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  The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew what he’d just said was wrong. The look on the chief’s face said as much.

  “You and I see it that way,” Brian said. “But that’s where Detective Cavanaugh comes in.” He gestured toward her. “She thinks that there might be something that can be saved on that laptop.”

  Alex remained unconvinced and he shook his head, contradicting what the chief had just said.

  “No way,” Alex said firmly, then turned toward the woman and said, “No offense, Officer, but I saw it and you didn’t. That thing is now just a thin, broken waffle.”

  Her interest fully engaged, she wasn’t about to let the detective stand in her way. “Then you won’t mind me looking it over.”

  Alex shrugged. He knew when fighting city hall was useless. And this was one of those times. “Hey, knock yourself out. Look all you want. You still won’t find anything.” He turned back toward Brian. “It’s a waste of time, sir.”

  “Duly noted, Detective,” Brian replied in a tone of voice that told Alex the chief still intended to have this pseudo-detective take a look at it.

  Well, it was her time to waste, Alex supposed. And if she was busy playing detective and attempting to resurrect that wreck of a laptop, well, then, she wouldn’t be getting underfoot and in his way, would she? And, if for some remote reason she did find a scrap of viable information on the laptop, so much the better. Alex saw it as a win-win situation.

  “Take her up to Homicide,” Brian instructed the detective. “I’ve given permission for Detective Cavanaugh to take over a desk and a computer. She’ll be using Montgomery’s for the time being, until he gets back,” he told Alex.

  “And then what, sir?” Alex asked. He wasn’t one to plan too far ahead, but he did believe in having something in place against a future that didn’t treat slackers kindly.

  “Well, by then I expect you and Detective Cavanaugh to have the murder solved,” Brian informed him in a voice that could be described only as confident. “That’ll be all for now,” he told the duo, dismissing them. “Oh, and Detective?”

  Both he and the cheerleader he’d been saddled with said “Yes?” at the exact same moment. Alex did his best not to appear annoyed.

  Brian smiled at the stereo response. “Keep me posted,” he instructed before getting back to reviewing the report that was currently on his desk.

  “Yes, sir,” Alex replied, trying not to clench his jaw too hard.

  “Absolutely!” Valri declared happily.

  Alex suppressed a sigh. It was going to be a very long investigation.

  As they left the outer office and went into the hall to get the elevator, Valri found she was having trouble containing a surge of enthusiasm.

  “This is exciting,” she announced, feeling as if her feet were barely touching the ground. Just this morning, she’d been wondering how long it would take her to work her way up to detective, and now here she was, trying the role on for size. It just did not get any better than this.

  Reaching the elevator half a step before Alex did, she pressed the up arrow and continued talking to her new partner.

  “I mean, it’s not exciting for Hunter. He’s dead. But this is going to be my first case.” That wasn’t quite accurate, so she backtracked a little. “Well, my first case that I get to solve. All the other times, I just got to be there at the start, putting up yellow tape, taking notes, then handing them over to the detectives who took the case.”

  She was fairly floating as she continued, taking no notice of the fact that there was no feedback coming from her tall, dark blond, handsome green-eyed partner.

  The elevator car arrived, opening its doors slowly.

  “But this time around, I get to be a detective. God, I hope I don’t screw up,” she said as she got into the elevator car.

  “That makes two of us,” Alex said under his breath. He hadn’t intended for her to hear, but she did. Rather than insult her, it seemed to reinforce what she was thinking.

  “You can tell me when I’m out of line,” Valri told him. Then, as if he’d said something to decline this request, she went on to assure him that criticizing her would be all right. “I’m the youngest in my family and I’m used to being criticized, so you won’t hurt my feelings.”

  Right now, hurting this effervescent officer’s feelings was the furthest thing from his mind. “Good to know.”

  If she heard the sarcasm in his voice, she gave no indication.

  “Have you been a detective long?” she asked as the doors again opened on the fifth floor and she fairly bounced out of the elevator.

  He spared her a glance. “Longer than you.”

  Again, Valri didn’t appear to take any offense at his tone. “Everyone’s been a detective longer than I have,” she said with a laugh that he would have thought was charming if he wasn’t currently being so annoyed at the spot he found himself in.

  It wasn’t that he resented getting a new partner, temporarily or otherwise. He’d had a couple already, and besides, it was the chief’s prerogative to pair up anyone he wanted. But what he did resent was the unspoken instruction that he needed to watch over this chattering blue-eyed blonde magpie and make sure that he returned her to the chief at the end of this assignment in the same condition that he’d received her.

  That meant he couldn’t strangle her.

  Granted, this energized temporary detective was very easy on the eyes, and in another scenario he might have even made a play for her. Beautiful women were a weakness for him even though he changed them a little more frequently than he had his jackets dry-cleaned.

  But this wasn’t another scenario, it was this scenario and she was a Cavanaugh, which, drop-dead gorgeous or not, meant hands off unless, of course, he wanted to risk losing those same hands.

