LOVER UNDER COVER

by Justine Davis

  "Well, well—isn't that a coincidence."

  Her arched brows, a bare shade darker than the sunset color of her hair, furrowed. "Isn't what a coincidence?"

  "I was born and grew up in a place very much like Marina Heights. Just as rough, and with the proverbial mean streets."

  "And now you're going for the silver spoon?"

  He laughed. "On a cop's salary? Hardly."

  "Protecting them, then."

  It was so close to what he'd been thinking moments ago that it startled him, but he'd had a great deal of practice in hiding his reactions in four years of undercover and narcotics work.

  Which reminded him of something.

  "Just how did you know who I was, Ms. Murphy?"

  "Eddie described you to me. Your partner, too."

  "And on the basis of that, you slapped me? What if you'd been wrong?"

  "I wasn't." She gave him a look that made him feel suddenly empathetic with snakes in zoos. "Eddie described you perfectly."

  "Oh? And what exactly did he say?"

  "Besides what you looked like? That you were two people. Rough, tough, and straight. Very macho. And also smooth, charming, and very pretty."

  Quisto's mouth quirked. "I'd thank you, if I wasn't reasonably certain you meant that as an insult, not a compliment."

  "Thank Eddie. But you can't, can you?"

  It hit him again, the realization of why she'd come here. He'd postponed dealing with it, afraid the nausea that had taken up residence in his gut would get the upper hand if he tried to think about it now. But he wasn't sure it was going to get any better.

  "What happened?" he asked again.

  "I told you. He was murdered."

  "How? When? Where? Any suspects?"

  "Suspects? Do you really have to ask? You know perfectly well who did it." She glared at him. "I notice you didn't ask why. Because you already know, don't you? The Pack obviously found out he'd informed on them."

  Quisto gave her an assessing look. "For the moment, let's set aside the myriad of other things that could have happened and say that's true. How did they find out?"

  She blinked. "How should I know?"

  "I don't know, Ms. Murphy. But then, as far as I knew, the only people who knew that Eddie had talked to us were me, my partner, and Eddie himself." He kept his gaze on her face. "But apparently I was wrong."

  It took her a moment, but only a moment. She looked stunned, then, quickly, angry. "I don't think I like what you're implying, Detective Romero."

  "Then give me another explanation. And," he added as she looked at him, "if you're thinking of suggesting my partner or me, forget it."

  "Actually," she said, a dispirited expression skewing her delicate features, "I was going to suggest Eddie."

  Quisto didn't react immediately. He was noticing how sad she looked and trying not to notice how much it bothered him to see her like that. He'd only just met her, and just because she'd come upon him like an avenging angel, that was no reason to go all soft because she now looked like that angel cast out.

  "Eddie?" he finally said, thinking he must be truly desperate to avoid the reality of the news she'd brought, if he was resorting to that kind of distraction.

  "He was always bragging. You know, exaggerating things, to make himself sound like a big man."

  "I know." His brows lowered. "It's possible. He was a mouthy kid. He could have bragged to the wrong person. Or to someone who sold the information to the Pack to make his fix money for the day."

  She nodded. He should, he supposed, give her credit for not trying to blame him for this, as well. Eddie had been a loudmouth, but Quisto had recognized the symptoms of a kid trying desperately to find his place in a world that seemed to have already condemned him to what it thought his place should be. He'd fought that battle himself, although it had been easier for him, with the big, loving family he had to back him up. And a mother with an indomitable spirit and a will of iron, who refused to allow any of her children to be sucked into the maelstrom of the streets.

  Eddie had been small, wiry, bursting with teenage energy, enough energy that he hadn't yet succumbed to the fatalistic resignation so common to his peers, the view that life sucked and then you died. That there was no way out, that in Marina Heights, if you were born poor you stayed poor, while right next door in Marina del Mar lay the personification of the American dream.

  Damn it, Eddie, why couldn't you just stay out of it, like I told you to?

