were beginning to think that was because he was guarding secrets, secrets that had to do with lining his pockets. Rumors had been raised. Where there was smoke, there was usually fire and it was her job to put it out. “I won’t get in your way.”

“For that to be true, you’d have to leave.”

From any other man, that might have been the beginning of a come-on, or at the very least, a slight flirtation. From Cavanaugh, she knew it meant that he regarded her as a pest. “All right, I won’t get in your way much,” she underscored.

He sincerely doubted that. But for the moment, he was stuck with this fledgling detective, and he didn’t have any more time to waste on her.

Patrick took out a pair of rubber gloves from his jacket pocket and pulled them on. He nodded toward the vehicle that had been fished out. “What have you learned so far?”

“The victim seems to be in her early twenties, on her way to or from a party.”

“How do you know?” The question came at her like a gunshot.

“Look at what she’s wearing. A slinky, short black dress.”

His glance was quick, concise, all-inclusive before reverting to Maggi. “Professional?”

Maggi paused. The panic on the victim’s face made it difficult to see anything else. “A hooker? Maybe, but not cheap. A call girl maybe. The dress is subtle, subdued yet stylish.”

He looked further into the vehicle. “Any ID?”

Maggi shook her head. “No purse. Might have been washed away, although I doubt it.”

He looked at her sharply. Even a broken clock was right twice a day. “Why?”

She’d already been over the interior of the car and found nothing. “Because there’s no registration inside the glove compartment. The glove compartment was completely empty. Not even a manual. Nobody keeps a glove compartment that clean.”

If it was an attempt to hide identity, he thought, it was a futile one. “Ownership’s easy enough to find out.”

Maggi nodded. She gave him her thoughts on the subject. “It’s a stalling tactic. Maybe whoever did this to her needed the extra time to try to fabricate an alibi.”

His eyes made her feel like squirming when they penetrated that way. The man had to be hell on wheels in the interrogation room. “So you think this is a homicide, not an accident.”

“That’s the way the department’s treating it or we wouldn’t be here.” She gave him an expression of sheer innocence.

He crossed his arms before him, looking down at her again. “Okay, Mary Margaret, what do you think the approximate time of death was?”

“Eleven twenty-three. Approximately,” she said. He was trying to get her to lose her cool. Even if this wasn’t about something bigger, she wasn’t about to let him have the satisfaction.

“Woman’s intuition?”

“Woman’s vision,” she corrected. “Twenty-twenty.” Before he could ask her what she was talking about, Maggi reached over the body and held up the victim’s right hand. The young woman was wearing an old-fashioned analog watch. The crystal wasn’t broken, but it was obviously not water-resistant. It had stopped at precisely 11:23.

The CSI team arrived, equipped with their steel cases and apparatus intended to take the mystery out of death. Patrick stepped out of their way as they took possession of the vehicle and the victim within.

Maggi looked at him. “Want me to brief them?”

Something that could have passed for amusement flickered over him. “Asking for permission?”

She served his words back to him. “Trying not to get in your way.”

Too late for that, he thought. Now they had to concentrate on getting her out of his way. Patrick gestured toward the head crime scene investigator. “Go ahead. That’s Jack Urban.”

Stepping around to the back of the vehicle, Patrick took out his notepad and carefully wrote down the license plate number before crossing to the nearest policeman. He handed the notepad to the man.

“See if these plates were run yet,” he instructed. “Find out who the car belongs to. See if it was reported missing or stolen in the past twenty-four hours.”

The policeman took the notepad without comment, retreating to his squad car.

The soft, light laugh that floated to him had Patrick looking back toward the crime scene. His so-called partner was talking to the head of the CSI team. Whatever she said had the man smiling like some living brain donor. Patrick shook his head. Obviously not everyone found his new partner as irritating as he did.

“I need to make a stop at the bank.”

Patrick spared the woman sitting beside him in the front seat a look. It was cold outside and he had the windows of his car rolled up. He hadn’t counted on the fact that along with the added warmth he’d be trapping the scent of her perfume within the vehicle.

Citing that they were partners until the captain tore them asunder, something Patrick was counting on happening in the very immediate future, the woman had hitched a ride back into town with him. When he’d asked her how she’d come to the crime scene in the first place, she’d told him that she’d caught a ride with one of the patrol cars.

The officers were still back at the scene, protecting it from contamination as best they could. With them out of the picture, Patrick’d had no choice but to agree to let her come with him.

He didn’t particularly like being agreeable.

He liked the idea of being a chauffeur even less.

“Why don’t you do that after hours?” he bit off tersely.

She shifted in her seat. Again. The woman was nothing if not unharnessed energy, exuding enough for two people. She could have been her own partner, and should have been. Anything but his.

Maggi pointed to the building in the middle of the tree-lined block. “C’mon, Pat, we’re passing it right now. It’ll only take a minute.”

She slid a glance in his direction. If looks could kill, she knew she would have been dead on the spot.

“All right, as long as you promise never to call me ‘Pat’ again.”

“Deal.” Like it or not, she was going to have to spend some time with him. She wanted it to be as stress free as she could make it. “So, what do you like being called?”

“I don’t like being called at all.”

No one said the assignments were going to be easy. “In the event that I have to get your attention,” Maggi began gamely, “do you prefer ‘hey you,’ or shall I just throw sunflower seeds at you until I get you to turn around?”

He could see her doing it, too. She had that kind of bulldog quality about her. “Cavanaugh’ll do.”

“Not even Patrick?”

He slowed down. There was a parking spot almost directly across the street from the bank. Patrick guided the car into it, then pulled up the hand brake. Only then did he turn to look at her.

“Let’s get something straight, McKenna. We’re not friends, we’re partners. We’re not even going to be that for very long, so quit coming on like some Girl Scout and stop trying to sound like you’re going to be my lifelong buddy.”

She sat there quietly for a long moment, trying to get a handle on this man. “Losing Ramirez hit you pretty hard, didn’t it?”

The look he shot her was darker than black. “The last thing I need or want is to ride around with Dr. Phil in the car. You want to analyze somebody—”

She held up her hand, not in surrender but to get him to curtail what he was about to say. “Sorry, just making conversation.”

“Well, don’t.”

Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned to look at him. The intensity on her face took him by surprise. “You know, Cavanaugh, someday you just might need someone to watch your back for you.”

“If and when I ever do, it sure as hell isn’t going to be you.”

She paused for a moment, and then she gave him a bright smile. “Roughage.”

Had she lost her mind? What kind of a birdbrain were they cranking out of the academy these days? “What?”

“Morning roughage. Does wonders in clearing out all those poisons that seem to be running around all through you,” she declared, getting out of the car. She paused to look in for a last second before closing the door. “I’ll only be a minute.”

Patrick frowned to himself. Even a minute seemed too long to remain in the car, surrounded the way he was with her perfume. What he needed right now more than solitude was air. He got out.

