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  “I’m not telling you anything,” Kendra reminded the man tactfully. “Right now, we’re just asking as many questions as we can think of, trying to see what we can find out. See what flies,” she added, borrowing some of the accountant’s short, clipped terms.

  Maxwell snorted. “Well, if he did kill her, then I’m a rotten judge of character.” It was evident by his demeanor that he didn’t believe he was.

  Kendra, however, wasn’t as sure as he was. “Let’s hope you’re not, Mr. Maxwell. Do you mind if we talk to your people? See if perhaps they might have anything to add?” They could do it with or without his permission, but with was always easier.

  “Do I mind?” Maxwell echoed. “Yeah, I mind. If they’re talking, they’re not working. But go ahead,” he concluded, waving them on to the outer office where the accountants who worked for him were all seated. “Get this over with. The sooner you do, the sooner you’re gone and they get back to doing what I’m paying them for.”

  “Don’t think anyone’s going to be nominating him for Boss of the Year any time soon,” Abilene commented under his breath as he and Kendra closed the door to Maxwell’s office.

  “Could be worse,” Kendra deadpanned. When Abilene raised an eyebrow, she said, “He could have told us to come back and talk to the other accountants after hours.”

  Abilene took a chance that she was being serious and said, “Maybe he knew he’d be overridden and didn’t want the hassle. Guys like that only pick fights they figure they’ll win.”

  Guys like that in this case meant guys in control. Was Abilene referring to himself as well? She took it as another possible small piece of insight into the man assigned to work with her.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Abilene heard something in her tone and deduced the rest. Partnering with her would be a constant, ongoing battle of wits. He found himself kind of liking that. It would keep him on his toes.

  “Not all guys,” he interjected.

  Okay, he’s exempting himself, she thought, amused. She looked at Abilene for a long moment—and just for a second, caught herself thinking things that had no part in the investigation.

  Doing an abrupt mental about-face, she murmured, “Good to know.”

  They both turned their attention to the accountants, taking them aside one by one into one of the small private offices meant for client-accountant interviews, and asked their questions.

  The accountants were all of the same opinion. Talking to them just reinforced the initial impression of a hardworking, affable young man who was willing to pitch in when necessary but for the most part, kept to himself. No one had a bad word to say about him.

  What Kennedy, the accountant who’d gone to Ryan’s apartment, had seen had already made the rounds at the firm and to a person, they were convinced that Burnett couldn’t have killed the girl. What they did believe was that the missing young man was perhaps in trouble or even imminent danger.

  “Maybe somebody broke into his apartment and kidnapped him,” said Gina, the accounting firm’s one administrative assistant, a very young-looking blonde who seemed to favor braids as a hairstyle, her blue eyes wide and earnest.

  Kendra decided to make the young woman work to put over her theory. “Then how do you explain the dead woman on his floor?”

  Gina didn’t even hesitate or need time to think. She’d obviously figured out the kinks in her theory while waiting her turn to be questioned.

  “She walked in on it and the kidnapper was forced to kill her because he couldn’t take them both prisoners.” Having advanced her theory, Gina seemed exceedingly pleased with herself. The next moment, she was looking to Abilene, rather than to the woman questioning her. She definitely looked interested in his reaction.

  He didn’t disappoint her. Instead, he nodded. “We’ll take it under advisement,” he told her in a quiet, thoughtful voice.

  In response, the young woman lit up like a Christmas tree.

  Her reaction was not lost on Kendra. And another one bites the dust.

  Since this was the last interview, Abilene followed Kendra’s lead and started to rise. He felt the administrative assistant place her hand on top of his, meaning to momentarily detain him.

  “You’ll let me know if that was what happened?” she asked hopefully. “That poor Ryan was kidnapped?”

  “You’ll be one of the first to know,” Abilene assured her with solemnity.

  “Laying the groundwork for a future conquest?” Kendra asked in a quiet, unfathomable voice as they left the outer office.

  “Letting her think she said something important and useful,” Abilene corrected. “And who knows? That woman’s theory makes about as much sense as anything else right now.”

  Kendra relented. She supposed she had to agree at this point.

  “One thing does seem to be clear right about now,” he continued.

  She would have been lying if she had said that she hadn’t braced herself before gamely asking, “And what’s that?”

  “The guy who worked shoulder to shoulder with those other accountants in that office wasn’t the kind of guy to kill his girlfriend in cold blood.”

  No, not according to the way they had perceived him. But there was also another explanation for what had happened in the small apartment. “How about in the heat of an argument?”

  They stepped into the elevator. Abilene shook his head. “Didn’t sound like a very passionate guy to me, either.”

  “How about you?” she asked without any preamble. She pressed for the first floor.

  Abilene stared at her. This was a new twist. “Are you asking me if I’m passionate?”

  Although the thought amused him, he just didn’t see Kendra putting that sort of question to him. It didn’t jibe with what he knew of her personality.

  Was he wrong? And if so, about what, exactly? Less than twenty-four hours in the woman’s company and she was becoming one huge, intriguing enigma. A puzzle he found himself wanting to solve.