  His jaw tightened. Even after eight years as a cop, eight years of seeing the wide variety of awful things people could do to each other, Quisto still found himself, every once in a while, astounded by the ugliness. Eddie could have made it; he'd had the drive, the determination. He'd even talked to Quisto once about maybe becoming a cop someday. And he would have been a good one, Quisto thought. He could talk that talk and get people to open up to him, and he'd had those big, brown, innocent eyes…

  "Damn," he whispered. And he sat down again on the bench, shaking his head, closing his eyes against the image of a kid clinging to some small bit of hope and innocence in a world that did its best to destroy both.

  He opened his eyes when he sensed the woman sitting down beside him. She was looking at him with a curious expression that was tinged with doubt, as if she weren't quite as certain about him as she had been.

  He should be gratified that he'd shaken her conviction about his culpability in Eddie's death. But he wasn't feeling that way at all.

  He was feeling guilty. And responsible.

  And very much as if the dauntless Ms. Murphy had been absolutely right.

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Detective Quisto Romero hadn't been at all what she expected, Caitlin Murphy thought.

  She stirred the paint in the half-full can, staring at the swirl of cheerful yellow color thoughtfully.

  He hadn't been the arrogant tough guy with a flip attitude and a smart mouth that she had thought would be just the type to appeal to Eddie Salazar. Or the kind of man she had pictured at Eddie's admiring description of "Rough, tough, and straight … muy macho."

  And he hadn't been the cool, uninvolved manipulator she had imagined he would be, either.

  No, Quisto Romero was none of those. He had an obvious edge, but she supposed that was inherent in the job. He might indeed be arrogant, but it might just as easily be a surfeit of the confidence that she also guessed was necessary for the job. And whatever his attitude, she had no doubt that he had been shaken by the news of Eddie's death.

  She lifted the paint can by its wire handle, tilted it and emptied the contents into the roller tray. She'd been putting off painting the back wall of the Zone for weeks now, trying to catch up on everything else her recent battle with the city council over her use permit had put her behind on. But this morning she needed to do something that didn't require her to concentrate on numbers, and forms that went on forever.

  But Quisto Romero certainly fit the rest of Eddie's description, she thought, as she picked up the roller and began to immerse it in the paint. Smooth, charming, and very pretty. Eddie had said it jokingly, along with some tales about his idol's effect on the ladies that she had thought were exaggeration. But now that she'd met him, Caitlin thought the words perhaps a bit of an understatement. Because Quisto Romero was indeed very smooth, very charming … and, yes, she admitted, he could even be considered very pretty, if you went in for dark, smoldering good looks, perfect golden-brown skin, and eyes that made you think of a choirboy gone bad.

  He was especially striking next to his blue-eyed, blond partner, she thought, wondering for a moment what kind of woman had the fortitude to marry a cop, even a good-looking one like Detective Romero's partner. Or Romero himself. If he was married. The teasing comments the big blond man had made seemed to indicate otherwise, but she was too far past the innocent stage of life to believe a wedding ring kept a man from fooling around if he wanted to.

  And Detective
Quisto Romero's marital status had nothing to do with her, she told herself firmly. Nor did his attitude, or his charm.

  But he was an interesting man. Except for those moments when he'd restrained her—easily, it had seemed, despite the fact that she was a relatively strong woman, and he looked more wiry than bulkily muscled—he'd been very gentlemanly. Even after she slapped him, even after she accused him of being responsible for Eddie's death, even when he was angry, he'd been almost courtly in his response.

  It was, in part, the slightly formal syntax of his speech that had given her that impression, she knew, but not completely. It went deeper than that, as if this were a man who had grown up with manners. An odd thing to think about a cop, perhaps, but once she calmed down, she had quickly realized that Detective Romero wasn't the kind of cop she'd anticipated.