When she looked at him curiously, he muttered, “I need to stretch my legs.”

She pretended to glance down at them. “And long legs they are, too.”

Not waiting for him, Maggi hurried across the street, wanting to put a little distance between herself and Mr. Personality before she said something she meant and blew everything. She held her hand up, stopping traffic as she darted toward the other side.

She supposed having him this ill-tempered made her job easier. It took away any qualms she might have about spying on him.

“Hey, didn’t they teach you not to jaywalk at the academy while you were busy graduating at the top of your class?”

For less than two cents, she’d tell him what she thought of him. Exercising extreme control, Maggi turned around when she reached the curb. “You want to give me a ticket?”

“I don’t want you risking your fool neck needlessly.” What he wanted to do was give her her walking papers, but there was nothing he could do about that here.

Resigned, and far from happy about it, Patrick pushed the glass door open and crossed the threshold ahead of her. She looked surprised when he held the door for her.

“I see someone must have taught you manners somewhere along the line,” she said.

“It’s expedient. If I let the door go, you would probably walk into it and make the ER our next stop. We have to get back to the station.”

She refused to let him get to her. She knew that was what he was after, to get to her so badly that she’d march into Reynolds’s office and declare that she wouldn’t work with him, the way all his other partners had. Except for Ramirez.

Ain’t gonna happen, Cavanaugh, she thought as she walked by him.

“You can huff and puff all you want, Cavanaugh,” she informed him brightly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

With that, she picked out the shortest line. Patrick stopped by the small table with all the deposit and withdrawal slips, looking annoyed. Mercifully, this wasn’t going to take long. Mondays were usually slow.

Except where homicides seemed to be concerned, she thought, thinking back to the crime scene they’d just left. Something like that made grabbing lunch a challenge to intestinal fortitude.

The teller in the window directly to her left screamed.

The next moment, the man standing before the window whirled around.

There was a gun in his hand.

“Everyone freeze,” he announced loudly. “This is a holdup.”

Chapter 3

The man’s eyes bounced around like pinballs that had just been put into play. He seemed to aim his weapon at everyone in the bank at the same time. Patrick could almost hear the bank robber’s nerves jangling.

“Get down!” the man shouted. “Everyone get down on the floor!” His gun moved erratically from person to person, turning each into a potential target, a potential victim. “Now!”

Patrick did a quick calculation. There were fourteen other people in the bank, not counting the bank robber. Five of them tellers. The gunman looked so rattled he could start firing away at any second. It had all the signs of becoming a bloodbath at the slightest provocation.

Going through the motions of dropping down to the floor, Patrick reached for his pistol.

The rest happened so fast he only had the opportunity to absorb it after the fact. Before he knew what she was doing, the partner the department had saddled him with cried out in what sounded like utter panic. His head jerked in her direction. The bank robber stared at her.

Maggi’s eyes were wide as they were riveted on the bank robber and she was trembling. Her hands were raised above her head in total submission.

“Omigod, it’s a gun.” Panic escalated in her voice. “He’s got a gun. Oh, please don’t shoot me,” she implored. “I just found out I’m pregnant. You’d be killing two people, not just one. Me and my baby. I don’t want to die, mister. I’ve got everything to live for. Please don’t kill me.”

With each word she uttered, Maggi edged closer and closer to the bank robber. She was breathing heavily and still trembling.

“Shut up, you stupid bitch. Nobody’s going to die, just do what I tell you.” The bank robber looked panicked himself as he trained the gun on her.

“All right, all right—” Maggi’s voice hitched “—if you promise you won’t hurt me. Pretty please?”

The last two words she uttered were distinctively different from the rest. As she seemed to sag down right in front of him, Maggi grabbed hold of his gun hand. Catching him by surprise, she violently jerked his arm behind his back. In less than half a heartbeat, her own gun was in her other hand. She held it close enough to the robber’s temple to get her point across.

“Drop the gun.” He did as he was told, cursing her roundly. “Now apologize to the nice people and say you’re sorry.”

“What the—” At a loss for coherence, the bank robber let loose a string of profanities that only made Maggi shake her head.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” she marveled. Relieved that the situation was over, Maggi took a deep breath, trying to get a hold of her own nerves. They felt as if they’d been stretched to the limit. Adrenaline still raced through her veins. “Keep that up and we’re going to have to wash your mouth out with soap, aren’t we, Detective Cavanaugh?”

As if waiting for some kind of word of concurrence, Maggi raised her eyebrow toward Patrick. He merely grunted as he pulled the man’s hands behind him and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. The look he gave her left Maggi short on description. Had she just stepped on his male pride?

The robber winced as the cuffs went on. “You’re cops?”

“No, just into a little S&M,” Maggi quipped. “We like to carry handcuffs with us.” She winked broadly at Patrick, beginning to enjoy getting under his skin. “You never know when they might come in handy.”

Using a handkerchief, she stooped down and picked up the man’s weapon by the butt. Nothing fancy. She wondered if this was the man’s first time. He’d certainly behaved that way.

“Next time you want money from a bank, do it right. Use a withdrawal slip.” She tucked the gun in at her belt for the time being, then looked at Patrick. “Want me to call for backup?”

Patrick gave the cuffs a good tug, making sure they were secure. “You mean you’re not going to fly off with him to the precinct?”

Maggi lifted a shoulder in a casual shrug. “My cape’s at the dry cleaners.”

Separating herself from the others, she took out her cell phone and put in a call for a squad car. The second she closed the phone, the bank manager was on her, telling her how grateful he was to her and her partner and asking if there was anything he could do to show his deep appreciation.

“Other than giving away a five-pound box of tens to charity, I’d say hire a security guard. The next time you might not be so lucky.”

The man was still thanking her profusely as she crossed back to Patrick and the prisoner. It was hard to say which of the two men glared at her harder.

She didn’t do recrimination well. “What’s your problem?”

Patrick made the prisoner face the wall as they waited for the squad car to arrive. His voice was cold. “I don’t like showboating.”

“So I won’t invite you to a boat show the next time there’s one at the marina. Anything else?”

“Yes, did it ever occur to you that you could have gotten your head blown off?”

“Frankly, I didn’t have time to think things through to their grisly end.” Maggi moved her head from side to side. “See? It’s still attached and in good working order.”

“Just barely.” The last thing he wanted was to lose another partner in the line of duty. He’d had enough department funerals to last a lifetime.

“That’s all that counts.” She kept her voice cheerful as approaching sirens grew louder. The cavalry had arrived. “Ah, that’s always such a comforting sound.” She looked at the prisoner. “Bet you don’t think so, do you?”

“Bitch,” the bank robber spit out. The next moment, he found himself spun around and held up an inch off the ground. The man’s feet came in contact with air as Patrick yanked him up.

“What’s your name?” Patrick growled at the man.

The bank robber fought for oxygen and against numbing panic. “Joe. Joe Wellington.”

