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  She complied.

  “Good.” Then he stood behind her and placed a hand over hers on the Glock.

  The muscles in her arm turned to stone again. Not an encouraging sign.

  “Breathe.”

  A puff of air hit his forearm.

  “Hold it up, using the sight and get a relaxed, but steady finger near the trigger. Don’t put your finger on it, until you’re ready to shoot. Now.” He grabbed her other hand and placed it on top of the one holding the piece steady. “We place this here, giving you added stability.”

  She didn’t say anything. Barely moved.

  “You’re holding your breath again.”

  “I’m not.” Cassidy broke away from him as if she couldn’t stand his touch.

  “It’s just a gun, not a medieval torture device.”

  “Guns kill people.” Those toned arms wrapped around her middle.

  “People kill people.” He managed to keep his voice even. “Some who know how to use it properly and some who don’t.”

  She huffed. “Just teach me how to shoot the darn thing.”

  “No. Not like this.”

  “Fine.” She reached for the gun, but he pulled it out of reach and tucked it in his holster.

  Whatever he’d done, it was bad enough that she wouldn’t look him in the eyes. “Why are you acting so weird?”

  “Why are you being such a pain?”

  “Me?” He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and plucked the last one out. A little nicotine should fix the anger brewing in his gut. “I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours, but I came when you called.” He felt in his pockets for his lighter and came up empty. “In my book, that’s accommodating.”

  “Next time, I’ll call somebody else.” She walked up to him, yanked the tobacco from his mouth, dropped it and squished it into the ground with her sandaled foot. “That’s going to kill you one day.”

  At the sight of the smashed cigarette, the contents scattered on the sidewalk, his left eye started twitching. “If it’s not that, it’ll be you.”

  “Excuse me?” Fire snapped at him from those usually calm, blue eyes.

  If he had his lighter and his cigarette, none of this would be happening. “Since you threw it on the ground, I guess you’ll be the death of me.”

  She flew at him. Small fists pounded against his chest. “Take. That. Back.”

  “No.” Each hit stirred up more thoughts of smashed tobacco and unreleased tension. He grabbed her wrists and held them together with one hand, ceasing her attack.

  She struggled against his loose hold. “Let go.”

  “So you can hit me again? Don’t think so.”

  Bright, red color rode high on her cheekbones. “You think because you’re Mr. Big-Shot-Detective, you can control whether I learn to shoot a firearm?”

  He released her. “When did I say that?”

  “You didn’t have to. I know you. I know how you think.”

  Okay, then. “For the record, I can reserve the right to teach you, if I think it’s not safe.”

  “Fine. I’ll find someone who doesn’t think they have to control me.”

  Anger boiled in his gut. How could she not see to the heart of his actions? “Excuse me for teaching you gun safety, so you don’t blow a hole in someone by accident.”

  As if she realized her close proximity and the fact that she was no longer prisoner, she backed up. A frustrated growl came from her throat. “I’m perfectly capable.”

  “Not holding a gun all nilly-willy and shooting before you’re even in position. That’s not capable, that’s idiocy. That’s how people get injured. That’s how people die.”

  Her shoulders straightened and her chin reached for the sky. “I was doing fine.”

  “You don’t even like guns. Even if I didn’t know you, that much would be obvious. So, why bother?”

  The muscles of her jaw clenched together. Her eyes turned into tiny slits. “Guns aren’t the problem. You are.”

  Wow. The ability to breathe left him, for a minute, before hurt seeped through his tissues. “Okay, then. Glad we cleared that up.” He left her standing in her yard and stomped over her freshly mowed grass, through the front gate and to his car.

  As he hopped inside and slammed the door, he heard the harsh creaking from the front door of the house as Cassidy shut it with gusto. He went to turn the keys in the ignition only to discover they weren’t there. After patting his pockets, he realized, he’d left them on the kitchen counter inside. In his mind, he could see them clearly, now, sitting alongside his blue lighter.