  “No,” she contradicted, a flash of embarrassment over the misunderstanding sending color up her neck to her cheeks—as did the unbidden thought of his being passionate. “What I’m asking you is if your fellow coworkers know the first thing about what makes Matt Abilene tick,” she asked. “Or do they know only what you want them to know?” Which was the more logical conclusion.

  After a moment, Abilene nodded his head. They reached the first floor and he waited for her to step out first, then darted out just before the doors closed on him.

  She didn’t tell Abilene he looked rather adorable just then, even though the thought flashed through her mind.

  “I see where you’re going with this,” he told Kendra.

  She laughed, waving away his words. “I wasn’t trying to make it a mystery—unlike who killed Summer and where our missing accountant is at the moment.”

  “Right now, I’d say the key is in their relationship,” he speculated.

  She seemed a little uncertain, even as she said, “Right now, I tend to agree.”

  Right now. Abilene smiled knowingly. “Don’t commit fully, do you?”

  She couldn’t make up her mind whether she liked his smile—or found it distractingly annoying, not to mention unsettling.

  “Not easily,” she admitted when he was obviously waiting for her to say something.

  He nodded. “Me, neither.”

  Tell me something I don’t know. But out loud, she said, “I already figured that part out,” all while sporting a pleasant, completely unreadable smile.

  Abilene followed her out to the street. “Where to now?”

  It was getting late. Shadows had begun to form, tagging one another on the ground. “I think you put in enough time on a first day,” she told him.

  He hadn’t expected that. She reminded him of someone who pushed, who worked into the small hours and expected no less from those who worked with her. “I’m not a novice,” he reminded her.

  “No,” she agreed, �
��but you do have a mother who’s waiting to see you. And we’re not about to solve this thing in a few extra hours tonight. Go, see your mother, Abilene,” she urged. “Make her feel better.” She thought of how much, after all these years, she still missed her own. “You only get one mother.”

  He snapped his fingers. “And here I was, getting ready to swing by the Mother Store to see if I could trade mine in for another model.”

  Sarcasm was a weapon—and a defense mechanism. Which was he using? “You always crack wise like that?” she asked.

  “Not always,” he admitted, his voice even, giving nothing away. And then he looked at her significantly. “Only when I’m inspired.”

  They’d come up to the car and she pressed the lock release. A small click had all four locks opening and standing at attention.

  “C’mon.” She opened the driver’s-side door. “I’ll drop you off at the precinct.”

  “Okay. I owe you a drink.”

  That stopped her for a moment. She glanced at him over the hood of the car. “How do you figure that?”

  He dropped down into his seat, then waited for her to do the same before continuing. “Isn’t the new guy supposed to buy drinks at the end of his first day?”

  Buckling up, she shut the door. Kendra shook her head just before turning on the ignition. “I was the last ‘new guy’ in our squad and they bought me drinks.”

  His laugh seemed to fill the interior of the vehicle and rippled along her skin.

  “That works, too,” he answered with an agreeable nod.

  Kendra had a feeling that he would hold her to that drink.

  * * *

  They parted in the parking lot, with Abilene going his way and Kendra, supposedly, going hers. She watched his car pulling out of the lot in the distance. Only then did she get out of her vehicle and go back upstairs.

  Tom was waiting for her. By request.

  Taking the elevator to the Missing Persons squad room, she got out, entered the room and crossed to Tom’s desk. Wearily, she dropped down into the chair positioned next to it.

  “What do you know about him?” she asked. “My new partner,” she added for clarification. And then, because it occurred to Kendra that she wasn’t being at all clear, she backtracked and said what she should have mentioned in the first place: her new partner’s name. “What do you know about Matt Abilene?”

  The wide, muscular shoulders rose and fell in a minor, offhanded movement. “Off the top of my head—nothing,” Tom admitted. “But I can ask around if you’d like.” He looked carefully at Kendra, as if trying to discern if everything was all right. “I heard that the chief gave you a new one,” he confirmed. “Is he giving you a hard time?”

  She didn’t want to answer that one way or another. To say yes would get her brother’s protective side up and Abilene wasn’t actually being condescending or disrespectful toward her, which meant that she couldn’t say that he was giving her a hard time. It was more that he was irritating her—mostly in ways she couldn’t talk about or explain, even to herself. Besides, knowing the way Tom thought, he just might interpret her words in a completely different and unwelcome way.

  So, for now, she remained evasive. “I just like to know the kind of person I’m working with, that’s all,” she said in the most innocent voice she could muster.

  “Wouldn’t you figure that out after a few days of interacting with him?” Tom asked, putting the logical assumption out there.

  For that, at least, she had an answer. “You know I’m the impatient type.”

  Tom grinned. “Which is why this new partner of yours gets more of my sympathy than you do,” her brother told her.

  Kendra eyed him impatiently. “So you’re not going to help?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  No, she had to admit that he hadn’t. And that relieved her. For a second. “You just like to yank my chain.”

  Tom didn’t bother suppressing the laugh. “Something like that.”

  Nothing new there, she thought. And then she remembered something else. Something she had jumped the gun on. Was this going to create problems now, she wondered uncertainly.