“Well, Joe, Joe Wellington, talk nice to the lady or the next time it won’t be soap you’ll be tasting in your mouth.” Patrick’s look was dark, malevolent. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear,” the bank robber gasped out. His eyes were glassy as they regarded Patrick.

Filled with disgust, Patrick all but threw him down. He then became aware that Maggi was grinning at him like some damn Cheshire cat.

“And just when I thought you didn’t like me,” she said.

“I don’t like you,” he replied tersely. She didn’t stop grinning. To say it got on his nerves gave new meaning to the word understatement. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You defended my honor. I’m flattered.”

He didn’t want her making anything out of it. It had been purely reflexive reaction. “I did it to defend the honor of the badge. It wasn’t done to flatter you.”

“Call it a side effect.”

He had no time to retort. The backup she’d summoned arrived that moment.

It was just as well, he decided. The sooner they got back to the precinct, the sooner things would get back to normal. Whatever that was.

“Buy you lunch?”

It was a little more than an hour later and the would-be bank robber had been sent to be processed through the system. Cavanaugh was writing up the report, annoyed at the time this took away from the homicide they were supposed to investigate.

He waved his hand at Maggi as if she were an annoying fruit fly buzzing around his head.

Maggi held up a twenty almost in front of his nose. “Now that I’ve had a chance to cash my check, I can afford to splurge a little. I feel like celebrating. Join me,” she coaxed. She knew how dangerous the situation could have gotten, despite her earlier disclaimer to him. The fact that it hadn’t gone badly, that she and everyone else were able to walk away, was a fantastic high she wasn’t close to coming down from.

He ignored her and the bill she held up. “Not interested.”

“Don’t you eat?” She bent down until her face was level with his. The ends of her hair brushed against some of his files. “Can I buy you a can of oil?”

Patrick finally looked up. “Is that supposed to be cute?”

“Relatively speaking.” She wasn’t going to let him rob her of her moment. So little of what she did these days felt this good. The positive reactions she dealt with all squared themselves away on paper. That never produced a high. “C’mon, Cavanaugh, lighten up. We’ve still got the rest of the day to face together. It goes better on a full stomach.” When he made no attempt to get up, she added, “My dad always says you can’t trust a man who won’t eat with you.”

He laughed shortly. “I take it your father never saw The Godfather.”

Perched on the edge of his desk now, she hooted. “You are a movie buff.”

He didn’t like giving her points, didn’t like her feeling as if she knew something about him. The less you knew about each other, the less likely you were to get close.

“I told you, that’s my sister’s department. You can’t help picking up a few things if it’s always playing in the background.”

That was the second time he’d mentioned his sister. She paused to study him for a moment. “Are you close, you and your sister?” And then she answered her own questions. “Silly question, I guess.”

The computer network was down, temporarily halting the exchange of information that would allow him to get the name of the owner of the dead woman’s sports car. Sometimes progress created nothing but stumbling blocks, he thought with annoyance. He didn’t bother sparing Maggi a glance. “Only if you think that I’m going to give you an answer.”

“So what are you, like, the Lone Ranger?”

It became obvious to him that subtlety was lost on her. She was probably the kind who had to be dislodged with a two-by-four or a crowbar. “The position of Tonto is not open.”

Since he didn’t look up, Maggi found herself staring at the top of his head. He had deep, straight black hair, the kind that tempted a woman to touch, to feather her fingers through it. She purposely slipped her hands under her as she sat.

“That’s okay, I don’t do sidekicks—I do partners.”

He finally looked up. “Aside from catching bullets with your bare teeth?” The expression on his face grew darker. “What the hell were you thinking at the bank?”

Another wisecrack was on the tip of her tongue, but then, she decided to tell him the truth. She’d acted because she was afraid.

“That he was going to fire on you if you drew your weapon the way you were planning to.” And then, because it was getting too serious, she added, “I didn’t want to lose a partner before I won you over with my sparkling personality.”

“How did you know what I was going to do?”

“I saw it in your eyes,” she said simply. “Sometimes, you can’t go in like the Lone Ranger. Sometimes you have to go in like Fay Wray.”

He stared at her. “Come again?”

“Fay Wray. The woman in King Kong.” There was still no recognition in his face. “The screamer.”

“You didn’t scream.”

“No, but I got properly hysterical. Enough to throw him off and get the drop on him.” Because it was obviously causing friction, she didn’t want to continue talking about the foiled bank robbery. “Anyway, it’s over. C’mon, Cavanaugh.” Playfully she tugged on his arm. “My stomach’s rumbling.”

He shrugged her off. “No one’s stopping you from going to lunch.”

“I hate to eat alone.” She would have pouted prettily if she’d thought it would work, but she knew it wouldn’t. Cavanaugh wasn’t the type to go out of his way to please a woman.

He glanced at her before going back to his report. “Go to a crowded restaurant.”

“I’d rather go to lunch with my partner.” She didn’t like being ignored and he was doing a royal job of it. This time, when she tugged on his arm, it was a hard jerk to get him to look at her again. “Hey, you owe me.”

Her words more than her action earned his attention. He raised his head, his eyes penetrating her inner layers. “I owe you?”

She could see how he could make someone squirm. She felt like squirming and she wasn’t the one who was supposed to be sitting on the hot seat.

“Sure, I told you I’d have your back and I did. Only it turned out to be your front, but—” she shrugged “—same difference. Now, are you going to come with me or do I push that chair of yours all the way to the elevator and make you come with me?”

He didn’t have time for stupidity. He didn’t know why he was bothering to answer her or even acknowledge her. “You wouldn’t dare.”

She grinned, her eyes gaining a mischievous glint he found oddly arousing. The blow to his gut came out of nowhere. He sent it back to the same address.

“Cavanaugh,” she informed him, “I was the kid who never walked away from a dare.”

He snorted. “You must have made your parents very proud.”

“No, just gray.” Maggi’s eyes shifted down to the chair he was sitting in, then back to his face. “Your chair’s got wheels and I know how to use them.”

Patrick had every intention of continuing to say no, but the woman had the tendencies of an annoying gnat. He knew damn well that she’d keep after him until he either really snapped at her or gave in. And he had to admit the truth: he was hungry.

“Okay.” Hitting the save button on the keyboard, he rose to his feet. “But you’ve got to stop sounding as if someone put your mouth in the fast forward mode.” If it ever stopped moving, it might prove to be a tempting target.

Her mouth was quick to curve. “Deal.”

Yeah, he thought, with the devil.

As he followed her out the door, he remembered reading a passage that said something about the devil having the ability to assume a very pleasing shape. He watched the rhythmic sway of her hips.

Looked like the devil had definitely outdone himself this time.

Maggi offered him his choice of places. He picked a pizzeria that had more seats outside than in. She ate three slices with the December wind chilling her food. He seemed more interested in observing the people on the street than in listening to anything she said.