  She lifted the roller to the dark wall behind the soda bar. It was a huge expanse, broken only by the counter that held the soda dispensers, the door to the bathroom on one end and the door to her small office on the other. It had been covered with graffiti when she took over the place, and the brown paint that had been donated had been the easiest way to cover it and get the club open. But now she wanted a brighter mood and had talked one of the local hardware stores into a ridiculously low price on the much more cheerful color. She spread a wide band of yellow paint, looked at it and sighed. Two coats. Definitely two coats. She began to work in earnest. But that didn't stop her thoughts.

  Detective Romero hadn't taken news of Eddie's murder lightly, she admitted. At one point, he'd looked almost ill. And that had caught her completely off guard; she had never expected such a strong reaction from the man she held responsible for that murder.

  And she still did hold him responsible, she insisted silently. Charm and manners and looks aside, Detective Quisto Romero was the one who, intentionally or not, had started Eddie down the road that cost him his life. She still held him responsible for that, and that was why he was so near the surface of her mind, not because she'd found him quite different from what she'd expected him to be.

  Besides, looks meant little, manners could be assumed, and all that charm could just as easily be a facade. After five years in Marina Heights, she knew all about facades. And she knew that some of them were no more than a thin disguise for viciousness.

  Or a coat of paint over ugliness.

  * * *

  He hadn't been to Trinity West in a long time, Quisto thought. In fact, the last time he'd been anywhere near the police station, so called because of its location on Trinity Street West

  , the street that had also given the surrounding neighborhood its name, was for the funeral of Chief Lipton, a year and a half ago.

  He glanced around once more before turning into the parking lot. Trinity West—the station and the neighborhood—hadn't changed much on the surface. Although it was on the western edge of Marina Heights, just a stone's throw away from Marina del Mar, it was a world apart from the wealthy town in attitude and perspective. There were prosperous sections in Marina Heights, and Trinity West was one of them, but there were still more areas that bore the unmistakable signs of neglect and decay. Areas set apart not so much by ethnicity—there were as many Caucasians as Hispanics or any other group in most places—as by degrees of poverty. Areas marked heavily with graffiti, that red flag of anger and arrogance and territoriality.

  But Quisto knew there had been a lot of changes that weren't so visible. He'd seen the statistics, seen the amazing drop in the felony crime rate over the past year. Trinity West had been a department under siege when their chief was murdered. But Miguel de los Reyes, the captain who had replaced him—a man who had also been wounded in that drive-by shooting—had taken hold immediately upon his recovery and appointment as interim chief, running things with almost a siege mentality, adopting techniques that were sometimes called by detractors—most of whom didn't have to live in Marina Heights—nothing less than guerrilla warfare, and would no doubt have been frowned upon if they hadn't produced such spectacular results. The law-abiding residents of the town were ready to nominate Chief de los Reyes for sainthood.

  The few Trinity West cops Quisto had run into in the past year were a little rough around the edges, a little cold in the eyes, and he didn't doubt that their reputation for now being the toughest, most effective small police force in the county was well deserved.

  He parked in a visitor's space near the front doors, not wanting to deal with the hassle of gaining admittance to the gated, secure lot in the back for the short time he was sure he'd be here.

  Unlike the Marina del Mar station, which was a pleasant modern structure on a hill with a view of the Pacific, Trinity West was a square, uninteresting-looking two-story building, with tall rectangular windows all around that mostly overlooked other buildings and a weed-filled empty lot. The regular glass that had been installed when the station was originally built had belatedly been replaced with bullet-proof material when a sniper had explicitly demonstrated what marvelous targets the windows were at night when lit from inside.

  Quisto checked in at the desk, displayed his badge and identified himself, and asked for the detective in charge of the murder of Eduardo Salazar. The young cadet, dressed in a uniform that appeared to have been cleaned and pressed just moments before, looked at him blankly.

  "A 187? When?"

  "Yesterday."

  The cadet shook his head. "Haven't heard a thing about it. And I read the log this morning."

  "It was a juvenile. A fourteen-year-old."