  The moment he walked into the Homicide Division with her, he saw heads turning in their direction. If he didn’t know better, he would have said it was as if they’d tripped some sort of an invisible wire that immediately set off a silent alarm, heard only by the other homicide detectives who populated the squad room.

  Heads turned and conversations slowly died out. Alex knew they weren’t looking at him. It was a given that news traveled approximately at the speed of light around the building.

  If he hadn’t already figured it out before, he could see now that his new albatross wasn’t shy. Leaving his side for the moment, she worked the room, waving and saying “hi” to just about everyone and, from all appearances, schmoozing with various people in the department.

  Detective Albatross was probably related, in one way or another, to all of them. Which meant that all eyes would be on them—and on him—to see if they were doing a good job.

  If he was doing a good job mentoring her.

  This was going to be a challenge, Alex thought grudgingly. A definite challenge for him, both as a detective and as a man. He would have to be sharp as the former and very hands-off as the latter.

  The first part was not going to be nearly as much of a challenge as the second.

  He waited as Valri made the various rounds through the room. He didn’t bother calling her over or saying anything to her until she finally rejoined him.

  “I didn’t realize there were so many Cavanaughs in Homicide,” she told him.

  “Murder attracts them, I guess,” he quipped. “Now, if you’re finished playing homecoming queen, I’ll show you where your desk is.”

  “Brody, are you annoyed with me for some reason?” she asked, following him.

  “What possible reason could I have to be annoyed with you?” he asked sarcastically, thinking that would put her off for a little while.

  He should have known better.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking,” she told him.

  “I’m not a
nnoyed,” he lied. “Just preoccupied.”

  “With the case?” she asked.

  He bit his tongue and gave her the appropriate answer, not the real one. “Yeah, with the case.”

  She turned her face up to him and smiled. “Then let’s get started.”

  He couldn’t strangle her here—or even vent. There were too many witnesses. All he could do was mentally shrug and let it go.

  Alex brought her over to his desk. Butted against it was Jake Montgomery’s desk. The contrast between the two work surfaces was like night and day.

  When it came to neatness, Alex was definitely not a stickler, but his desk looked like the last word in tidiness when compared with Montgomery’s. His partner’s desk had been officially dubbed no-man’s land the first week the guy had taken it over. Alex used to say that Montgomery never met a scrap of paper he didn’t like.

  He had no idea how Montgomery could lay his hands on reports when he needed them, but the man could and he did, each and every time. Alex figured that a little bit of magic was involved, but he asked no questions, afraid of the answer he might get.

  Now that he thought of it, the very sight of Montgomery’s desk might make this pseudo-detective turn tail and run.

  “That’s your desk,” he told Valri, gesturing at the piece of office furniture hidden beneath piles and piles of papers, files and old candy wrappers. “Computer’s right there—somewhere,” he added since at the moment, the laptop that Montgomery was using just before he landed in the hospital was not visible.

  His guess was that it had to be buried somewhere beneath all the various documents.

  Valri stood in front of Montgomery’s desk, stunned. She was definitely not a neatness freak, but this was a whole different ball game. She glanced toward her partner to see if he was putting her on. But he looked dead serious.

  “How can you tell?” she asked Alex, eyeing the disaster area.

  The papers were all precariously stacked and she had a feeling that if she tried to remove so much as a single page, an avalanche would result. Maybe this was some sort of a prank that was religiously played on the “new kid” on the block. She glanced in Alex’s direction, hoping to be proved right.

  His expression gave nothing away.

  “Easy. I remember seeing it there just before he wound up in the hospital. He used it every day,” Alex told her.

  Valri squared her shoulders. “Okay. If you say so,” she said as she began to feel around in the general vicinity, spreading her long, graceful fingers beneath the scattered papers.

  Alex thought it would take her a while to locate the laptop, but he hadn’t counted on the fact that like most of her family, Valri was born with a stubborn streak that wouldn’t allow her to give up. It had her tackling each challenge as if she was competing for first place in a marathon. Nothing less would do.

  Within a few minutes, she was grinning broadly, her eyes all but dancing as she glanced up at Alex. He found himself wishing that she looked more like his absent partner than a beauty pageant winner—bubbly, with a flawless complexion and what looked to be killer curves beneath her clothes. His partner was 0 for 3 in that department. “You’re right,” she cried, sounding as if she had just located buried treasure rather than an MIA laptop. “It’s right here.”

  Almost in slow motion, Valri extracted the laptop from beneath a pile of papers, careful not to dislodge any of the documents.

  To Alex’s surprise, she actually managed to do it, leaving the stacks upon stacks of papers almost exactly the way they were.

  And then, as she held up the laptop for his benefit and her own delight, it happened. As if the piles of papers had been set on a ten-second delay timer, suddenly the less than well-ordered stacks began to fall, fast and furious, to the floor right before her feet.

  And on her feet, as well.

  Within seconds, there was an entire off-white mountain of papers engulfing her practically up to her knees.