It was a power play, she knew that. She had invaded his territory and he was suspicious of her. He had no idea how suspicious he should have been, she thought. Or maybe he knew. The worst thing in the world was to underestimate your opponent. And he was that. Her opponent, her assignment. Not her partner. This kept life interesting. And damn complicated.

“You’ve got a healthy appetite,” he commented when she reached for her fourth piece.

“He speaks. Wow.”

“Forget I said anything.”

“No, please, now that the floodgates have opened up, continue.” When he made no comment, she shook her head. “You keep this up and I’m going to be forced to practice my ventriloquist act on you.”

“Your what?”

“That’s when the sane person makes the wooden creation beside her talk. In other words, putting words into your mouth. Like ‘Thanks for the lunch, Maggi. Remind me to return the favor.”’

Patrick stared at her. She’d done a fair imitation of his voice, all without moving her lips.

“Want me to continue?” she offered.

“No, you made your point.” He rose, passing a ten in her direction. “You’re crazy.”

“I said lunch was on me.” She was on her feet, striding after him to the car. Catching up, she pushed the money back into his pocket. “Do we have to argue about this, too?”

He felt her hand as she withdrew it from his pants pocket. The tightening in his loins was purely instinctive. And annoying. As was she.

“Why not? You seem to like it.”

She pulled open the door on her side and got in. “I’d like a little agreement better.” Buckling her seat belt, she sighed. “Tell you what, I’ll let you yell at me some more if you want to.”

About to start the car, he paused to look at her. “I don’t yell.”

“Okay, growl. Lip-synch, something. Just talk. Say something, anything.”

“Why?” Starting the car, he pulled out of the parking area.

“Because I want to get to know you. Partners should know something about each other and I really don’t know anything about you, other than what I’ve heard and the fact that if these were Roman times, your scowl would put Zeus to shame.”

He came to a stop at a red light. “Jupiter.”

“What?”

The light turned green again and he stepped on the accelerator. “Zeus was a Greek god, Jupiter was the Roman equivalent.”

So he knew something beyond police procedure. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who knew mythology. “Impressive. I’ll still go with Zeus. You look more like a Greek god than a Roman god anyway.”

She was flirting with him, he thought, but when he shot her a look, McKenna’s expression was totally guileless. Was she putting him on? Didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to last long enough for that to become a problem.

“You were damn lucky today that things turned out the way they did and no one was hurt. Next time, you might not be so lucky.”

“I’ve always been pretty lucky.” His profile hardened even more. “Hey, don’t underestimate the part luck plays when it comes to our line of work.” She thought of the wound that had put her out of commission for a month a couple of years back. She’d kept that bit of information from her father. The man had enough on his mind. Thinking of it, she patted the region several inches below her shoulder. “Two inches to the left and this scar might have been the last one I ever got instead of just one of many.”

“Scars? You’re talking about scars?” What kind of a woman was she? As far as he knew, women didn’t exactly go out of their way to draw attention to something that was considered to be a blemish.

“Sure. Don’t you have any?”

“I have enough.”

“Where?” she asked innocently.

“Out of the light of day.”

For just the slightest second, she caught herself wondering just where on his very hard anatomy those scars were located. The next moment, she roused herself, hauling her mind back into focus. “Then you know what I’m talking about. About luck, I mean.”

Turning right, he shook his head. “Mary Margaret, I’m beginning to think I don’t have a damn clue what you’re talking about most of the time.”

She wished he wouldn’t use her name, but she knew if she said anything, he would only do it more often. “The subject is luck. The visual aids are scars.” Grabbing her jacket and blouse, she undid some buttons and pulled both articles back. “Like this one.”

Patrick glanced in her direction and almost forgot to look back at the road. He’d only caught a glimpse, but that provided more than enough fodder. He swerved to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him.

“Damn it, Mary Margaret, you always go exposing your breasts to people you hardly know?”

All she’d shown him was a little more skin than had already been evident. “It’s called cleavage and I’m not exposing myself, I’m showing you a scar that’s well above the bad-taste line. If I was into exposing, there are other scars I could show you.”

Patrick didn’t have to look at her to know she was grinning. He heard it in her voice. He was about to ask her just where on her anatomy they were situated, but he didn’t need to go there. The interior of the car was warm enough as it was.

Maggi moved the fabric back into place. “Anyway, my point is that luck has everything to do with it. And I’ve been luckier than most.”

She not only had hair like a Barbie doll, but the intelligence of one as well, Patrick thought darkly.

“Luck has a nasty habit of running out when you least expect it.”

“God, but you are Mr. Sunshine, aren’t you?”

“Sunshine was never my department.” This time, he took on the yellow light, making it through the intersection before it had a chance to turn red. The faster he got this annoying woman back to the precinct, the better. “That’s the realm of cockeyed optimists.”

“Would it help you to know that I can back up my cockeyed optimism?”

“How? A Ouija board?”

She glanced at her watch. They’d eaten lunch in less than twenty-five minutes. “We’ve got a little time left. Take me to the firing range.”

“We’ve still got a homicide to solve,” he reminded her.

“This’ll only take a few minutes and it might make you feel a whole lot better.”

What would make him feel a whole lot better, he thought, was finding out that she was just part of another one of his bad dreams.

Growling an oath under his breath, Patrick turned the car around.

Chapter 4

The fiftyish, barrel-chested man behind the desk at the firing range smiled warmly the moment he saw her walking in, transforming his round face from intimidating to surprisingly boyish in appearance. “Hey, back for more, Annie Oakley?”

Reaching behind his desk, the officer, Miles Baker, produced a box of ammunition before Maggi could make a formal request and slid it across the counter toward her.

Inclining her head, Maggi took the box from him. “Just here to see if my edge hasn’t dulled.”

Baker laughed. “Even dulled, you’d still be better than the rest of us.” His deep-set brown eyes shifted toward Patrick. Since the other detective made no request for shells, he left a second box where it was. “Hey, you ever seen this lady in action?”

Against his will, Patrick thought about the incident at the bank. At the time, he’d been sure she’d lost her nerve. To be honest, McKenna had pulled her weapon out pretty quickly.

He looked at Maggi. “Depends on what you mean by action.” He noted that she had the good grace to look just a shade uncomfortable.

Baker raised hamlike hands, warding off any stray thoughts. “Hey, I don’t go there.”

His denial was a bit too vehement. Patrick was willing to bet the man had had a sensual thought or two about the woman he was grinning at. Baker wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t. Besides, Patrick had seen the way the man had brightened the second he’d recognized her.

“I’m talking about with a gun in her hand.” Baker kissed the tips of his fingers before spreading them wide again as if to release the phantom kiss into the air. “Thing of beauty to watch.”

Patrick still wasn’t sure if the officer was referring to the way she shot or just McKenna in general. He supposed, if pinned down, he’d have to agree to the latter. But beauty had little to do with their line of work. If anything, it got in the way.