  Kendra took a breath, then said, “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “Go ahead.”

  She pressed her lips together, then pushed ahead. “Think that the chief would mind my bringing two guests with me to his Saturday brunch thing this week?”

  “Which chief?” he asked for form’s sake, although only one of them really cooked. Brian just put up the tables. “We’ve got two of them in the family now,” he reminded her, tongue in cheek. “It might be clearer if you refer to them as Uncle Andrew and Uncle Brian.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to do that just yet. They were people she respected and in Brian’s case, was honored to work with. But they weren’t her uncles. Maybe in time they would be, but not yet. Not now.

  “Doesn’t feel right, yet,” she told her brother. “And you know I’m talking about the brunches the former chief has in his house—Andrew, all right?” she tagged on, exasperated as she used the man’s name.

  Tom ignored her irritated tone. There was a more interesting question here than why her temper kept spiking. “What guests?”

  She would rather not have said anything until later, but since he asked, she had to tell him. There was no easy way around it. “Abilene and his mother.”

  “So you’re getting along with him, then,” Tom assumed.

  She wasn’t about to launch into any long explanations right now. “One thing doesn’t have anything to do with the other,” Kendra countered.

  Tom crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “All right. Educate me.”

  She sighed. “Abilene got a call at the office from his mother today. She was upset. From what I could gather, her boyfriend walked out on her. Abilene said it wasn’t the first such occurrence. That it’s a pattern.” She recited the facts as she recalled them. “She sounds like a good woman who’s made a lot of bad choices because she’s afraid of winding up alone. Apparently, there’s no other family. I just thought...”

  Kendra let her voice trail off. Tom was the smart one here, she let him fill in the blanks.

  “—that being subjected to the Cavanaugh family might help her feel less alone?” he guessed.

  “Something like that,” she acknowledged. “But I don’t want to do something that’ll make the chief think that I’m taking advantage of the so-called family connection.”

  Tom shook his head. “It’s not a ‘so-called’ family connection,” he corrected her. “It is a family connection. Our family connection. Like it or not, Kenny, Dad’s a Cavanaugh. And so are we.”

  “Yeah, I know. But—” She paused for a moment, searching for words that didn’t seem to want to materialize. “What do we do about...you know...the other family?”

  “We don’t ‘do’ anything about them. The way I see it, Kenny, we just got more family, we didn’t trade one bunch in for another. You can’t close your eyes to over twenty years of life and pretend it never happened. We thought they were our aunts and uncles, they thought they were our aunts and uncles. No reason for anything to change.”

  He was missing the huge elephant in the room—and she knew he was too smart not to see it. So why was he taking this stand?

  “Except that they’re not our aunts and uncles,” she insisted.

  “Just a technicality, Kenny. Finding out about the hospital mix-up doesn’t suddenly erase them, or make all those memories of Christmases past disappear. It sure doesn’t erase them from our lives. They wouldn’t want it and we wouldn’t want it.” He leaned forward in his chair, his voice gaining enthusiasm. “Life just got better, Kenny. And you don’t have to choose between one camp or the other. This is one of those times when you can have it all and it’s really okay.”

  He smiled at her as he rose. When she did as well, Tom gave her a quick, hard hug. “Give yourself permission to be happy again, Kenny. The rest of us are
worried about you.” And then he glanced at his watch. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a very sexy lady waiting to light up my life and I don’t want to keep her waiting any longer.”

  That would be the detective who’d transferred from New Mexico after working with her brother on her niece’s kidnapping case. Kaitlyn Two Feathers. Their family would become larger by one very soon. Kendra was happy for Tom, even as she felt an unexpected pang in her heart for what she no longer had. And maybe never did. Jason’s suicide, despite all her efforts to help him, was evidence of that.

  “Say hi to Kait for me. Tell her to treat my big brother well.”

  He grinned. “Will do.”

  She stood there, watching her brother leave and then, quietly, she doubled back to the Homicide squad room. She made her way through the nearly deserted room until she reached her desk.

  Taking a deep breath, Kendra sat down and started to go over all her notes on the current case from the beginning.

  Again.

  Chapter 6

  Sabrina Abilene’s impressively unlined, heart-shaped face lit up when she saw her son walking toward her booth.

  She’d been sitting there for the last half hour and was thinking about leaving. She knew that Matthew’s career didn’t always remain between the lines. Sometimes he was forced to work around the clock. And while she worried about him a great deal because of his chosen career, she was also incredibly proud of him.

  “You came,” she cried once Matt was within earshot. Surprise and pleasure were evident in equal parts in her voice. “I didn’t think that you were going to.”

  Matt slid into the seat opposite his mother. This was where they came whenever they wanted to celebrate an occasion. Or just to get away and talk.

  It was the latter he was faced with now.

  Somewhere along the line, their roles had gotten reversed and he’d become the parent while she was the child, at least when it came to matters of the heart.

  “When have I not come?” he asked. Then, before she could reply, he said quietly, “You’re getting me confused with all those other men in your life, Mom. The ones who keep disappointing you and running out on you.”