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  Declan took her answer in stride. “How did you happen to be here?” he asked.

  Charley looked up sharply, recognizing the tone Declan was using. It was deliberately laid-back, conversational—and moving in for the kill because, as the person who called in the murder, she was suspect number one.

  She told him the truth—as far as she was willing to take it.

  “I heard Holt hadn’t shown up for his shift in the last couple of days and his lieutenant said he hadn’t called in, either. That wasn’t like Holt. I knew he was having a hard time because of a breakup he was going through, so I decided to stop by to check on him. It was on my way.” It hadn’t been, but Cavelli—or Cavanaugh—didn’t need to know that part, Charley thought.

  “A breakup?” Declan echoed, looking at her thoughtfully. “With you?”

  The question was so unexpected, it made her laugh. The laugh was devoid of any humor.

  “Hardly. Her name was Melissa. They didn’t quite have the same goals and expectations. When Holt looked at her, he heard wedding bells ringing. When she looked at him, she heard the sound of a cash register going off.”

  “Not a match made in heaven,” Declan agreed. He looked down at the man thoughtfully. “You think he killed himself?”

  “He wasn’t the type.” He wouldn’t have done that to her, no matter how badly he’d been hurting. He wouldn’t have taken himself out of her life like that.

  “Then you knew him pretty well,” Declan concluded.

  She didn’t want Declan to go veering onto that path, but rather than deny it, she gave him another answer. “There was a note,” she began.

  Declan eyed her, his interest escalated. “A suicide note?”

  “No,” Charley snapped, the edge of her temper growing frayed at an increasingly faster pace. She knew she wasn’t being fair to Declan. It wasn’t his fault that Matt was dead.

  It bothered her greatly that there were no defensive wounds on the body. That meant that Matt hadn’t fought back. Most likely, he’d been passed out when the killer had struck.

  She hadn’t had time to do anything with the note except carefully remove it so that it wouldn’t get damaged when the paramedics worked over her brother. Taking her handkerchief out, she picked up the edge of the paper she’d placed out of the way and held it up for Declan to read.

  “Just the beginning,” Declan repeated, and raised his eyes to her face. “You think it’s a budding serial killer making an announcement?”

  “Could be,” she allowed, then told him the last detail. “It was stapled to his chest.”

  That didn’t sound right. Was she getting muddled because the discovery of the body had hit her hard? “You mean to his shirt.”

  “No,” she said, taking out her cell phone and selecting the photos app. “To his chest.”

  She flipped through the photographs to the one she’d made herself take of Matt, knowing it was an important detail that just might help them solve Matt’s murder.

  Finding the one she was looking for, she held it up for Declan. “There. See?”

  “Wow.” The word just slipped out of its own volition. He took the smart phone from her—or tried to. “I won’t damage it,” he promised her.

  She was really going to have to get a better grip on herself or she wasn’t going to be of any use to Matt, she upbraided herself.

  “Sorry,” Charley responded, releasing her hold on the phone.

  “That’s okay,” Declan said. And then he took a closer look at the photograph that she had queued up for his perusal. “You’re right, the note was stapled to his chest. Who does that kind of thing?” he marveled, more to himself than to her.

  That was an easy one to answer. It was all the other questions that were going to be difficult. “Someone who’s crazy.”

  “Any more? Photos?” he asked rather than just arbitrarily flip through her array of photographs. In what he saw as her present, rather fragile state, he wanted to make sure he avoided doing anything that might upset her any further than she already was.

  “Not of the crime scene,” she told him. There were other photographs of Matt, both with her and without her, but those she didn’t want this detective to see. If the matter came up, she wouldn’t deny her connection to Matt, but until then, she wasn’t about to advertise the fact that he was her brother, either.

  Declan leaned over the officer’s body, taking in all he could without actually touching the man or rolling him over. The bullet seemed to have entered in the region of his heart. He had no way of knowing if there was an exit wound until after the crime-scene investigator released the body. He wondered if his father had been called in for this one. Seeing as how it was a police officer who had been shot—possibly executed—he rather thought it was likely that his father would be on the scene since he was head of the day lab unit.

  “Think he means it?” Declan asked, straightening up again.

  The detective had asked the question completely out of the blue. She stared at him, unclear what he was referring to. “Who?”

  “The killer,” Declan told her patiently. “Do you think there’ll be more? That he really intends to kill other people?”

  Charley shrugged, at a loss to form any real opinion. “That’s what his note says,” she replied, her voice eerily removed.

  Declan nodded as he conducted a perimeter examination of the area where the body had been discovered. “Well, thanks for the input,” he told her. “I’ll keep you in the loop if I can.”

  Charley didn’t budge as she gave him a glare that would have made Medusa shiver. “‘In the loop’?” she echoed incredulously. “I’m not going to be in any ‘loop,’ Cavelli or Cavanaugh or whatever name you want to go by,” she informed him. “I’m going to work this case.”

  “What department are you with?” he asked her patiently.