“Apparently that’s why I’m here.” Resigned, Patrick looked at what he hoped was his temporary partner expectantly. “Okay, you want to show me something, show me.”

Though his expression remained impassive, she knew Cavanaugh was challenging her. Ordinarily she didn’t go out of her way to prove anything about herself to anyone. She figured people who did were braggarts.

But this wasn’t a case of bragging or showing off. This was a case of proving herself to the man she’d supposedly been partnered with. This was showing him that she could be trusted to at least cover his back when the time called for it. And, in her experience, one trust usually led to another.

At least, that was what she was counting on.

“All right.” She turned on her heel to lead the way to the firing range. “Let’s go.”

“Hey, don’t forget these.” Leaning over the counter, Baker held up two sets of earphones. “Don’t want to go around the rest of the day deaf, do you?”

Patrick doubled back and took both pairs from the officer. He handed one set to Maggi.

“All right, Mary Margaret,” he said gamely, “impress me.”

No pressure there. Going to the rear, Maggi chose a slot, then donned the earphones before pressing a button that sent her paper target flying down the field away from her.

Patrick watched as the blackened target became smaller and smaller. The woman with the gun made no effort to halt its progress. Just how far was she sending it?

“You planning on stopping that thing anytime soon? Nobody expects you to shoot at a perp fleeing the scene in Nevada.”

The target still hadn’t gone as far as she could shoot, but Maggi pressed the button to oblige Patrick. The paper target looked little bigger than a suspended stray piece of confetti.

Closing one eye, she took careful aim and fired.

Curious, Patrick didn’t wait for her to discharge the weapon again. Holding his hand up to stop her from firing, he pressed the button to retrieve the target. When it came back, he saw that she’d hit it dead center. He felt he had to assume that it was just a freakish coincidence, but for argument’s sake, he gave her the benefit of the doubt.

“Not bad,” he conceded, releasing the target, “if you’ve got the time to line up your shot.”

Maggi said nothing. Instead, reaching over him, she pressed the button again, sending the target back even farther away than before. This time, Patrick made no comment about the target’s proximity but waited until she stopped it herself. And then, just when the target had reached the end of its run, she pressed for its return.

Once the line was activated again, Maggi began firing, sending off five rounds before the paper target came back to its place of origin.

Without a word, Patrick examined the target. She’d sent all five rounds into the same vicinity as the first. Two of the shots were almost on top of each other, the rest close enough to make the hole bigger.

Staring at it, Patrick had to admit to himself that she was impressive. But he’d never admit this to her.

“Not bad,” he said again, “if the perp is running in a straight line and not firing back.”

He was doing it to annoy her, Maggi thought. He wasn’t the first man she’d had to prove herself to, and losing her temper wasn’t part of the deal. She loaded a fresh clip into her weapon.

“I guess we’ll just have to wait for the right occasion,” she told him calmly.

“I guess. We done here?”

She squared her shoulders, feeling a slow boil begin. She could have gone on firing, but obviously it didn’t prove anything to this lug. “We’re done.”

“Good.” Patrick took off his earphones and walked back to the front desk.

He was a hard man, Maggi thought, but then she already knew that. And she also knew that she’d made her point. Taking a deep breath, she hurried back to the front desk and handed in the remainder of the box of ammunition to Baker, as well as the earphones.

Baker looked surprised that she had cut her time so short.

“Fun time’s over, Baker,” she explained. “We’ve got to get back to the station.”

The officer put the earphones away. “See you around, Annie Oakley,” he chuckled.

Patrick stood at the door, waiting for her. “He knows you.”

She walked out first. “We’ve talked.”

He had a feeling she talked to everyone and everything, living or not. “So, how long have you had this supervision?”

It was a backhanded compliment. Nevertheless, she accepted it gladly. She barely suppressed the smile that rose to her lips, but Maggi knew he’d think she was preening. She walked briskly beside him to the car.

“I don’t. What I had was a father who was on the job for twenty-two years. He put a gun in my hand when I was old enough to hold one and took me out to the firing range.” She still remembered the first time. The weapon had weighed a ton, but she’d been far too proud to say anything.

“Some people would frown on that.” He passed no judgments himself. People were free to live their lives any way they saw fit, as long as it didn’t impinge on others. Or him.

“Yeah, well, my father wasn’t exactly your average guy. He wanted me to have a healthy respect for guns and to know what one could or couldn’t do.”

Patrick heard the pride in her voice, and the affection. It was the same tone he heard in his cousins’ voices when they talked about their fathers. He wondered what that was like, having a father you were close to, you were proud of. It seemed like such a foreign concept to him.

“A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing,” he pointed out.

Her father had taught her how to take a gun apart first, piece by piece, and then clean it before reassembling it. She’d had to wait a long time before he allowed her to handle cartridges.

“Maybe, but enough of it sets you free,” she countered.

“Whatever.” Getting into the car, he waited until she buckled up. “So, how does your father feel about you being on the police force?”

“He worries.” Maggi slid the metal tongue into the groove, snapping the belt into place. “He’s a father first, a police officer second. But he’s proud of me.” She knew that without asking. It made her determined never to let him down. “He’s the reason I joined up.” She thought of the upbringing she’d had. Blue uniforms populated her everyday world. “I never knew anything else.”

Starting the car, he backed out of his space. “What’s your mother got to say about it?”

Maggi kept her face forward. “Nothing. She died when I was nine. He and his buddies raised me.”

Her profile had gotten a little rigid. He’d hit a nerve, he thought. Miss Sunshine had a cloud on her horizon. Interesting. “His buddies?”

Maggi nodded. Her profile was relaxed again and she was as animated as before. Just his luck. “The other police officers. I was their mascot.”

He laughed to himself, taking a hard right. “That would explain it.”

Maggi found she had to brace herself to keep from leaning toward the window. “Explain what?”

“The cocky attitude.”

“I don’t have a cocky attitude,” she informed him. “I just know what I’m capable of and, since you’re my partner, I wanted you to know, too,” she added quickly before he could accuse her of showing off.

“You shouldn’t have put yourself out.”

Turning her head, she caught him sparing her a glance. She couldn’t fathom what was in his eyes. “Why?”

“Because you’re not going to be my partner for that long.”

Guess again, Cavanaugh. “You know something I don’t?”

Arriving at the station, he pulled into his spot and stopped the car. Sure shot or not, someone who looked like her didn’t belong out in the field. It was like waving a red flag in front of every nut case in the area who wanted to get his rocks off. The sooner she wasn’t his responsibility, the better.

Patrick got out, slamming the door. “Yeah, I know how long people in your position last, on the average.” He took the front stairs to the entrance quickly, then paused at the door. She was right behind him.

Maggi grinned up at him as she walked through the door he held open for her. “Haven’t you noticed, Cavanaugh? I’m not average.”