  The young man's brows rose. "Now, I would have heard about that." He smiled proudly. "I know pretty much everything that happens around here."

  Quisto stifled a sigh; gung ho was so wearying. He told himself there must have been a time when he had been just as full of energy and enthusiasm; he just couldn't remember it at the moment.

  "I'll just wander down to Detectives, then," he said, "and see if I can find out what I need."

  The cadet shrugged, as if to say that if he didn't know about it, it hadn't happened. But he pointed Quisto down the hall and buzzed him through the security door into the detective-division reception area.

  The older woman with steel-gray hair seated behind the reception desk gave him the same blank look the cadet had.

  "No, we had no murders reported yesterday. I'm certain of that, because that set a new record for us. Twenty-two days without one."

  Marina del Mar was more likely to go twenty-two years without one, Quisto thought. He'd been there eight years now, and he'd seen only one. And that had been the first one in a decade. Trinity West was definitely a different place.

  "This was a juvenile. Age fourteen."

  She looked thoughtful for a moment. "We did have a juvie DB yesterday…"

  She turned to look at a large book that lay open behind her, apparently listing the cases and the detective assigned to them. Marina del Mar had used a similar system prior to everything's being computerized a couple of years ago. Apparently Trinity West's budget didn't run to sophisticated computer case-tracking equipment. The woman turned back to him, apparently having found the dead-body case she'd referred to.

  "Detective Butler is handling that. He's here, if you'd like to speak to him."

  "Yes, please."

  "I'll buzz him for you."

  Moments later, a tall, rangy man with a shock of thick, pale blond hair that fell forward over his left brow stepped out into the reception area.

  "Detective Romero?"

  Quisto nodded, feeling suddenly old at thirty; this man barely looked old enough to have graduated from any police academy. Tan and fit, he also looked as if he should be lolling on the beach ten miles due west, at Marina del Mar.

  "I'm Gage Butler." He held out a hand, and Quisto took it. The man's grasp was firm but not crushing; no challenge or testing here. "Come on back, and we'll see if what I've got is what you want. Want some coffee?"

  Quisto declined politely as he followed the man back into
a large room filled with desks in various stages of disarray, set up in pairs, back-to-back, in clusters of varying sizes. Some were occupied, most were not; he'd evidently been lucky to find Detective Butler here. Phones rang regularly, adding to the backdrop of blended voices from those investigators who were here. It was a familiar mixture of sounds to Quisto.

  A long, low bookcase on the far wall held books that were also familiar to any detective division, penal codes, volumes of the Physician's Desk Reference, and the ubiquitous tools of any investigator, telephone books from all over the country. Above the bookcase was a bulletin board with the requisite Wanted posters, crime warnings and advisories from other departments on missing persons and property and unidentified bodies. It was an atmosphere Quisto, as any cop would, felt immediately comfortable in, although this office lacked some of the modern equipment he was used to, and showed a lot more wear and tear than his home office did. Butler gestured him into a chair beside one of the neater desks behind a low divider labeled with a sign declaring it Juvenile and Sex Crimes. Quisto sat down and relaxed, resting his right ankle atop his left knee.

  "Pam said you wanted to know about the juvie DB we turned up yesterday?" Butler asked, setting aside three file folders on his desk and picking up the one beneath them.

  Quisto nodded. "I may know him."

  The Trinity West detective flipped open the front of the pale tan folder. "We got an ID from someone who said she knew the kid, but nothing from the family yet."

  "That wouldn't have been a redhead with a temper, would it?" Quisto asked, rubbing reflexively at his cheek.

  Butler grinned suddenly, and he looked even younger than before. "You've met Caitlin, then?"

  "Caitlin?"

  "Caitlin Murphy. Strawberry blonde, big blue eyes?"

  Quisto lifted a brow. "That guess didn't take long. You know her?"

  "Not as well as I'd like, but apparently I'm not her type," Butler said, his mouth twisting wryly. "She's … an amazing woman. More guts than sense, but an amazing woman."