  Nope. There they would stay. He wouldn’t want to be more of a problem. Exiting the car, he reached under it for the magnetized lockbox he kept hidden between the frame and body. His hand met dry metal. Stooping to eye level with the underside of the vehicle, a string of curses ran through his mind. The thing was gone. Gone, because he’d locked himself out of his house last week and hadn’t replaced it.

  The urge to land a kick to the wheel in front of him, hit him hard.

  Instead, he rooted around in his glove compartment in hopes that he’d find a pack of smokes and a book of matches. He didn’t let himself think about the woman in the house.

  Twenty minutes later, the contents from both his glove box and center console lay in disarrayed piles on the floor. Both his driver-side and passenger seats rested as close to the dashboard as they could get. The front doors stood ajar. He had two dollars and fifty-three cents in his pocket, in change, a bleeding index finger and no cigarettes.

  He put the offended digit in his mouth, sat on the gravel and leaned against the hot metal of his vehicle. Sweat dampened his hair, face and shirt. The irony of the afternoon hit him, as his eyes drifted shut. Yeah, he’d done something to tick Cassidy off. Darned, if he knew what.

  Minutes or hours later, he wasn’t sure which, a shadow fell across his face and a jingle brought his eyes upward. Cassidy stood over him, his keys in her grasp.

  He scrubbed a hand over his face, hoping to chase away the cobwebs.

  “Scoot over.” She didn’t wait for him to fully comply before she sat next to him, forcing him to move a few inches.

  “Car’s hot,” he said.

  She shrugged, leaned back and then jumped forward with a hand to her bare shoulder. “For the love of carrot sticks!”

  He held back a snicker. “Told you.”

  Seconds ticked by with silence. Then she handed him the keys. “Guess you might need these.”

  “Yeah.” Their fingers touched, a slight tingle transferring between them.

  “Look, I may have overreacted a little. Maybe we both did.”

  He didn’t say anything. Didn’t want to spoil the moment and start another argument.

  “What I said earlier… You’re not the problem. You’re right. I’m not comfortable around guns.” Her eyes met his then, a small pleading gleam in them. “I need your help.”

  Why? Why now? And why couldn’t she trust him enough to tell him everything? “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Her face fell. “Oh.”

  “Not right this minute. Are you hungry?”

  “Maybe.” She hugged her legs to her body. The action made her seem like a lost kid instead of a grown woman with a teenaged son.

  “I could use lunch. Help me move all my garbage out of the way and I’ll buy.”

  A small smile lit her face. “Okay.”

  As apologies went, it didn’t qualify one-hundred percent, but he didn’t point that out. Instead, after lunch, he taught her the basics of gun safety and they settled on safer subjects. By the end of the day, things seemed calmer between them and he chalked up their earlier spat to nothing more than a hot day, nicotine withdrawal and lack of sleep.

  He ignored that voice in the back of his head that disagreed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Amanda had no leads to go on, no prints, no witnesses and no body.

  What she did have, was an empty coffin, six
feet of upturned dirt and the state breathing down her neck. And the mother of all headaches beating at her temples.

  She massaged her left shoulder with the opposite hand, hoping to ease the pinching tension from her muscles as she sat on the concrete steps in front of the lab. The morning sun rose over the surrounding buildings creating a blinding spot of light directly in front of her. She hadn’t thought to grab her sunglasses before getting out of her car earlier.

  She hadn’t expected to spend so much time inside the lab pressing the techs for more answers than they could give her. She should go home, shower, and catch Eric before he left for work, then go over and see McKenna.

  Maybe get some sleep somewhere in between. First, she needed to attend a funeral. To pay her respects to someone she hadn’t always liked. But that same woman had been in that dumpster with McKenna. And after hearing her stoic recounting of the time, it became clear that whatever animosity the two had, had been erased in those hours. That was reason enough for Amanda to do the same.

