by Paula Graves
"He was murdered," Hannigan answered.
"Oh." Marie took the spoon out of the pot, scraped the chili residue off on the inside rim of the pot and laid the utensil on a small metal plate that seemed to be for that very purpose. She turned off the stove and removed the pot from the burner before she turned back to face them. Her eyes were still dry, but she had aged about a decade in the span of seconds.
"I'm so sorry, Marie," Hannigan said.
"Do you know who did it?"
"Not yet," Brody answered, letting his left hand settle against the small of his partner's back. He felt her body tremble beneath his fingertips, and while his ego might like to think it a response to his touch, he was pretty sure it was delayed reaction to finding her cousin brutally murdered.
She was tough as nails, but even tough girls had their breaking points.
"We're going to find out," Hannigan said firmly.
"I don't know if Dwayne even has a suit that still fits," Marie said. "He stopped going to Sunday school so long ago."
Hannigan glanced at Brody with an expression he'd never seen before on her familiar face.
Helplessness.
"Why don't I help you find a suit?" Brody offered, giving Hannigan's back a final stroke before he got up and went around the bar to Marie.
Marie seemed startled by the offer but managed a wan smile. "Okay. His room is at the back."
As Marie started slowly toward the back of the house, Brody turned to look at Hannigan one more time. She was looking down at her hands, which were so tightly clenched her knuckles had gone white. She didn't turn to look at him, her profile distant and untouchable.
He felt an answering hollowness in the pit of his stomach as he followed Marie Barlow to her dead son's room.
"So, you're not going to talk to me for the rest of the night?"
Brody's murmur filled the heavy silence that had fallen over the car from the moment they'd left her cousin's house for the cross-town trip to her own little bungalow on Rosedale Drive. Though his tone was so low as to be almost imperceptible, it was such an intrusion on the quiet that it sent a little shockwave jangling through Hannigan's nerves.
"I think I'm out of things to say," she admitted.
"I know you said you weren't close to Dwayne, but you seem to be taking this whole thing pretty hard."
She didn't know how to answer his unspoken question. She hadn't lied; she and Dwayne hadn't spoken ten words to each other in the past decades. Her job and his lack of scruples had conspired to keep them spinning away from each other any time their orbits came into accidental contact.
But there had been a time, years ago when they were both just kids, when Dwayne had been her favorite cousin. Unlike her older brothers, who saw her as a nuisance when she tagged along behind them, trying to keep up with their rough and tumble activities, Dwayne had welcomed her as an ally and a compatriot in his own adventures. They'd hiked mountain trails, fished woodland streams, pitched baseballs and footballs and done a hundred different things that had delighted her tomboy heart and sealed a bond of friendship between them that had lasted until their teenage years.
She felt Brody's silence like a touch. He was giving her space and time to sort out her thoughts and feelings, but there was also an element of expectation. He was her partner. What she thought, what she felt—those things were important to him.
And not just because he was her partner. Or her friend.
They mattered because one night in late August, only a few weeks ago, she and Brody had damned near gone all the way in the front seat of her car on a Lovers' Lane stakeout.
And as much as she tried to pretend she'd learned her lesson about mixing pleasure and business, she knew her lingerie shopping trip earlier that day had been all about being prepared the next time the opportunity to sleep with her partner came around.
"You know I love you, don't you?" Brody said.
She closed her eyes to keep herself from sneaking a look at him. She didn't know if she was ready to see what she might find shining in those dark, sexy eyes of his. "I know."
"I'm not talking about wanting you, although that's also true," he added. "I'm just talking about the other kind of love. You're my partner. I want you to be happy and safe and have only good things in your life."
Damn it. Brody knew better than to say things like that to her.
"Brody—"
The forward movement of the car stopped, and the engine noised died with a click of the ignition key. The silence in the car deepened until it filled her ears with its oppression.
"Hannigan?"
She opened her eyes. Brody parked in her driveway instead of at the curb, as he usually did. She turned a questioning look his way.
He unlatched his seatbelt, letting it snap back into the holder. His gaze held hers, full of kindness but also steel.
"What are you doing?" she asked, her heartbeat quickening.
"I'm staying with you tonight."
Chapter Five
"You're overthinking this," Brody said.
Hannigan looked up from her bowl of soup. "Overthinking what?" she asked, although she knew exactly what she was overthinking and why she was overthinking it.
"I'm not going to try to sleep with you."
Her lip quirked on the right side. "Good to know."
Brody's eyes darkened with frustration. "That doesn't mean I don't want to sleep with you."
"Duly noted."
"Hannigan, don't do this."
She put her spoon down with a sigh. "Brody, why couldn't you be one of those guys who doesn't like to talk about his feelings?"
"Because someone in this relationship has to be at least nominally verbal?"
Relationship, she thought with an inner grimace. Since when did they have a relationship? "We made out in the front seat of my car. Once."
"I told you I didn't think we could go back to the way things were before that happened. I still don't."
"Brody, go home."
"No."
"I don't want to be handled!" She pushed her chair back and stood up, her cheeks burning. "I don't want—" She stopped short, dropping back into her chair as her legs wobbled beneath her. Damn it. She didn't know what she wanted. Or didn't want.
