Blazing Star

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Through his regulation jacket, Karen could feel the masculine strength of his corded biceps. His tense breathing seemed to match her own, heightening her keen awareness of his powerful warmth. She didn’t want to be touched by his humanity, his maleness, the vulnerable corners of his heart. It was so much easier to see him as the enemy. So much easier to keep a hostile distance.

Brick turned away from her sharply, breaking her hold on his arm. While Karen swallowed her hurt, he stared out the window for a long, quiet moment, then confessed, “Captain, I’ve got a lot of reasons to resent you. Deep in my heart, I know that most of them don’t have a lot to do with you as a person. I’m sorry I’ve been so damn hard to work with.”

To her surprise, Karen said, “I’m sorry, too.”

He managed a thin smile. His dimples barely winked. “When I said most of them didn’t have a lot to do with you, I didn’t mean I like the way you’re running the station. You can be a bear. I just meant that...if I’m going to hate you, I ought to hate you for the right reasons. All this other baggage—my promotion, Mark’s death—well, that’s not playing fair.”

Karen had to admire Brick’s ethics. Even when he was angry, he seemed like a man she could trust. He’d come a long way in the past two days, and she didn’t want to push him. Still, she had to ask, “I don’t suppose you could consider not hating me at all? The men will take their cue from you. I’d rather not spend the next few years on the outside looking in.”

Brick studied her for a long, thoughtful moment. “You’ve spent most of your career that way, haven’t you, Captain?” he perceptively observed. “On the outside looking in.”

Reluctantly she nodded. It was too obvious to deny. “I’m a woman doing a man’s job in a man’s world, Bauer. I’m always staring at somebody’s back.” She paused a moment, then went on to say, “I am who I am, Lieutenant. I can’t be anybody else.”

“No,” he quietly agreed, his blue eyes finally showing a glimmer of warmth. “I guess you can’t. And frankly...I don’t think you should have to be. I’m sorry if I made you feel that...well, that the real Karen Keppler wasn’t welcome here.”

Karen had no idea how to reply to that, but fortunately, she didn’t have to say anything. Brick abruptly ended their heart-to-heart talk by opening his door and hopping out of the car. He didn’t open Karen’s door for her—some policemen actually had tried to—but he did keep the diner door from slamming in her face as she followed him inside.

Blocked by his impressive height and broad shoulders, Karen couldn’t see around Brick to get a good look at the place, but she could certainly smell the pepperoni and hear the cheery repartee. The instant he set foot inside, half a dozen people raised a hand or called out, “Hey, Brick!” while Brick himself gave the group one of those dazzling grins that felled Karen every time it was cast in her direction.

One grizzled old farmer called out, “I hear that new she-bear is blistering your backside, boy! How can we help you get rid of her?”

The fellow next to him joshed, “Oh, Brick don’t need no help. Just you wait. He’ll have that filly on the run in no time. Everybody knows that captain’s chair is Brick’s rightful place.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” said a woman behind the counter in a pink uniform, an old-fashioned beehive and nurse’s shoes. The name tag said Marge, and the tone of her voice announced quite clearly that she was proud to own the place. She snapped a dish towel at Brick, smacking him sharply on his badge as she grinned at him.

Brick stepped aside so Karen could see everybody in the restaurant better, and so everybody could see her. Marge swallowed a small gasp as she read the name on Karen’s badge, and gave an embarrassed grin.

“Marge, this is Captain Karen Keppler,” Brick declared with more dignity than Karen thought she could have managed in the same situation. And then, as the room went from jovially cheerful to starkly silent, he said, “I imagine if you serve the captain one of your corned beef sandwiches, you’ll have a friend for life.”

Under the circumstances, it was a gift...far more than Karen had expected from Brick Bauer. “Nice to meet you, Marge,” she said cordially.

“Nice to meet you, uh, Captain.”

Karen was about to feign an enthusiastic comment about corned beef—even though she hated it—when Brick started ushering her toward a booth in the back. As he sat down, her eyes met his with open gratitude, and he looked back with a curious blend of pleasure and discomfort.

Suddenly she felt ashamed of how crusty she’d been with him ever since she’d arrived in Tyler. He was a man, and her promotion had certainly stripped him of his pride before his friends. How many men would have treated her with warmth under the circumstances?

Yet abruptly, to Karen’s astonishment, Brick smiled. It didn’t seem like an accident this time; it didn’t seem artificial or strained. He looked like a man who was happy to stop for lunch with a friend or a colleague. Who was maybe even proud to be seen with a beautiful woman. Who might be pleased to know that the woman in question secretly thought he was the sexiest man she’d ever seen.

