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  Toni threw up her hands. “I’m not having this conversation.”

  “No, but I am,” Lucinda insisted. “You don’t want to look back years from now and think of him as the one who got away, do you?”

  “I don’t want to look back at him at all,” Toni lied. Just then, she heard a familiar noise. “Oh, thank God, the baby’s crying. We’ll talk later,” she said, hurrying out to the baby’s room.

  “Count on it!” Lucy called after her.

  * * *

  When Dugan came in early the following morning, he immediately looked toward Toni’s desk. She wasn’t there. He felt his stomach sink like lead. A feeling of disappointment washed over him.

  He’d left a police officer guarding her place, just in case Padilla showed up, although this was now just a precaution. Padilla was either dead or gone, Dugan was almost sure of it. No, Toni wasn’t here for another reason. He wondered if she’d decided to take it slow after what had happened both Friday and then on Saturday—or if there was another reason she wasn’t here.

  Maybe she’d decided that this just wasn’t worth it.

  But that would make her a quitter, and he wasn’t sure if he could really buy into that.

  Just as he was attempting to come to terms with her absence, he saw Toni coming in. Not from the hallway, but from the back of the squad room. She was carrying a number of folders and they were up against her chest, making her look like an overworked student whose arms were loaded down with a large number of beige folders.

  “You look surprised to see me,” Toni commented. There was nothing she liked better than catching him off guard.

  Dugan shrugged. “I thought maybe you’d decided you weren’t coming in today.”

  “Why on earth would I decide not to come in?” she asked. “I’ve been researching our problem.”

  “Our problem?” he repeated, not sure just which problem she was referring to.

  Maybe she’d just made that up to catch him by surprise, he thought. That was a distinct possibility, given the way she’d thrown him for a loop Saturday evening. If he tried, he could still taste her lips on his. He’d spent the rest of his weekend thinking about how he might have spent his Sunday if he’d acted on his initial reaction to her.

  “The drug war,” Toni specified. “I’ve been reaching out to some old contacts and—” She stopped when she saw the expression on his face. “Why are you smiling like that?”

  If he told her that he was relieved to see her, or that she’d made a great impression on everyone Saturday, he wasn’t sure how she would react. She might just take it to be a way of getting to her or to continue something that hadn’t had a chance to play out. Yet.

  But since she was already working full throttle ahead, he decided to just go with that and ask to be filled in on what she was thinking.

  “Just glad it’s Monday,” he told her. “So, go ahead. You were saying?” he coaxed, taking off his jacket and dropping it on the back of his chair.

  “Turns out that Padilla might not have killed Oren because they belong to rival drug cartels,” she told him. She could see that she’d caught him by surprise. “The killing might have been personal.”

  He took a breath, settling in. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “Oren stole Padilla’s girlfriend, then tossed her aside once he’d done what he wanted to with her. It’s a very old story,” she added.

  “What a winner,” Dugan commented, frowning.

  She liked the fact that he didn’t just disregard her theory as simply that. A theory. “I know, but this means that Padilla didn’t kill Oren over routes or drug shipments or territory wars.”

  “Doesn’t mean it can’t escalate to that,” Dugan pointed out.

  She nodded. “I know, but right now, it still might just be about that. What I’m saying is that Padilla might not have his cartel covering his back over this, at least, not for the time being. So we could have an easier time getting to him,” she said excitedly.

  “Hold it,” Dugan cried, putting his hands up to stop her narrative from going any further. “We?” he questioned skeptically.

  “Well, yes,” she told him. Then, because he was looking at her curiously, she specified. “You, your team. Me.”

  He shook his head. There was no way that he was about to consider putting her life in jeopardy. “This is getting way too dangerous to bring you in, O’Keefe,” Dugan told her.

  She stared at him, dumbfounded. Was he kidding? “But I already am in. And anyway, it’s actually less dangerous, not more,” she told him. “We’re after one guy, not a whole cartel.”

  “Yes,” Dugan emphasized. “One guy who you shot in the leg,” he underscored. “He’s not about to forget that.”

  “If you get him without me, it doesn’t matter what he doesn’t forget,” she said. “The point here will be that you did get him and, more than likely, Padilla will want to make a deal so that he doesn’t spend the rest of three lifetimes in jail.”

  Dugan stared at her, dumbfounded. “Are you hearing yourself?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. “And I think that not only do I like what I’m hearing, I think that the chief of Ds is going to like hearing it, too,” she informed him with a confidence he found incredibly annoying. Because it might be true and it put her in danger. No matter how he sliced it, all he could think about was that she could get hurt.

  Or worse.

  He decided that the best thing he could do was to get her to back off.

  “Look, they all liked you, but let’s not get carried away here,” he warned.

  “They did?” she asked, her eyes suddenly wide. For all the world, she made him think of a little girl at Christmas. “They liked me?”

  “Yes,” he told her, winding down just for a moment. “They did. But they also know that getting a civilian involved in police business—”

  “I’m not a civilian,” she insisted. “I’m a professional.”