  “How’s Lawyer Boy these days?” A voice asked from somewhere in front of her. The light still too bright to see, she shielded her eyes with a hand above her brow.

  Robinson galloped up the steps, two at a time and sat next to her, the sun bouncing off his dark shades. He wore a dark black suit, freshly pressed. As he sat, a hint of laundry soap and spicy aftershave hit her nostrils. Great. Just what she needed. Confrontation.

  “Long night?”

  If she had any fight left in her, she would have told him to take his fake good cheer elsewhere. “Sorry about Kara.”

  Shock registered on his face for half a second. “No sarcasm. You must be getting soft.”

  “Or I was trying to be real for a minute and show a little compassion.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay.”

  So many witty comebacks entered her brain. “I’m too tired for this.” She stood.

  “Wait.” He caught her arm. “Sit back down.”

  She should have left, but something compelled her to stay. Maybe it was the sweat dampening his forehead and upper lip or that he chewed on the corner of the lower one. Uncertainty wasn’t something she ever got to see from him. She sat.

  Silence reigned. “Being a jerk is second nature. I don’t try to be, I just am.”

  Wow. That hadn’t been what she’d expected. How many layers hid behind Robinson’s big-fat-jerk routine?

  He rubbed the palms of his hands on his suit pants. “I’m sorry about Kara, too. No one deserves to die like that.”

  An exhale of breath caught her by surprise. “Ever wonder why we do what we do, when it seems like a losing battle?”

  “All the time.” An audible sigh escaped his lips. “It’s sometimes a thankless job. And we don’t get to save everybody or find all the right evidence.”

  “No. We don’t.”

  “But we do the best we can and give one-hundred and ten percent every day. I know you do that.”

  She ignored the compliment, and shifted on the cement. Maybe she was more tired than she realized. “I don’t have anything to go on, but an empty coffin. The techs were able to find trace amounts of Ms. Bening’s DNA, but other than a few chips and scrapes on the coffin, I’ve got nothing.”

  “Do we have a window of time when we know this thing was dug up?”

  “What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” She tried for the lighter tone on which their working relationship was built.

  He gave a half smile. “I knew that would get you.”

  “That an apology for acting like a grade-A jerk?”

  “Hazards of the job. Will it do?”

  She shook her head. “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not really.”

  “Perfect. I wouldn’t want special treatment.”

  He chuckled. “So what’s the time frame?”

  “Couple of weeks. Three, max. Birmingham was out of state until he came back from Vegas.”

  “Maybe he hired someone to do the job?”

  “Give me a motive and I’ll run with it, but until then, I’ve got nothing.”

  Robinson rubbed his temples. “Wow. I was hoping for better news.”

  “Me, too.”

  They sat in silence a moment, Robinson’s black dress shoe tapping a steady rhythm on the pavement. Something thick charged the air around them, causing a normal silence to take an eternity. Amanda spent plenty of time around men. As a detective, sometimes the only other women she encountered were witnesses, those on the CSU, at the lab or first responders on patrol.

  It didn’t bother her as it did some of the female beat cops with which she occasionally mingled. She’d proved a long time ago, if only to herself, that she deserved the level of responsibility she shouldered.

  “There something on your mind, Robinson?”

  For a minute, she though he might give her the truth that always hid behind every sentence. He opened and closed his mouth. “Did you mean it when you told me not to call you?”

  Something strange flopped around like a fish in her stomach. “I try not to say anything I don’t mean.”

  He nodded. A cocky smile lit his face. “Good thing I didn’t call then.”

  It shouldn’t have matter that things could be different. It shouldn’t have hurt that he didn’t see her as his equal. Because, this was a job. This wasn’t playtime on the playground. And she didn’t need the buddy system as she filed in line for lunch. She could account for herself.

  “You need a favor.”

  “I need a second pair of eyes at Kara’s funeral. You were going to go anyway, weren’t you?”