Or even why she was trying to push him away when he was just trying to make sure she was okay.
"I'm sorry."
He got up and walked around the table, crouching in front of her. Taking her hand, he looked up at her with gentle eyes. "I will do whatever you want. Even go. Just tell me what you want."
She touched his face, wishing she were as fearless as he thought she was. "I don't want to talk. Okay? But I don't want you to go."
He nodded. "Okay."
"And I want you to clear the dishes."
His mouth curved slowly into a lopsided grin that made her gut twist into knots. "Now you're taking advantage of my sweet nature."
She started to drop her hand away, then changed her mind, lifting her other hand to cradle his face. His beard shadow scraped lightly against her palms, sending little sparks of pleasure through her. If only it were easy to just follow her instincts. To take a chance and see where this thing between her and Brody took them.
But everything was at stake. Everything.
She dropped her hands away from his face, looking away when she saw the faint glimmer of hurt in his eyes. He pushed to his feet and started clearing their dishes from the table.
"I'm not immune," she said quietly.
"To my boyish charm?" he countered lightly, scraping the leftover soup into a plastic container for storage in the refrigerator. He was frugal for a guy who came from money. One of his boyish charms.
"That and your smokin' hot body," she answered, smiling a little when he slanted a look her way. "It's just—working with you is the best thing in my life. Professionally, we're so well suited. So in tune."
"And you don't want to risk that."
"No."
"I think it may be
too late."
She looked up sharply, alarm rising in her throat. "No."
"I'm not as strong as you are. I'm not as controlled. I can't compartmentalize my life the way you do—you know I can't." He put the leftovers in the refrigerator, closed the door and leaned against the counter. "I have this picture in my mind of how good we'd be together, and sometimes, it's all I can think about."
"You mean how good we'd be in bed."
He took a deep breath, his expression deadly serious. "I mean how good we'd be in a relationship. A real one. More than just sex."
She stared at him. "Since when?"
"Since you told me to go home, and I realized I belong here. With you."
"This is too fast." Restless energy pushed her to her feet, propelled her toward the kitchen window. Outside, nightfall had nearly reached completion, with only the faintest indigo glow backlighting the trees in her backyard. "Can't we slow this down?"
"How?"
She made herself turn to look at him. "Stay tonight. Hold my hand. Can that be enough?"
He released a pent-up breath. "You tax a man's control, Stella Hannigan. But, yes. That can be enough." His eyes darkened with intent. "For now."
When he looked at her that way, she found her own cautious nature slipping away, unleashing the impetuous side that wanted nothing more than to push Brody down on the table and finish what they'd started That Night at Magnolia Park Lookout.
She reined it in and took his hand, leading him out of the kitchen into her front room. Releasing his hand, she crossed to the stereo and put on a mix CD she knew he liked. The Eagles started things off with "Lyin' Eyes," and she turned to find Brody on her sofa, patting the cushion next to him with a smile on his face.
She couldn't hold back her own smile as she sat beside him, leaning toward him as he draped his arm over her shoulders.
"Too fast?" he murmured.
She shook her head. "This is nice."
He rested his head against hers and fell silent, letting the Eagles fill the conversational gap. After the Eagles came Marshall Tucker Band and "Fire on the Mountain," followed by Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Bad Moon Rising." Tension slowly flowed from her limbs, and her eyes drooped shut.
She was back standing in an alley suddenly, the brick walls closing in. And from nowhere, a frog gig was flying at her throat, too fast to evade.
Too fast to miss.
She jolted forward, her hand rising to her throat.
Brody's arm tightened around her. "Hannigan?"
She forced her breathing back to normal. "Dozed off."
"Nightmare?"
The image lingered. "Do you think Dwayne saw it coming?"
"His death?"
"The frog gig."
"Oh. I don't know," Brody admitted. "Probably not. I think it happened so quickly he didn't know what hit him."
She hoped so. She hadn't cared much for her cousin's life choices in recent years, but he'd been family. And, for a few years as kids, they'd been damned near inseparable.
"Dwayne used to take me fishing," she said after a few more minutes of uninterrupted southern rock from the CD player. "Up on Sweetbriar Creek. One time, we caught this enormous bluegill—had to weigh close to a pound. It was as big as my daddy's hand, and he had a big hand. My brothers were so jealous."
"Did you eat it?"
She looked up at him with horror. "No. I took it back to the creek. We'd kept the poor thing in a bucket of creek water long enough for my dad to get home from work to take a look. My brothers wanted to fry him, but by then I was kind of attached."
"I'm surprised you didn't try to keep him as a pet."
She smiled. "That was my intention, but my daddy sat me down and explained that wild creatures like that bluegill didn't belong in captivity. Those fish we see in aquariums are delicate little house fish, he explained. I had caught a big, beautiful wild fish, and my choice was either to eat him or put him back. That was nature's way."
"So you put him back."
"Well, I'd already named him Luther, and I didn't think I could eat something I'd named."