  “Journalist,” Dugan underscored. “You’re a professional journalist. That doesn’t make you James Bond—or even Jane Bond,” he told her, struggling hard to hang on to his temper.

  “Look, I’ve undertaken a lot of dangerous assignments,” she said. “And I still managed to make it to thirty-one. That’s not just luck.”

  “Isn’t it?” he challenged.

  She knew what he was doing. He was trying to make her lose her temper. Toni hunkered down, instead. “I can certainly help you get this guy, too.”

  “How?” he asked. “How are you going to help us get this guy? By acting as bait?” Dugan demanded angrily.

  She took a breath, steeling herself off. “If that’s what it takes.”

  He threw his hands up. “Omigod! You, woman, are crazy.” Taking a breath, Dugan forced himself to calm down. He needed to reason with her. “Besides, he’s probably already left the country.”

  She wasn’t convinced of that, not by a long shot. “From everything we know about him, Padilla has a vendetta mentality. The man’s not going to be happy until he shoots me.”

  Dugan closed his eyes, shaking his head. “Fantastic.”

  “But I’ll have you and your team watching me every step of the way,” she insisted, trying to make him understand what she was thinking. “All we have to do is get him to come out and show his hand. And voilà, you’ve got him.”

  His eyes met hers. His were blazing. “No,” Dugan bit off.

  She pulled back her shoulders, bracing herself. “I can do it without you,” she countered.

  His eyes widened. “No, you can’t,” he said, refusing to believe that she would actually go through with something so dangerous.

  “Wanna bet?” she asked in a low voice that, insanely, he found exceptionally sexy.

  “Look, if I have to tie you up and keep you prisoner somewhere until this blows over,
I will. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “I doubt that the chief will approve of that,” she replied coolly.

  “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him—or me,” he informed her.

  “C’mon, Dugan,” Toni coaxed. “You know that’s not your style.”

  “Neither is putting your life in danger,” he told her firmly.

  She had to make him understand. “Dugan, my life’s already in danger. That guy’s out there looking for me and it’s only a matter of time before he finds me. This way, we bring the war to him on our terms and you can protect me.”

  He was beginning to feel overwhelmed—and that he couldn’t get through to her. “Where do you even get these ideas?” he asked.

  She grinned at him. “I read a lot,” she told Dugan. “So, is it a deal? Are we going to do this together? Or are you going to make me wind up doing this all alone?” she asked, looking up at Dugan with her big, hopeful doe eyes.

  “All right,” he said, surrendering. “We’ll do it your way,” he ground out between clenched teeth. “But not without a lot of prep work being put into it first,” he warned. “We’re not going into this blind like we wound up doing last time.”

  “All right, you’re the boss,” she told him innocently.

  “Ha!” was all Dugan allowed himself to say in response, at least for now.

  Chapter 17

  A week passed.

  A week in which Toni went in, every day, expecting that this was going to be the day that she would be able to confront the man she knew wanted to eliminate her from the face of the earth.

  Except that she didn’t.

  Despite a few sightings, Padilla was nowhere to be found.

  Her life, Toni came to realize, had changed. Not because of the kind of work she did, not because she was part of something bigger than her ongoing story, but because she no longer did anything alone.

  She had a bodyguard.

  At first, maybe because she didn’t quite believe it, she didn’t fully realize she had one, because although he accompanied her home at the end of the day, Dugan left her on her doorstep.

  Or so she thought.

  She learned otherwise quickly enough. It actually happened several hours into the following day.

  It was just a little after four in the morning. Heather had woken up for her first feeding and rather than just remain upstairs with her until the baby fell asleep again, Toni brought the little girl down and walked the floor with her for a while.

  It wasn’t quite light yet, but she was able to make out shapes clearly across the street.

  When she saw the Mustang, at first Toni thought she was just imagining things. But a closer look told her that she wasn’t. That was Dugan’s vehicle.

  And Dugan was sitting in it.

  Surprised, Toni was about to go talk to him, then thought better of it. She was wearing a pair of cutoffs and a tank top, not the best attire to go waltzing across the street in, she decided.

  Looking at the baby, she saw that Heather had fallen asleep.

  She took the baby back upstairs to her crib. Putting her down, Toni stood there for a couple of seconds, making sure the baby didn’t wake up. Heather went on sleeping, so she was free to hurry back down the stairs.

  Toni looked out the window again just to make sure that the car was still there and that she hadn’t conjured up the whole thing in her head. She hadn’t. The car was still there.

  He was still there.

  She sighed, shaking her head. Why hadn’t he said anything to her about this?

  Picking up her phone from the table where she was charging it, she called Dugan’s number. He answered her on the first ring.

  Well, at least he wasn’t asleep this time, she thought.

  “Just what are you doing outside my door?” Toni demanded.

  She saw him stretching. “Answering the phone,” he told her.

  Idiot! she thought. “Don’t get wise with me, Cavanaugh.”