  She knew where he was going with this. “Narcotics. It doesn’t matter,” Charley insisted, immediately vetoing any objections he might have been inclined to raise. “I was the first on the scene and I’m...” she paused to search for just the right words to use in this argument she intended to win “...familiar with his...with the victim’s background. That is definitely going to prove handy.”

  “This is a homicide,” Declan began.

  There were a variety of reasons why she couldn’t work the case, objections he was rather certain his lieutenant would raise—unless Declan went to bat for her. He rolled the thought over in his head. He was officially minus a partner and this was not a one-man investigation—especially if it turned out that this killer had more bodies on his agenda.

  Thinking it over, he decided that that would most likely prove to be the best argument to use when he spoke to his lieutenant.

  “I know what it is,” Charley retorted, grinding out the words. “Look, I need to be included in this investigation—actively included,” she underscored before he found some cute little phrase to insultingly refer to her participation in this investigation.

  She took a breath, knowing what she was about to do was going to make her vulnerable, but she had no option left to her. She owed it to Matt to find his killer—to avenge his death. “Look, I’ll be in your debt if you talk to your captain—”

  “Lieutenant,” Declan corrected.

  “Whatever.” Charley shrugged impatiently. Her eyes held his, waiting for a decision from him.

  “In my debt,” Declan repeated thoughtfully. He did like the sound of that.

  “In your debt,” she confirmed, her voice as devoid of emotion as she could make it. Later she’d figure out how to get around this deal with the devil she was making, but right now, she had to secure her position on the investigation.

  “You want in that badly?” Declan asked, scrutinizing her closely. There were things she wasn’t telling him, but he was
rather certain they would surface, by and by.

  She raised her chin like a soldier about to charge into the unknown and, just possibly, not return again. “Yes.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll talk to my lieutenant, see if he can get you temporarily assigned to Major Crimes. You just might be in luck. My partner handed in his papers today and he’s leaving the department for the private sector.”

  Charley nodded, but she hardly heard a word of what the other detective was saying to her. The phrase “you just might be in luck” was echoing over and over again in her head.

  She was never going to be in luck again.

  Her brother, her best friend, her entire family lay on the sofa, dead.

  There was no such thing as luck anymore, she thought darkly.

  She didn’t realize Cavanaugh was talking to her, didn’t even hear him, let alone have any of his words register until she felt someone touch her arm. Blinking she looked up, once again abandoning the haze she hadn’t even realized she’d slipped back into.

  “Are you all right?” Declan was asking.

  She roused herself, doing her best to look alert and generally unfazed. She had her suspicions she couldn’t quite carry off the impression that she’d come around. “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  Declan began to enumerate the reasons that occurred to him. “Well, for one thing, you look like you’re a million miles away.”

  Charley shrugged. She had that one covered. “That’s not exactly a pretty sight to emboss on my brain,” she replied flippantly, indicating the dead body on the sofa.

  There was more going on here than that and Declan knew it. Moreover, he was fairly certain that she knew he knew it. But now wasn’t the time to get into it. He had to give her a little time to collect herself—while he did a little digging on the side into her background.

  Keeping her close would turn out to be a good thing, Declan decided. Other than the fact that—strictly speaking as a man—she was even more of a knockout now than she had been back in the academy, she was obviously mixed up in this somehow. Whether merely innocently because she was acquainted with the victim or if there was more to it than that, he’d yet to decide, but she figured into all this somehow and he intended to use that to his advantage.

  He was fairly confident he could sell this to the lieutenant. The man trusted his judgment and more important than that, he wanted to stay on the good side of the chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh, and Brian took a personal interest in all his detectives, especially those bearing the same surname as his.

  All that remained for him to figure out, once the dust settled and he—or they—found the killer, was what he intended to get in exchange for letting her come on board and work with him.

  This was going to be very interesting, he decided as he heard the sound of what he presumed was the crime-scene investigative unit’s vehicle approaching.

  Chapter 3

  Sean Cavanaugh was the first crime-scene investigator in through the doorway.

  Nodding at his son and the unfamiliar woman with him—was it him, or did it seem like there was always a woman with Declan?—the head of the day investigative unit looked grimly down at the body on the sofa. The dead man appeared to be in his late twenties, early thirties. Strong, well built and undoubtedly with a good future in front of him until a bullet ended all that.

  What a waste, Sean thought, setting down the case he always carefully checked and restocked after every crime-scene investigation. It was time to get to work and find answers.

  “So the victim’s one of our own,” Sean said sadly, addressing the remark to both of the occupants within the room.

  Charley answered first. “Yes, sir, he was. Sergeant Matthew Holt,” she told the head of CSI.

  Oh, Matt, Matt, what have you gone and let happen to you? Why’d you let your guard down like that? You always told me to be careful. Why weren’t you?

  Charley felt her throat closing, suddenly clogged with tears. She fought them back.

  Sean nodded, taking in the information. “And you are?” he asked.