  “You don’t honestly think Ciamitaro is dumb enough to show up?”

  “One can hope. I need you on the lookout for anyone suspicious or out of place. We still haven’t ascertained how Moore got out of the dumpster.”

  He knew her weaknesses now and had no problem exploiting them. “Do you have anything for me to go on?”

  “The prints on the flagstone we found at the scene don’t match any we’ve recovered so far. We find the guy who got her out, we find Ciamitaro. Then we can charge him with federal kidnapping, Mrs. Gaidies’ murder and a laundry list of other felonies.”

  “The news has been blissfully silent on insider details.” The words came out like a barb, in line with their usual sparring routine. Amanda ground her teeth together. Why hadn’t she let this conversation die? Stupid.

  Robinson’s intake of breath was minimal, but noted.

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  He waved it off. “One of Ciamitaro’s swords had Mrs. Gaidies DNA on it as well as a few microscopic bone remnants.”

  “He had an alibi for that time frame.” She didn’t add what she knew he had to be thinking. Kara had been his alibi and she’d also died by his sword.

  “We found a half vial of Ketamine at his house and a box of syringes. The probability that he drugged Kara the night of Mrs. Gaidies death is high. She wouldn’t have had any idea he’d been gone.” All the details came out of his mouth in stoic sentences, as if someone not close to the victim said them.

  It explained everything. His harsh attitude last week. The cutting questions. How far back had Kara’s disloyalty to Robinson gone? She shook her head. None of your business. “That’s a dangerous game to play. A little too much and his alibi becomes a victim.”

  “He knew what he was doing.”

  “McKenna thinks Kara stumbled into some knowledge. Let’s face it, she had a knack for gleaning information, in some unconventional manners.”

  He nodded. “We need to figure out what.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Since the morning they woke up together in Las Vegas, they’d been stuck on a very real rollercoaster ride with a three-hundred foot, ninety degree drop.

  This was another bump in the gut-wrenching dissent. There would be more.

  “You don’t have to go.” Jordan watched McKenna struggle with some emotion she thought nobody noticed. She’d showered and put on mak
e-up, which did little to hide the yellowish-purple bruises and red-rimmed eyes.

  Helplessness washed over him. If she attended Kara’s funeral, he wouldn’t be able to keep the stares from her face. They’d been hiding out for almost a week. As much as he wanted to lock her away from the world, doing so wouldn’t end well.

  “Yes, I do.” She grabbed a banana and a glass of water, then sat at the table beside him. Matthew lowered the newspaper he’d been reading across the table. He sipped from what had to be his tenth cup of coffee as if this were any normal day.

  On that account, he agreed with McKenna.

  Far from normalcy, Jordan stood with his face pressed up against the dirty glass. As if he were a kid without a home, looking in on a happy family on Christmas.

  “Everyone will understand,” Jordan said.

  “I’m going.” As if it would back up her statement, she peeled and bit into her fruit.

  It should give him some hope, independence being her normal motto. Instead, he sat with two paths in front of him. One would keep her safe. The other might make her feel better. He didn’t have any idea which path led where and the time had come to make a decision.

  Protecting her had been at the forefront of his mind for so long it had become second nature. Now, when it mattered more than ever, he couldn’t seem to find the cocky confidence that guided his decisions to that end.

  No matter how hard he tried, she might not ever be completely safe. How was he supposed to be okay with that?

  “You’re going. Why not let you’re pesky best friend tag along?”

  “It’s not like that.” He could feel his nostrils flaring. Even with her bruises and the gash over brow, she was so beautiful it hurt. Keeping his hands off her for the last few days had added to his current torture. The decision seemed sound after their trip to the crime scene. Healing took time. He didn’t plan to rush it.

  “It hasn’t been like that since you turned thirteen.”

  A pink hue appeared on her cheeks. “Seriously? I had braces, never wore my hair in anything other than a ponytail and used to drag you into messes that usually ended with one of us in trouble.”