  Chapter 3

  “Brody, what’re you trying to do, lose another partner before she even gets started by burying her alive in Montgomery’s useless garbage?”

  The sharply voiced question came from behind Alex. He didn’t have to turn around to know who the gravelly voice belonged to. Only one person in the squad room talked like that. Len Latimore, the lieutenant who had recently taken over the Homicide Division, had a voice that sounded as if he had spent the past twenty-nine days drinking hard liquor that went down anything but smoothly.

  “I’m not trying to bury her, Len,” Alex said, although now that he thought of it, that didn’t sound like altogether a bad idea. “She was trying to locate Montgomery’s laptop, which was supposed to be in there somewhere.”

  Of medium height and build, and appearing as if he were permanently rumpled, Latimore scowled as he circumvented the off-white avalanche around the newest addition to the division.

  “Looks like she found a lot more than that.” If there was anything Latimore hated, it was clutter not of his own making. “Get a large box out of the supply room and clean this stuff up,” he instructed.

  “Yes, sir,” Valri responded. She’d just assumed, since she was low woman on the totem pole and, after all, she had been the one to disrupt the precarious stacks in the first place, that the lieutenant was talking to her. “Which way is the supply room?” she asked.

  “Not you,” Latimore snapped. “You, I want to see in my office. You—” he turned to face Alex “—can get all of Montgomery’s junk cleared away.”

  “Montgomery’s going to want all this when he gets back,” Alex pointed out. It wasn’t that he was particularly fond of the mess that his partner made, but he knew how he would have felt if someone had come and moved all of his things while he was in the hospital, especially since he’d been put there by job-related injuries.

  “Yeah, well, what he wants and what he gets are two damn different things. This isn’t his squad room, it’s mine, and I don’t want to see this when I come out again,” he warned, pointing to all the papers scattered on the floor around the chief’s cousin. “Do I make myself clear?”

  “It’s my fault, sir.” Valri was quick to speak up. “I caused the papers to fall.”

  The last thing she wanted was for this to cause any hard feelings between her and Brody. She might still be green, but she knew that wasn’t the way to start a new partnership, temporary or otherwise.

  Latimore’s frown deepened. “I’m not talking about whose ‘fault’ it is, Cavanaugh. I’m talking about cleanup.

  “In my office, Cavanaugh,” Latimore ordered gruffly. “Now.”

  Valri had no choice but to do as she was told. She couldn’t risk getting the lieutenant any angrier than he already seemed to be. Otherwise, she would have remained to help clean up the blizzard of pages before she went into the short, bull of a man’s office.

  Valri glanced over her shoulder at her partner. She fervently hoped that the detective wouldn’t hold this against her. He didn’t look overly thrilled to be working with her to begin with. Having to clean up a mess she had caused, accidentally or not, was only going to make matters worse.

  She was acutely aware of garnering covert glances as she followed the lieutenant to his office.

  Reaching the glass-enclosed lair that looked barely larger than a small walk-in closet, Latimore waited impatiently until she had crossed the threshold. The second she did, he closed the door behind her.

  He walked to his desk and sat down, waving at the chair that faced him and expecting her to take the hint. When she didn’t, he ordered, “Sit,” as if he were training a dog. Rumor had it that Latimore was better with dogs than he was with people.

  Valri didn’t remember bending her knees and dropping into the chair, but she must have because the next moment, she was sitting and uneasily facing the lieutena
nt.

  All but holding her breath, she waited for the man to speak.

  Not one for being delicate or standing on ceremony, Latimore got right down to the question he wanted resolved.

  “You got any trouble looking at dead people?”

  For a moment, the question caught her completely off guard. Of all the things she had anticipated that Latimore could ask her, this was not one of them.

  “I don’t know,” Valri answered honestly after a beat. “I’ve never looked at a dead person.”

  Latimore grunted. He didn’t look as if he was satisfied with her answer. “How long have you been on the force?”

  “A little more than two years, sir.”

  “And in all that time, you never saw a dead homicide victim?” he questioned skeptically.

  “No, sir. I’ve dealt with a couple of victims who had been shot, but they were still alive. Mostly,” she enumerated quickly for his benefit, “I’ve dealt with break-ins, home invasions and robberies.”

  “How do you think you’ll react to seeing a dead body?” he asked.

  She took a breath before answering. “It’s not something I’d look forward to, but it’s part of the job.” And she was here to do her job.

  Latimore looked far from satisfied, scowling at her. “Not answering my question, Cavanaugh. If you’re going to fall apart, I need to know up front—like now,” he emphasized, narrowing his eyes as he pinned her with them.

  “I’m not going to fall apart because it is part of my job,” she replied in a surprisingly calm manner, given her penchant for bubbliness. “I wouldn’t be much good to Brody or the victim if I fell apart,” she added. Not to mention that she would have felt that she was letting down a whole legion of Cavanaughs, both here and in Shady Canyon.

  Latimore rocked back in his chair, which squeaked to signal the new position. His small brown eyes never left her face. “So you’re telling me it’s mind over matter for you, is that it?”