Brody laughed, hugging her lightly with his draped arm. "How old were you?"
"I guess maybe nine or ten." It had been shortly before Clem McAlpin had come to town. Back when she'd still clung to some of her innocence. She pushed the bleak memory from her head. She never talked about McAlpin. Not with her family, who knew everything. And not with Brody, who didn't have a clue.
If they were to have a real relationship, she realized, she'd have to tell him the whole story. Not just the official version.
The thought made her stomach twist into knots.
"When did he go bad?" Brody asked.
An ache of regret settled in the center of her chest. She had a habit of attributing everything that had gone wrong in life to that summer when McAlpin came into their little town and turned everything upside down for her family, but the truth was, Dwayne hadn't really been affected by what happened. Not the way she had.
"I'm not sure there was any particular moment in time where he crossed over to the dark side," she admitted. "More like several small things finally adding up to large things until they tipped the scale. Dwayne loved to play and hated to work. He never reached that point that most people do where he realized that work is how you earn your play."
"Do you think he's the one who stole your mother's Lotto ticket?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. It seems sort of unimportant at this point. And if it's somehow behind Dwayne's murder, my mother could never enjoy the money anyway."
"Then we'll hope it's not connected." He gave her shoulder a light squeeze. "I really liked meeting your mother. She makes me think of you in some ways."
She shot him a skeptical look. "Really?"
"Really."
"I've often thought I'm a bit of a disappointment to my mother. Her only daughter, her one chance to buy frilly clothes and do girly things, and she ends up with me."
"You make it sound as if you're mannish." Brody's gaze dipped to her chest and back up to meet her eyes. "You most definitely are not."
"You know what I mean."
"I think your mother loves you like crazy. And she respects you, too."
"And, apparently, fears me."
He brushed his lips lightly against the side of her head. "You can be formidable."
"When you're five-foot-four and dealing with big, tough cops and big, bad crooks, you have to be a little formidable, or you don't survive."
"I imagine it's hard to turn that off when you're with family and friends, huh?" There was no censure in his words or tone, just a gentle statement of reality.
It still stung a little. "I guess I need to work on that."
"But not with me." He kissed her hair again. "Don't change for me. I don't want that."
She thought with embarrassment of her trip to the lingerie shop earlier that morning. Was it that recently? It seemed to have happened in another lifetime. She'd been so frazzled, trying to figure out how to make herself more attractive to Brody, even though she hadn't yet decided whether or not to act on the attraction between them. It seemed frivolous and silly now, after all that had happened.
"So if, for instance," she said, "we ever made it into the bedroom, you wouldn't be expecting frilly underthings or skimpy peignoirs or anything?"
She darted a look at him and found his dark eyes watching her with amusement. "The only thing I'm expecting in the bedroom is you. Naked. What you have to take off to get there is really not that interesting to me."
She laughed. "Duly noted."
His eyes narrowed in a not-very-subtle leer. "You sound skeptical. Want me to prove it?"
Turning to face him, she touched his lean jaw, sliding her thumb lightly over his full bottom lip. "I believe you."
He feigned pain. "And he swings and misses!"
She leaned in and pressed her mouth against his, lingering a moment as pleasure spread like heat fire through her chest. He li
fted his hand to her cheek, his long fingers playing lightly across her skin.
She pulled back and looked at him, a smile tugging at her lips. "You don't have to stay here tonight. I'm fine."
"Is that a request?"
"No. If you want to stay, you're welcome."
He kissed her forehead. "Then I'll stay."
She snuggled against him, trying to close her mind to all the arguments against changing her relationship with Brody. She'd gone over and over them since that first kiss, convinced herself a dozen times to close the door on the very notion, but when it came time to say the words, to put an end to any thoughts of exploring their sexual attraction, she just couldn't do it.
So what did that tell her?
"Stop thinking, Hannigan." Brody's voice was a rumble in her ear. "No decisions have to be made tonight."
No, she thought. Not tonight.
But soon.
Chapter Six
One thing was for certain. Mel Cooley was not the man Brody had seen driving the Kawasaki Ninja 650 the day before outside the alley where they'd found Dwayne Barlow's body. Cooley was about five inches too short and a hundred pounds too heavy.
"Dude, this is so messed up," he said again with a shake of his shaggy head. "Are you sure it was Dwayne?"
Hannigan, Brody saw, was starting to lose patience. "He's my cousin. I'm sure it was him. Did you see him at all yesterday or not?"
"Well, yeah, he came by the shop a little after lunch time to see if I wanted to knock off early and have a beer with him at Bug Swallows."
"Bigelows," Hannigan translated to Brody. "You couldn't go?"
Cooley angled a look toward the open doorway to the hall. Across from the break room where they had met to conduct the interview, the door to the manager's office was open. "No. My shift wasn't up," he said carefully. Brody read his answer to mean that his manager had been in the auto body shop the previous afternoon, precluding any chance of leaving work before his shift was over.
"How did he seem to you?" Brody asked. "Happy? Excited? Worried?"
Cooley frowned, his forehead folding into three fleshy ridges. "He seemed normal, I guess. He's always happy."
