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  Maybe she’d been fighting everything too hard, including the circumstances that had recently arisen. Up until now, she’d felt that if she accepted the fact that she was part of such a large law enforcement family, she was somehow being disloyal to the people she’d always believed were her extended family.

  Now’s not the time for philosophical ruminations, she upbraided herself. There was a case to solve and apparently more than one person to bring to justice.

  Or so it seemed.

  Damn, there was nothing simple about this so-called simple case.

  Their first step had to be to find out who this teenager was and how he was mixed up in all this.

  “Okay, how do we find this kid?” she asked Abilene, thinking out loud. Before her partner could say anything, she turned to the manager and asked the man a very obvious question. “Mr. Hanna, have you ever seen this teenager before?”

  The bank manager shook his head adamantly. “No. I don’t recognize him.”

  “Are you sure?” Matt pressed.

  The man remained firm. “Positive.”

  Kendra sighed. “Can’t ask for more than that.”

  * * *

  Playing a long shot, Kendra and Matt went back to Ryan Burnett’s apartment building and questioned all his neighbors. When they showed the photo of the teenager lifted from the surveillance tape, no one could recall ever having seen him around.

  “I suppose we could get a court order to confiscate the ATM and bring it to the lab to check the outside for fingerprints,” Kendra said halfheartedly an hour later as they faced each other across their desks in the squad room.

  “Half the city’s fingerprints might be on that keypad,” Matt pointed out.

  “Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “So near and yet so far.”

  “Speaking of near, how about grabbing a bite to eat and heading back to my place?” he suggested.

  They were alone in the squad room. Wong had gone home half an hour ago and he’d been the last one there with them. There was no longer a reason to keep her voice low the way there had been earlier—Wong had ears like a bat and he also loved gossip.

  “Look, just because I spent one night with you doesn’t mean that I’m going to hop into bed with you every time you smile,” she informed Matt.

  “I know that,” he told her solemnly, then asked, “So, how does pizza sound?”

  She hadn’t been able to resist him when she’d been operating on all four cylinders. In her present condition, she knew damn well that she didn’t stand a chance and was only going through the motions of holding him at arm’s length for form’s sake. She didn’t want to appear supereasy.

  The truth was that spending another night with him sounded incredibly appealing.

  “Perfect,” she told him with a tired sigh. Switching off her computer, she rose to her feet. “As long as you promise no anchovies.”

  He pretended to sigh as he followed suit. “You drive a hard bargain.”

  Kendra laughed shortly as she crossed the empty squad room. “Hey, I’m a Cavanaugh. We’re supposed to be born tough.”

  “So the legend goes,” he agreed, letting her walk out first. “Okay, no anchovies.”

  Once she crossed the threshold into the hallway, he hit the light switch. The squad room fell into darkness, except for a single light left on in the lieutenant’s office. Lately, everyone had been reminded to do their part to conserve energy.

  He intended to follow the letter of the request—at least at work. In his apartment, though, it was a whole different story—and he couldn’t wait to get there to watch it unfold.

  Chapter 14

  Several days went by, shrouded in frustration. Their investigation had ground to a complete standstill. There were no more sightings of the teenager using Ryan Burnett’s ATM card and no one had seen Ryan himself, not anyone in his building nor at his workplace. They had left instructions at both places to be called immediately if the man turned up.

  The phone, in that respect, remained exasperatingly silent.

  In the interim, Matt ran off copies of the teenager’s photo that they had lifted from the initial bank surveillance tape and then had them distributed to all the other bank branches in the county as well as the surrounding counties. They were hoping that greed could prompt the teen to tap into a second ATM.

  After a week had gone by, there still hadn’t been any new hits.

  They were swiftly running out of innovative ways to approach the problem.

  “Damn!”

  The softly muttered curse had Kendra looking up from the papers on her desk and at her partner. Despite everything, her expression instantly softened. Their case might not be going anywhere, but it seemed as if they were.

  Not that she had the slightest idea where it was that they were headed, but for now, the holding pattern they were currently engaged in had her waking up with a smile each morning despite the frustration she was professionally encountering.

  When it came time to leave the precinct for the day, it made no difference if they walked out together or separately and at different times—they still wound up together that evening.

  In each other’s arms.

  And neither one of them minded.

  Kendra refused to explore what was happening, refused to think beyond the moment because she knew from experience that the next moment could bring with it devastation and events that could very well blow her life apart. So she told herself she wasn’t invested, that she was simply enjoying the moment and the very steamy, teeth-jarring fact that the good-looking man seated across from her in the squad room was one incredible lover.

  And that, she told herself over and over again, was enough for her.

  If at times she wondered how he felt about what was happening between them, she forced herself to block the questions and think of something else. Anything else. In this particular situation, ignorance was bliss—because knowing, most likely, would bring with it some sort of excruciating pain and if she could avoid it, even by simply sticking her head in the sand, she was going to do it.