Yeah, he thought as he followed her inside the building, that’s just the trouble, I’ve noticed.

“Definitely died before she went into the water,” the medical examiner, Dr. Stanley Ochoa, informed them with the slightly monotonous voice of a man who had been at his job too long.

Maggi couldn’t help looking at the young woman on the table, stripped of her dignity and her clothes, every secret exposed except her identity and why she’d died.

Poor baby, you look like a kid. Maggi raised her eyes to the M.E. “And we know this how?”

Instead of answering immediately, Ochoa turned to Patrick. A hint of amusement flickered beneath his drooping mustache. “Eager little thing, isn’t she?”

“And, oddly enough, not deaf or invisible,” Maggi cheerfully informed the M.E. as she placed herself between the two men, both of whom towered over her. She missed the glimmer of a smile on Patrick’s face. “Now, how do you know she didn’t drown?”

“Simple. No water in the lungs. She wasn’t breathing when she went over the side.”

“Because she was already dead. Makes sense.” Maggi looked at the gash on the woman’s forehead. It looked as if there’d been a line of blood at one point. If she’d bled, that meant she’d still been alive when she’d sustained the blow. “That bump on her head—did she get it hitting her forehead against the steering wheel when she went over the railing?”

Ochoa dismissed the guess. “Might have, but at first glance it looks deeper than something she could have sustained from that kind of impact.”

Patrick’s face was expressionless. “The air bag was deployed.”

Maggi bit the inside of her lip. She’d forgotten that detail and knew it made her look bad in his eyes. She regarded the victim again. “Could the air bag have suffocated her? She’s a small woman.”

Again the M.E. shook his head. “No, suffocation has different signs. This was a blunt force trauma to the head. Something heavy.”

Because Cavanaugh wasn’t saying anything, Maggi summarized what they’d just ascertained. “So someone killed her, then put her into the sports car and drove her into the river to make it look like an accident.”

Ochoa nodded. The overhead light shone brightly on his forehead, accentuating his receding hairline. “Looks like.”

Patrick had been regarding the victim in silence, as if he was conducting his own séance with her. He raised his eyes to look at the overweight medical examiner. “Anything else?”

“Not yet. I’m waiting on the blood work results and I haven’t conducted the autopsy. Check back with me tomorrow.”

Patrick was aware that Maggi wasn’t beside him as he reached the door. Turning around, he saw her still standing by the table. He thought she was studying the victim for enlightenment until he saw the expression on her face.

With an annoyed sigh, he retraced his steps. “We don’t mourn them, Mary Margaret, we just make sure whoever did this to them pays the price.”

He probably thought she was weak, Maggi thought. The woman’s death just seemed like such a sad waste. “Yeah, right.” Squaring her shoulders, she walked out of the room.

The moment they were in the corridor, Patrick’s cell phone rang. He had it out before it could ring a second time.

“Cavanaugh.”

Curiosity ricocheted through her as she walked beside him, waiting for Cavanaugh to say something to the voice talking in his ear. She wanted to figure out the nature of his call. Her real assignment was still foremost in her mind, but she wanted to find the person who’d wantonly ended the life of the young woman on the table in the morgue.

If she was hoping for clues, she was disappointed. All Cavanaugh said before disconnecting was “Thanks.”

Impatient, she tried not to sound it as she asked, “Well?”

He wasn’t accustomed to answering to anyone. The only partner he’d ever gotten along with had always given him his space, waiting for him to say something but never really pressing him. But then, this woman wasn’t Ramirez. What she was was a royal pain in the butt. “That was Goldsmith.”

Maggi knew Goldsmith was the officer he’d asked to track down the sports car license. She was surprised that Cavanaugh recalled the man’s name. He didn’t strike her as the type to put names to people; he seemed more likely to just label everyone “them” and “me.” “And?”

The more she pushed, the more he felt like resisting. It wasn’t a logical reaction, but this woman was pressing all the wrong buttons. Buttons that weren’t supposed to be being pressed.

“C’mon, Cavanaugh, stop making me play twenty questions. Who does the car belong to?”

“Congressman Jacob Wiley.”

She vaguely remembered the last election. Mind-numbing slogans had littered the airwaves, as well as most available and not-so-available spaces. But one of the few people she’d genuinely liked was Congressman Jake Wiley, “the people’s candidate,” according to the literature his people distributed.

“The family values man?” She glanced over her shoulder toward the morgue, reluctant to make the connection. Her father had taught her long ago not to jump to conclusions. There could be a great many explanations as to what a young, pretty girl was doing dead in a car that belonged to the congressman.

“One and the same,” Patrick confirmed. He was already heading out the door again.

Maggi had to lengthen her stride to catch up.

Congressman Jacob Wiley had a build reminiscent of the quarterback he’d once been. Blessed with an engaging smile that instantly put its recipient at ease, he flashed it now at the two people his secretary ushered in. He’d been informed that they were from the local police and there was a hint of confusion in the way he raised his eyebrows as he rose from his cluttered desk to greet them.

Wiley extended his hand first to Maggi, then to Patrick. “Always glad to meet my constituents so I can thank them in person for their vote.” His tone was affable.

Patrick’s eyes were flat as he took full measure of the man before him. He found the smile a little too quick, the manner a little too innocent. “To set the record straight, I didn’t vote for you.”

“But I did,” Maggi said to cut the potentially awkward moment. “You’ll have to forgive my partner, Congressman. He left his manners in his other squad car. I’m afraid this is official business. We need to ask you a question.”

“Ask away.” Lacing his hands together, Wiley sat on the edge of his desk as if he was about to enter into a conversation with lifelong friends. “I believe in fully cooperating with the police.”

She held up the digital photograph that had been printed less than half an hour ago. “Do you know this woman?”

Patrick watched the congressman’s eyes as he took the photograph in his hands. There was horror on his face as he looked at the dead woman. “Oh, God, no.” He turned his head away.

“Are you sure?” Patrick pressed, his voice low, steely. “She was found in your car.”

Light eyebrows drew together in mounting confusion. “My car? My car’s right outside.” He pointed toward the window and the parking lot beyond.

Patrick’s expression didn’t change. “Navy blue sports car. Registered to you.”

A light seemed to dawn in the older man’s face. “Oh, right.” As if to dissuade any rising suspicion, the man explained, “I have more than one car, detectives. I’ve got five kids, three of them drive. Of course, there’s my wife,” he tagged on. “But she prefers the Lincoln.” He paused, sorting out his thoughts. “And then, sometimes I let one of my people borrow a car when they’re running an errand for me.”

Patrick made a notation in his notepad, deliberately making the congressman wait. “So at any given time of the day or night, you don’t know where your cars are.”