  “Detective Charlotte Randolph, sir.” Charley focused strictly on answering the questions put to her. Her voice sounded almost robotlike. “I was the one who called it in.”

  Sean unlocked his case and lifted the lid. “Well, Charlotte—”

  “Charley,” she corrected him, forcing a faint smile to her lips. “People call me Charley.”

  Matt had called her Charley when she was a little girl and the name had stuck, she thought now. Damn it, she couldn’t tear up, she couldn’t, Charley ordered herself, digging her nails into her palms.

  Think of something else. Think of anything else.

  Sean looked at the woman, quietly studying her. This wasn’t just a casual acquaintance of the victim. His death was affecting her.

  “Well, Charley,” Sean amended. “How did you happen to be here?” he asked gently.

  “I already asked her that,” Declan interjected.

  “Yes, but I didn’t,” his father pointed out calmly. Both his voice and his expression were sympathetic as he continued to regard the young woman.

  Behind him, two more members of his investigative team came in, both well entrenched in what their particular duties were at a scene like this. They got to work quickly and quietly, moving as smoothly as the timing belt on a well-oiled engine.

  Charley took a breath before reciting her answer. “I heard he hadn’t shown up for work for a couple of days and that he hadn’t even bothered calling in. I knew that wasn’t like him, but I also knew that he was going through a rough patch—”

  “What kind of a rough patch?” Sean asked.

  “He’d just broken up with a woman he was certain was ‘the one.’” Someone should have strangled Melissa a long time ago, she thought angrily. Before the witch ever came into Matt’s life.

  Guided by her tone, Sean made the only logical assumption. “But she wasn’t ‘the one,’ was she?”

  “Not unless we were talking about barracudas, sir,” Charley replied, deliberately staring straight ahead, past the CSI chief’s head.

  “No need to call me sir,” Sean said. That sort of thing created a formal atmosphere and right now, he was striving for the exact opposite. Nodding his head to indicate Declan, he added, “He never does.”

  “I do, too. You just don’t listen,” Declan told his father.

  “All too well, Declan,” Sean said, glancing at his son knowingly. “All too well. All right, if you two want to stand over there and wait until I finish processing the crime scene, it shouldn’t be all that long.” He glanced at the opened bottles of vodka and Kahlua on the coffee table. “A little early in the day to be getting into that right now. Was that his drink of choice?” he asked. “A black Russian?”

  It hadn’t been, initially. All Matt ever drank—if he drank at all—was a beer, maybe on rare occasions, two. He hadn’t been very big on anything that allowed him to lose the tight rein he had over his control.

  “It was a habit he picked up from Melissa,” Charley told him.

  Declan scanned the room as if that could somehow answer his questions by the very nature of the vibrations that had been left behind. “Then maybe she was here, too,” he suggested.

  “Only one glass,” Charley pointed out. “It was the first thing I checked for.” Once she could bring herself to leave Matt where he lay, she added silently. “Besides, there’s no lipstick on the glass.”

  “Big on makeup, was she?” Declan asked, curious. This detective seemed to know a lot about the woman in question. Why?

  “It helped to cover up her physical flaws,” she explained.

  He laughed at the way she worded her answer. “Not a big fan of the woman in question, I take it.”

  Charley saw no reason
to deny or cover up how she felt about the woman who had deliberately broken her brother’s heart. What did it matter? Matt was gone and his feelings were the only ones that had ever mattered to her anyway. If she’d held her tongue before about Melissa, it was only to spare him.

  In hindsight, maybe if she had said something, he wouldn’t have gotten to this point. Maybe he might have even been alive now because he would have been at work, not home and unprotected.

  “I wouldn’t lift a finger to save her if she was drowning in a puddle of rainwater,” Charley told the detective.

  “Talk about cold,” Declan couldn’t help commenting.

  Actually, it was the exact opposite. Whenever she thought of the strawberry-blonde with the flat brown eyes who had led her brother around as if he were some sort of trained monkey on a leash, her blood pressure went up by at least ten points. Possibly even more.

  “She cut out his heart and stomped on it. I have no reason to get all warm and toasty whenever I think of her—which is as infrequently as possible,” she informed Declan, her tone indicating that she didn’t want to discuss the woman anymore.

  “Duly noted,” Sean said. For a minute, she’d forgotten the other man was still in the room.

  The head of CSI took out the camera he’d paid for with his own money, preferring to use something he was comfortable with rather than the one the department had issued to him.

  “Will you two be working the case together?” he asked mildly.

  Declan said, “Don’t know yet” at the same time that Charley said, “Yes.”

  Sean smiled. “A slight difference of opinion, I see. Apparently the situation is all tangled up, which is nothing new.” He lowered the camera for a moment to look at her. “I’ll keep Declan here posted and he can let you know what progress has been made, if any.”

  She didn’t want to be on the receiving end of anything secondhand. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stop by the lab whenever you’re done processing the evidence.”