  Besides, she reminded herself, there was no basis to believe that anything of a permanent nature would ever be in the offing. The man had a history of loving ’em and leaving ’em. Fruit flies had longer relationships with one another than Matt Abilene had with the women who passed through his life, and she was vaguely aware that she was already pushing the time limit.

  But if she pretended oblivion and said nothing, maybe he wouldn’t notice and this moment they were sharing would continue a little while longer.

  It was the only plan she had.

  “Another dead end?” she asked, nodding at the phone.

  Coming to, he replayed her question in his head and had no point of reference. “What?”

  “You just said ‘Damn,’ so I’m asking you if that’s another dead end. Our case,” she prompted when he looked at her quizzically. “You remember, dead body in bachelor’s apartment. ATM hits by a third party.” She cocked her head, looking up at the face that had already turned up several unnerving times in her dreams. “Any of this ringing a bell for you?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” For now, he waved away her question and her reference. This wasn’t about their case, but something far more personal. Something that caused him worry and concern on a regular basis. Why couldn’t he have a normal mother who went off on tour buses with her friends and gambled twice a year in Vegas? “She’s still not answering,” he said in frustration.

  It was Kendra’s turn to be confused. “She?” She was only focused on one she right now. “The dead woman?”

  “No,” Matt bit off, exasperated not so much with her as with who he was trying to reach—and couldn’t. “My mother.” In an effort to make more sense, he backtracked and said, “I keep leaving messages on her phone and she’s not picking up or returning my calls.”

  That didn’t sound all that unusual. After all, he and his mother had separate lives to live. “Maybe she went away for a while.
”

  He shook his head. “Not without telling me.”

  She laughed softly, wondering if he knew what that sounded like. “You realize that you’re making noises like a parent.”

  He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t the responsible one, the one who watched out for his mother instead of the other way around.

  “With her I always have been.” He dragged his hand through his wayward dark hair and looked accusingly at the telephone handset again. “Other than one message on my voice mail in which she said all of two words, I haven’t heard from her all week.”

  Kendra humored him and asked for more details. “And those two words were?”

  “Thank you. She said, ‘thank you.’ ” He said the words as if they held some hidden insult.

  Kendra smiled and nodded knowingly. “Ah.”

  She had his attention immediately. “What do you mean, ‘ah’? Was that some form of female-speak that I’m not getting?” he asked.

  This was a side of the man she found amusing. And strangely endearing, although there was no way she would ever say that to him.

  “In a way,” she admitted, and then she decided to clue him in, at least in the way she interpreted it. “I think your mother was thanking you for taking her to the gathering at the chief’s house last weekend.”

  “Okay.” He continued looking at her, waiting for further enlightenment. He didn’t see any reason for his mother to simply say that and nothing more. “Okay,” he repeated, this time with a touch of frustration because Kendra was obviously seeing something that he didn’t. “Fill in the blanks for me. What is it that I’m not getting?”

  “That your mother probably hooked up with my father.”

  He could feel his protective side rising up. There was an edge to his voice as he asked, “Hooked up in the old sense or in the new sense?”

  That was a subject she neither wanted to explore nor talk about at length.

  “Either way, I think your mother’s happy. And I caught my father humming the other day when I came down to the lab with our possible suspect’s photo. My father doesn’t hum,” she told him, in case the significance of that escaped him. “At least, he hasn’t since my mother died.”

  Matt was still stuck at the starting gate as the significance of what she was saying began to sink in. “Meaning your father and my mother—”

  “Had a good time,” Kendra said euphemistically. And then, because she wasn’t really able to read her partner’s expression, she continued in their individual parents’ defense, “Hey, they’re both consenting adults….” Not wanting to go into any sort of detail, Kendra deliberately let her voice trail off.

  “My mother’s been through the ringer emotionally,” Matt protested. He definitely didn’t want to see that happening to the woman again. Didn’t want her taken advantage of again, even unintentionally.

  Kendra did her best not to take offense and just focused on the fact that her partner was worried about his mother—not that Abilene was inadvertently insulting her father.

  “And my dad’s not the kind of guy to just have a fling without any thought to possible consequences—not like some people.”

  That brought the conversation to a skidding halt. Her partner’s vivid green eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Was that meant for me?”

  Denial at this point would have been useless, so rather than retreat or pretend that he’d misunderstood her, she stuck by her words. “I don’t see anyone else in this conversation.”

  And that was when the alarms went off in her head. What the hell was she doing? Since when did she behave like a “typical female,” to use one of her brothers’ labels, acting as if she wanted to know “where this relationship is going”? That wasn’t her. At least, that wasn’t her anymore, right? Because she didn’t want a relationship, just something casual, nothing more, she silently insisted.

  “Sorry, forget I said anything,” she told Abilene with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I’m just punchy, that’s all. The important thing is, don’t worry about your mother. If my dad’s spending time with her, then she is definitely in safe hands. He’s the old-fashioned type—chivalrous to a fault,” she added with emphasis, because Abilene still looked pretty unconvinced.