  “Oh, but I do it so well,” Dugan quipped, looking out of his window toward her house. Seeing that she had the curtain pulled back, he waved at her.

  She took a deep breath, reminding herself that losing her temper was not the way to go with this man. She tried to approach the subject reasonably. “Why didn’t you tell me you were playing bodyguard again?”

  “Well, for one thing,” he told her, “the subject didn’t come up—”

  Okay, enough with being reasonable, she thought. “Dugan!”

  “And, for another, I wanted to put off getting into this kind of a discussion with you for as long as possible.”

  Toni continued looking at him—and then sighed. He was being protective of her. She really couldn’t stay mad at him for that.

  “Okay, get in here,” she ordered.

  “Why?” he asked suspiciously. “Do you have something sharp and pointy you want to stick into me?”

  The absurdity of his question and the serious tone of voice that he asked it in totally disarmed her and she started to laugh. Any annoyance she had felt dissipated. “Just get in here, Cavanaugh.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answered, pretending to go along with whatever she had in mind.

  Dugan ended the call and she watched him get out of his vehicle. Within less than a minute, he had crossed the street to her house.

  She moved over to the door. Hitting the keypad, she disarmed the alarm and let him in, then shut the door again behind him. She paused just long enough to rearm the security system before turned to confront him.

  “This your idea?” she asked.

  “In part.” Then he quickly added, “The chief doesn’t disagree.”

  “Fine.” She liked feeling that she could take care of herself, but with Lucinda as well as Heather in the house, she supposed that she did appreciate the extra protection. “But if you’re going to be Kevin Costner, you might as well sack out on my sofa.”

  She had lost him at the mention of the other man’s name. “Say what again?”

  “Kevin Costner,” she repeated. When he still looked at her blankly, she prompted, “The Bodyguard,” naming a popular film from 1992. She saw that it still made absolutely no impression on him. “Not an old movie buff,” she realized. “Okay, never mind. That doesn’t change the fact that if you’re going to do this, you might as well not get a stiff neck sitting up all night in your car.” She paused to look at him. “You really think I’m in any danger?”

  He decided to be honest with her. “Yes, I do. But since I can’t get you to back off and just disappear with your baby for a while until this is over, this is the next best thing I can do.”

  Toni sighed impatiently. She knew he was right. This had been her argument for getting Dugan and his team to let her stay to begin with.

  Resigned, Toni asked the detective, “Can I get you anything?”

  His eyes swept over her. Damn but she had an even better figure than he’d thought. The cutoff shorts and tank top fairly clung to her body—the way he would have liked to.

  Dugan cleared his throat. “More clothes would be nice.”

  She looked at him, confused. “You want more clothes?”

  “For you,” he told her. “Because right now, what you’ve got on—or lack thereof—is a pretty big distraction.”

  And then she understood. She had begun to think that he only saw her as an assignment. Obviously not. She rolled the thought over in her mind. It pleased her a great deal.

  “Why, detective, is that compliment?” she asked, grinning.

  “That is an observation,” he told her solemnly, leaving it at that.

  “And it’s a lovely one, too,” she said, pleased. It was nice to know that she wasn’t the only one who felt an attraction between them. “You want a blanket?” she asked, nodding at the sofa. “Or maybe a cup of coffee?”r />
  “Coffee. Black—if you already made it,” he added quickly. He didn’t want her going to any extra trouble on his account.

  “I haven’t, but it’ll only take a second,” she told him. “And then you can tell me what you have planned for today—besides taking a cat nap sometime, of course,” she added.

  “What made you look outside?” he asked her, raising his voice as she crossed into the kitchen. And then the answer suddenly occurred to him before she said anything. “Are you worried that someone followed you?” he asked. Had Toni seen anyone who shouldn’t have been there?

  “I didn’t think about that,” Toni answered. “No. I guess it was just a gut feeling I had,” she admitted. Toni heard him laugh. “What’s so funny?”

  “That’s a Cavanaugh stock answer,” he told her. “Every time one of our moves are questioned, we usually say we did what we did because we had a gut feeling.”

  “I’ll have to remember that,” Toni called back. “As for me,” she told him, “I’ve had gut feelings as far back as I can remember.”

  “Have they ever been right?” Dugan asked.

  Toni came back into the living room, a steaming cup of coffee in her hand. She stood before him, looking at Dugan for a long moment before finally answering.

  “Actually, most of the time,” she told him.

  He took the coffee cup from her. “That was quick,” he noted.

  “I have one of those instant brew machines. It practically makes the coffee the minute you think of having a cup,” she said. And then she glanced at her watch. “You know, it’s only a little after four. Why don’t you grab a little shut-eye while you still can?” she suggested. “I’ll just get out of your way and go back upstairs. I promise not to flee or do anything bad until at least after six o’clock in the morning.” She crossed her heart for emphasis.

  He didn’t think he could get any sleep right now. He waved her off. “Do whatever it is you normally do. Pretend I’m not here.”