Unable to stop herself, Karen found herself grinning back, thrilled to see those blue eyes sparkle, thrilled to share even the briefest moment of camaraderie with Brick. Her happiness grew as she heard him say to Marge with deceptive nonchalance, “The captain says it’s her treat today, so you better start running her a tab.”

Karen swallowed hard as she realized that Brick had just handed Marge Peterson—and everybody else within earshot—his personal letter of recommendation. He could have let this crowd assume that he was stuck with her today because he couldn’t refuse to eat lunch with his captain. Instead he’d found a way to say, “I’ll vouch for Karen Keppler.”

It was nickels and dimes, but it was a start.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_9de539c6-a546-53e6-83e6-7bdf7308c774)

BY THE END of Karen’s first week on the job, Brick had resigned himself to accepting her captaincy. They were certainly on much better terms than they’d been the first time she’d rousted him from the shower, but most of the time she still remained pretty formal, especially at work. At home or alone in her office she sometimes said something downright friendly, and if Brick really worked at it, he could get her to laugh. But in front of the men she was still all business, and in their presence Brick made sure to treat her with the utmost respect. They were still wary around her, but they kept their anger in check. Steve still didn’t trust her, and said so on a regular basis. Cindy Lou cowered every time Karen entered the room. Orson Clayton had bought a larger shirt and had gone on a diet. Everybody knew but Karen.

Everybody also knew that there was no point in worrying about a woman who’d been dead for forty years, but Karen insisted on pursuing that investigation, too. She’d even set up an appointment to talk privately with Zachary Phelps, who’d been chief of police back then. Naturally Zachary had notified Brick at once and had confidentially reported the gist of the conversation. Karen didn’t know that, either.

She also didn’t know that although Judson had divorced Margaret on grounds of desertion years ago, he’d never gotten over her. Proof of her death, even now, would rock him. It would devastate Alyssa. Brick dreaded having to break such grim news, but it was not a job that he’d entrust to anybody else. The Ingallses were practically family.

When Joe Santori had discovered the body some months ago, Brick had gone through the motions of a preliminary investigation. When he’d found out that Margaret Ingalls’s dentist was dead, Paul had told him that the time-consuming task of tracking down her dental records would have to wait until after he finished the legwork on a current case or two. Paul had kept him busy with something else ever since.

But Captain Curvaceous had insisted that Brick hit the trail of the dental records again, and to his surprise, he’d turned up some new leads at once. A few quick calls to the dental association in Chicago had netted him the necessary records. The overworked county coroner had promised to cross-check them with the deceased’s teeth as soon as possible and get back to him sometime in the next week or two.

In the meantime, he had an investigation of his own to pursue, one he kept quite diligently from Karen. A few discreet calls here and there had sent out the hounds, and the first to report came to Brick by mid-December from Bill Riley, an old pal from the police academy. Nowadays Bill was a lieutenant at the Belton substation, with his eye on the captain’s chair.

“Sorry I’m late,” Bill apologized as he joined Brick for lunch at a coffee shop on the highway one Friday afternoon. It was about halfway between Belton and Tyler, a natural place to get together to catch up on old times, which they did every month or so. “We just got hit for the second time by two punks in a blue van. I had to check out an anonymous tip on my way here, but it didn’t pan out.”

“That’s okay. Sorry you couldn’t nail the guys,” commiserated Brick, who was enjoying spending his day off in a sweatsuit instead of a uniform. “Things have been pretty quiet out our way.”

“Well, that may be about to change,” warned Bill. “These two guys were working Casner for a few weeks before they moved on to us. Just when the Casner substation gathered enough information to lay a trap, they vanished into thin air.”

“And showed up ten miles down the road.”

“You got it. And since you’re another ten miles or so away from Belton, I figured they’ll head on to Tyler when they feel us nipping at their heels. Why don’t I have a copy of the file sent over to you? It might help you get the jump on them.”

They broke off long enough to order, then Bill asked, “I imagine you’re eager to know what I found out about your captain.”

“Well, now that you mention it...” Brick’s eyes met his friend’s. Two weeks ago he’d been reasonably certain that Bill, or one of the other guys he’d put on Karen’s trail, would turn up some dirt. Now, curiously, he suspected that her record was as clean as his own. Odder yet, he really hoped that nobody would uncover evidence that he’d be honor-bound to turn over to Commander Harmon for the protection of his men.