Wide, muscular shoulders rose and fell beneath a handmade suit. “I’m afraid not.” Maggi began to take the photograph back, but Wiley stopped her at the last moment. “Wait, let me look at that again.” The air was still as he studied the face in the photograph more closely. After a beat, the impact of death seemed to fade into the background. And then recognition filtered into his eyes. “This is Joan, no, Joanne, that’s it. Joanne Styles.” Wiley looked first at Maggi, then Patrick. “She works for me.”

“Worked,” Patrick corrected, taking the photograph back.

Disbelief was beginning to etch itself into the congressman’s handsome face. “What happened to her?”

Patrick gave him just the minimal details. “She was found in the river this morning, in your sports car. It appears she went over the side of the road sometime last night.”

Veering to the more sympathetic audience, Wiley looked at Maggi. “She drowned?”

“Someone would like to have us believe that,” Patrick interjected, his eyes never leaving the man’s face.

Confusion returned. “Then she didn’t drown? She’s alive?”

“Oh, she’s dead all right,” Patrick confirmed emotionlessly. “But she didn’t die in the river. She died sometime before that.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we. For the moment.” Patrick pinned him with a look. “Where were you last night, Congressman, if you don’t mind my asking?”

The congressman’s friendly expression faded. “If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, I do mind your asking.”

“Just doing our job, Congressman,” Maggi interjected smoothly, her manner respectful. “Pulling together pieces of a puzzle. It might help us find Ms. Styles’s killer if we could reconstruct the evening.”

“Yes, of course. Sorry,” he apologized to Patrick. “This has me a little rattled. I never knew anyone who was a murder victim before. I was at a political fund-raiser at the Hyatt Hotel.” He looked at Patrick and added, “With several hundred other people.”

“Was Ms. Styles there?” Maggi prodded gently.

“I imagine so, although I really couldn’t say for certain. All of my staff was invited,” he explained.

“Looks like those several hundred people certainly didn’t help keep her alive, did they?” Patrick asked.

“If we could get a guest list, that would be very helpful. Could you tell us who was in charge of putting the fund-raiser together?” Maggi felt as if she was tap-dancing madly to exercise damage control.

“Of course. That would be Leticia Babcock.” Picking up a pen, Wiley wrote down the name of the organization the woman worked for. Finished, he handed the paper to Maggi. He glanced at Patrick, but his words were directed to the woman before him. “Anything I can do, you only have to ask.”

Patrick took the slip of paper from Maggi and tucked it into his pocket. His eyes never left the congressman’s face. “Count on it.”

Chapter 5

Hurrying to catch up to her partner, Maggi pulled the collar of her jacket up. It began to mist. The weather lately had been anything but ideal.

“You get more flies with honey than with vinegar, Cavanaugh.”

Patrick reached his car and unlocked the driver’s side. He looked at her over the roof. “I’m not interested in getting flies, Mary Margaret, I’m interested in getting a killer.”

She blew out a breath as she got in on her side. “I wish you’d stop calling me that.”

Patrick closed the door and flipped on the headlights. The sun had decided to hide behind dark clouds. They were in for a storm. “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

Her father had named her after his two sisters. She wished he’d been born an only child. “Yes it is. That doesn’t mean I like hearing it—” Maggi turned in her seat to glare at him as she delivered the last word “—Pat.”

The nickname she tossed at him was fraught with bad memories. Only his father had ever called him that, when the old man was especially drunk and reveling in the whole myth of “Pat and Mike,” something Patrick gathered had come by way of a collection of Irish stories about two best friends. According to Uncle Andrew, a number of Irish-flavored jokes began that way, as well. In any case, he and his father didn’t remotely fit the description of two friends, and it was only when he was in a drunken haze that his father could pretend that he’d created a home life for his family. In reality, home life was just barely short of a minefield, ready to go off at the slightest misstep.

Maggi sighed, trying to regain some ground. “All I’m saying is that the congressman was a great deal more cooperative when you weren’t glaring at him.”

He started up the car and got back on the road. “That’s what you’re here for, right? To win him over with your sunny disposition.”

“Attila the Hun’s disposition could be called sunny compared to yours.”

To her surprise, she heard Patrick laugh softly to himself. “Looks like our first day isn’t going very well, is it?”

She trod warily, afraid of being set up. “Could be better,” she allowed. Maggi caught his grin out of the side of her eye.

“It’ll get worse.”

“If you’re trying to get me to bail out, you’re wasting your time.”

“And why is that? Why are you so determined to work with me?” he wanted to know.

“You mean other than your sparkling personality, charm and wit?” She saw his expression darken another shade. The man could have posed for some kind of gothic novel, the kind given to sensuality. He’d be damn good-looking if he wasn’t into scaring people off. Upbraiding herself, she curtailed her own impulse toward sarcasm. “I was assigned to you, Cavanaugh, and I don’t back away from my assignments, no matter how much of a pain in the butt they might be.”

Maggi watched his eyes in the rearview mirror. Instead of becoming incensed, he looked as if he was considering her words. “Fair enough.”

She knew she should let it go, but she couldn’t. A door had opened, and she didn’t know when it could be opened again. She needed to move as much as she could through it.

“No, what’s fair is if you give me a chance here,” she told him tersely. “I’ve shown you that I don’t fall apart in tense situations and that I’m a dead shot and all in under eight hours. If you were anyone else, that would definitely tip the scales way in my favor.”

The woman could get impassioned when she wanted to. That was a minus. He’d always found that emotion got in the way of things. “I’m not anyone else.”

She sank into her seat. “So I’ve been told.”

Something in her tone worked its way under his skin, made half thoughts begin to form. It took a little effort on his part to ignore them. He had no idea why. “Make the best of it, Mary Margaret. What you see is what you get.”

Not hardly. If that were the case, then there would be no need for her to go undercover to investigate the allegations Halliday had received from an anonymous source. The allegations that made Cavanaugh out to be a dirty cop on the take.

Even if she wasn’t on the job, just one look would have told her that what you saw was definitely not what you got when it came to Patrick Cavanaugh.

Their next stop was the offices of Babcock and Anderson, which organized and handled the arrangements for fund-raisers of all types. The professional firm was run by Leticia Babcock, president and sole owner. There was no Anderson.

“I thought it sounded more aesthetically pleasing to have two names on the card,” Leticia Babcock, a tall, slim woman in her mid-thirties informed them when they asked after the whereabouts of her partner. “Makes it sound as if the company has been around for ages.” Because they’d requested to see the guest list, she scrolled through her records as she spoke to them. “Ah, here it is.” She beamed. Stopping, she tapped the screen with a curved, flame-red nail. “We raised more than was originally hoped for. The gala was an amazingly rousing success. The congressman was very pleased.”

Maggi could all but see the dollar signs in the other woman’s eyes. “Congressman Wiley?”

“Yes.” The dark-haired woman sat back in her chair, sizing up her visitors. “He was the one who came to me to organize it. Very generous man. Not bad-looking, either.” Momentarily ignoring the tall, somber man standing beside her, she winked broadly at Maggi. “Too bad he’s married.” With a careful movement orchestrated to avoid chipping a nail, Leticia hit the Print key. The printer to the left of the highly polished teak desk came to life and began printing the list.