  The phone rang on his desk just then, preventing her partner from responding to her assurances about her father and his mother.

  “Abilene,” he snapped impatiently into the handset.

  Kendra watched him and decided that it wasn’t his mother finally returning his calls. An alert expression had come into his eyes. This had to be about the case.

  “We’ll be right there,” he promised, hanging up. Matt looked at her. “We’ve got a hit.”

  She was on her feet immediately, grabbing what she needed and shoving it into the pockets of her jacket. “He showed up at another branch of the bank? Is he still there?” she asked eagerly.

  Matt shook his head. “The bank security guard saw the kid through the glass doors, apparently making a withdrawal. By the time he got outside, the kid had driven away.”

  Kendra blew out a breath. “Terrific,” she bit off in frustration.

  “Actually, yes.”

  “Go on,” she prompted.

  “The guard got a partial plate number,” he explained as they hurried out of the squad room.

  “You could have led with that,” she told him in exasperation. “Well, every little bit helps.” She tried not to allow herself to get too excited. This could lead to just another dead end—then again, maybe they had gotten a little closer to finding their perpetrator.

  Instinctively, Matt knew that she’d want to take the stairs rather than wait for the elevator, so he headed in the opposite direction of the elevator banks, toward the door to the stairwell.

  When he was directly behind her, Kendra smiled to herself. The man was learning.

  * * *

  “I’m sorry,” the security guard, a retired former patrolman with the Aurora P.D., apologized for the third time in as many minutes. “I was on my break and coming in through the other entrance when I spotted the kid you’re looking for. He was just finishing up and by the time I got over to that side of the building, he was driving away.” The guard had already given them the paper with the partial license plate he’d managed to copy down. “It was one of those little cars, you know, looks like it belongs in a toy box.”

  “A smart car?” Abilene guessed. It was the smallest-looking vehicle that he knew of.

  The man shook his head. “No, it’s a mini-something-or-other.”

  “A Mini Cooper?” Kendra asked.

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Mini Cooper,” he repeated, relieved to get that off his mind. “It was navy and white,” he described.

  Kendra nodded. Finally, they were getting some pieces to work with. “We’re going to need to see the surveillance tape,” she told him.

  “Sure, I already told the assistant manager you’d be asking,” he informed them, then added, “The bank manager’s out today,” as he led them inside the bank to speak to the woman.

  They got luckier.

  The teenager’s car was parked directly behind him as he’d made the withdrawal and the rest of his license plate was visible after the in-house tech at the police station worked her magic for them and removed the glare from an adjacent window.

  From there, the steps became easier.

  “Hello, Scott Randall,” Abilene declared as he pulled up the Mini Cooper’s registration. Armed with the teenager’s name, they pulled up his driver’s license.

  Which was where it looked as if their streak of luck ran dry.

  The man whose name was on the registration for the car looked like—and was, according to his date of birth—a senior citizen.

  “If that’s a teenager, then I belong in nursery school,” Kendra commented as she came around to her partner’s side of the desk and looked over his shoulder at the photo on the driver’s license he’d pulled up on the screen.

 
“Maybe it’s the kid’s father,” Matt speculated.

  “More like his grandfather, is my guess,” she said, shaking her head. “Either that or there are a hell of a lot of people involved in this case.” Going back to her side of the desk, she sighed, took out her weapon and holstered it. “It’s all we’ve got. Let’s go pay Mr. Randall a visit and ask him if he knows who’s been using his car.” She rolled her eyes, thinking of worst-case scenarios as she walked out of the room. “And I swear, if he tells us his car was stolen and he was just getting around to reporting it, I’m going to scream.”

  She probably would, too, Matt thought. “Just give me fair warning, that’s all I ask,” he said to his partner as they went toward the stairwell again.

  * * *

  The car in question was not parked in front of the house listed on the DMV registration.

  Big surprise, Kendra thought, getting out of the Crown Victoria. She braced herself for the disclaimer she anticipated coming from the man they were about to question.

  Matt pressed down hard on the doorbell. When the door opened a couple of minutes later, a rather befuddled, somewhat overweight man with flyaway white hair looked at them over the tops of his rimless glasses.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, one hand still on the door. It was obvious he was prepared to swing it shut at a moment’s notice.

  “We certainly hope so, Mr. Randall,” Kendra said in her most soothing voice. “Do you by any chance own a navy-and-white Mini Cooper, license plate number—”

  The man held up his hand, stopping her before she could launch into the sequence of numbers. “Don’t read the numbers to me. Waste of time,” he informed her. “I can’t picture them in my head. I’ve got to see the numbers written on a piece of paper or something.”

  Perfectly happy to play along, Kendra handed the man the paper and Scott Randall peered at it very carefully, blinking his eyes several times.

  And then he raised his eyes to hers. “What about the car?” he asked cautiously.

  “Then you do own it,” Matt said, wanting to establish that fact first.