“That doesn’t stop some men,” Patrick indicated.

Leticia laughed. The sound carried no mirth. “Didn’t stop my third husband, that was for sure. But I hear the congressman’s a straight arrow.” She sighed again and shook her head, as if lamenting the missed opportunity. She held out the pages to them. “Believe me, I left him enough of an opening.”

Patrick glanced at down at the list the woman had provided for them. The names went on for several pages. And everyone was going to have to be checked out. He debated giving that assignment to McKenna, let her run solo with it.

“Five hundred guests,” Maggi told him. “Don’t bother counting them.”

She was quick with numbers, he thought. Handy trait to have around. He looked at Leticia as he tapped the list. “He said his staff was there.”

A small, slightly superior smile twisted her lips. “Yes, they were.”

He watched the woman’s eyes, looking for some tell-tale flicker. “Is that normal, to invite your reelection staff?”

“Not really, but like I said, the congressman’s a very generous man.” She ran down the benefits of attending. “There was a great deal of good food to eat. Some of those staff members probably ate better than they ever have in their lives. Not to mention networking.”

“Networking?” Maggi asked before Patrick had a chance to.

“Yes, there are a lot of important, influential people attending these things. Everyone likes to be seen ‘caring’ about a popular cause. Doesn’t hurt to be around them. You never know where your next big break is coming from.” She looked from Maggi to Patrick, her manner terminating the session. “If there’s anything else I can do for you, let me know.”

He wasn’t ready to leave just yet. Patrick took out the photograph of the dead woman and held it up to the organizer’s face. “Did you see this woman at the party last night?”

Leticia shivered, making no move to take the photograph in her own hand.

“Not that I remember.”

The very air had climbed up inside their lungs as they waited for her to go on.

“Is she…dead?”

“Very,” he replied grimly, tucking the photograph away again.

“Thanks for your help,” Maggi told the woman as they walked out. Patrick made an inaudible sound that could have passed for “Goodbye.”

Outside the window, Maggi could see that the mist was getting heavier. She hoped it would hold off until she got home for the night.

She glanced at the papers he was holding. “Looks a little daunting.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

Part of her wanted to ask if Patrick was on to something, but she knew he was just pulling her chain or maybe giving her some kind of encoded message. She wanted no part of either. As he pressed for the elevator, she looked at the list over his shoulder. “So, where do you want to start?”

He folded the list in half twice before lodging it beside the photograph. He never even looked at her. “At her apartment.”

When she wasn’t busy working or partying, Joanne Styles had spent her time in a tiny, cluttered studio apartment about two-thirds the size of the one Maggi had lived in when she was in San Francisco.

Standing in it now made Maggi entertain a very odd sense of déjà vu coupled with the thought “there but for the grace of God…”

Except that she would have never let her guard down enough to have someone do to her what had been done to Joanne.

Maggi supposed that was her inbred leeriness. It came from being raised in an atmosphere of law enforcement agents. Looking back, she knew that it was her leeriness that had gotten in her way with Tyler, urging her on to keep a part of herself in reserve, not allowing him to see all of her.

Lucky thing, too, considering the way that had turned out, she mused.

Patrick noticed the expression on his partner’s face as she stood looking around. She seemed a million miles away. He ignored her for a moment, then heard himself asking, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Maggi took a moment to rouse herself before turning to squarely face him. “Just trying to put myself in her shoes, that’s all.”

He supposed there was nothing wrong in getting a female’s perspective on all this. “Can’t hurt.”

She raised her eyes to his, humor playing along her lips. “Mellowing?”

She wore some kind of gloss, he realized, something that caught the overhead light and made her lips shimmer.

He was noticing the wrong things, Patrick told himself.

Not bothering to answer her, he nodded toward the laptop that stood open on the small, pressboard desk. There was every indication within the room that Joanne would have been returning to her apartment.

“She had a computer. Maybe there’s some interesting e-mail that might tell us something. We can take it up to the lab,” he said.

Maggi closed the lid and unplugged the computer. She spotted a carrying case haphazardly thrown under the desk and tucked the laptop into it. “Why the lab?”

“To read it.” When she looked at him quizzically, he added, “There’s probably a password they’ll need to get by.”

“I can get you through that,” she said.

Patrick stopped rifling through the victim’s closet. “You’re a hacker?”

She shrugged carelessly. “I’ve been known to get into some systems.”

He hadn’t thought to catch McKenna in a contradiction so soon. “I thought you believed in the straight and narrow.”

“I do.” With the laptop safely put away, she began to go through the shallow center drawer. “I was also younger once.”

Squatting, he looked from the victim’s collection of shoes. Twelve pair. Shoes were obviously a weakness. Nothing unusual about that. “Guess not everyone starts out as a plaster saint.”

“Guess not.”

Maggi closed the center drawer. The desk wobbled dangerously and continued to do so with every move she made as she went through the other two drawers. It was the kind of desk that started out as pieces packed into a cardboard box along with simplistic photographs that were meant to be directions. It couldn’t have been any cheaper if it had been constructed out of orange crates. “Looks like being a congressman’s staff assistant doesn’t pay all that much,” she commented.

“Maybe she was in it for the fringe benefits.”

Having found an album tucked into the rear corner of the closet, Patrick flipped through the plastic-covered pages until he found something worth looking at. He held up a page with a photograph mounted in the center. It displayed several young people, all smiling broadly and obviously celebrating. In the midst was the congressman. He had his arm draped around two staff members, one a male, the other was Joanne. A banner in the background proclaimed Wiley Is Your Congressman.

Maggi moved forward to look at it. Joanne seemed so happy. If this was the last election, that meant it was taken only a few weeks ago. “And maybe he’s just a nice boss.”

“Maybe.”

From his tone, she knew he didn’t believe it.

By the time they returned to the station, they had one more piece of information beyond the address book that Maggi had found in Joanne’s desk and her laptop. Ochoa had called from the coroner’s office to tell them that their victim had also been seven weeks pregnant.

Maggi watched as the rain teased the dormant wind-shield wipers of his car. They had just pulled into the precinct parking lot when he had gotten the call.

A baby. The killer had gotten two for the price of one. Her own charade in the bank came back to her. You’ll be killing two if you kill me.

She sighed. “Puts a whole new spin on this, doesn’t it?” she commented as Patrick put away his cell phone.

He opened the door. A whoosh of cold air and the smell of rain came in with them. “That it does, Mary Margaret, that it does.”

She started to tell him again how much she hated to be called that, but then let it go. Some things in life remained the same. The more she voiced her dislike, the more he’d use the names. She was better off just putting up with it. With any luck, she’d find what she needed and terminate this charade Internal Affairs had assigned her before she gave in to the urge to strangle Cavanaugh.

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