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She shook her head, allowing a small laugh to escape. It almost sounded lyrical. She would have a melodic laugh, he thought darkly. They’d hooked him up with a wood nymph.
“No, I was just labeling them. Personal as opposed to professional.” Then, before he could cut her off, she filled him in—whether or not he wanted her to, she thought. “I left because my father died, and there was suddenly nothing left for me in Oakland. I have no family,” she confided. “So, I sold my house and applied for a job down here.”
I’ve got too much family, he thought. Want some of mine? Out loud he asked, “You’re kind of young to be a detective, aren’t you?”
She all but radiated pride as she answered. “Youngest to make the grade in Oakland,” she confirmed. “The Chief of Ds said I was an eager beaver.”
“Terrific.”
Jaren waited for a moment. When her unwilling new partner said nothing further, she took the initiative. “So, what would you like me to do?”
“Stop talking, for one,” Kyle answered without skipping a beat, or looking up from the folder he’d opened on his desk.
Rather than back away, she asked another question. “I take it you’re the strong, silent type?”
He made a mental note to stop at the hardware store and buy a roll of duct tape. The clear kind so people wouldn’t immediately notice that Rosetti’s mouth was taped over.
“Something like that.”
He heard her laugh softly to herself. “I’ve run into that before.”
“I bet you have.”
Jaren leaned over her empty new desk in order to get closer to him. “Don’t worry, O’Brien, you’ll find that working with me won’t be such a bad thing.”
Abandoning what he was trying to read, Kyle finally raised his head. He gave her a long, penetrating look. Had he met her off the job and a year ago, when he thought he knew who and what he was, and when the world was still recognizable to him, he might have even been attracted to her—once she learned not to talk so much. But now, well, now he had a feeling he would count himself lucky if he didn’t strangle her by the end of the day.
“We’ll see,” he said, his voice showing no glimmer of hope in that direction.
Suddenly, his new partner was on her feet again like a Pop-Tart escaping a toaster. “I’m going for coffee,” she told him. “Can I get you any?”
“No, thanks.” She took five steps before she stopped and turned around again. He had a feeling that she would. “What?”
“Where is the coffee machine?” she asked, her demeanor so sunny it just blackened his mood.
Kyle sighed and began to point in the general direction where the machines were located, then remembered that they had been moved last week. If he were still a churchgoer, he would have thought of this woman as penance.
Reluctantly, he pushed back his chair and rose to his feet. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
He didn’t think it was humanly possible for her to brighten, but she did. “Thank you, that’s very nice of you.”
“No, it’s not,” he denied, walking out of the squad room and into the hallway. “For the record, it’s called selfpreservation. If you’re drinking, you won’t be talking.”
His sarcastic remark earned him yet another grin. “I’ll try to keep it down,” she promised.
“If only,” Kyle murmured to himself under his breath. He had a feeling she heard him because she slanted an amused look in his direction.
The vending machines’ new location wasn’t that far away from the elevators. They were almost there when he heard a woman call out his name. They both turned around, Kyle almost unwillingly, and Jaren with the bright enthusiasm of a newcomer who was eager to absorb her surroundings as quickly as she could.
He found himself facing Riley McIntyre, newly attached to the Cavanaugh clan herself, as were her two brothers, Zack and Frank, and her older sister, Taylor.
At this rate, the Cavanaughs were going to be able to populate their own small city, he thought cynically.
He saw her giving the woman beside him a quick, scrutinizing look. This almost constant sharing of his life was new to him and he didn’t much like it. “Heard you got a new partner, Kyle. This her?”
She obviously waited for an introduction, but was never one to stand on ceremony. “Hi, I’m Jaren Rosetti,” Jaren said, extending her hand to the woman.
Riley wrapped her fingers around Jaren’s hand. “I’m Riley McIntyre, Kyle’s stepcousin.” Riley’s eyes danced as she made the introduction.
Okay, that was a new one, Jaren thought. She looked from the blonde to Kyle. If any explanation was coming, Riley would do the honors. Getting words out of Kyle O’Brien was like pulling teeth. Very strong teeth.
“Stepcousin?” Jaren repeated.
Riley nodded. “My mother recently married Brian Cavanaugh. He’s the chief of detectives here. And Kyle’s his nephew. That makes me his stepcousin. There’re four of us on the force—stepcousins,” Riley qualified, flashing a grin at the younger woman. “Don’t worry, it gets easier as time goes on,” she said.
“Not hardly,” Kyle muttered to himself. Looking for a way to garner a few seconds of peace and quiet, he decided to do what he ordinarily never did—ask for a favor. “Riley, can you show her where the coffee machine is?”
Riley shrugged. “No problem. I was on my way there myself.”
And the next minute, Jaren found herself being taken under the wing of a Cavanaugh by marriage. Any misgivings she might have entertained about transferring to Aurora’s police department quickly faded away in the face of Riley’s sunny disposition and easy manner.
She was going to like it here, Jaren decided.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_cef36f79-bb0f-51c2-9e2a-2f085cb5cf55)
“I brought you some coffee.”
She was back, Kyle thought. So much for peace and quiet.
He glanced up from the report he was finishing. He hated the paperwork that went along with the job, and it was hard enough tackling it when he was in a good frame of mind. This was going to take him all day.
His new partner, Mary Sunshine, stood there, holding in each hand a container of what passed for coffee at the precinct.
“I don’t remember asking you to,” he said, making no attempt to take either container from her.
“You didn’t,” she answered, keeping a smile on her face. “I just thought you might like to have a cup. Newest studies say that three cups of coffee a day help keep your memory sharp.”
Part of him knew he was being unreasonable and ornery, but he just didn’t feel friendly at the moment. And for her own good, Rosetti had better understand his moodiness early on.
“And just why would you think that you have to appoint yourself the guardian of my memory?” he asked.
Jaren placed the container she’d brought back for him on his desk, then sat down at hers. She studied him for a moment.
“You know, I’d say that you got up on the wrong side of the bed today, but I’ve got a feeling that today, there wouldn’t have been a right side.” She paused to take a sip of her coffee, then asked, “Or is that just a given?”
Kyle didn’t bother giving her an answer. Instead, he just looked back at the paperwork on his desk.
She sighed, but refused to give up. “Look, I’m trying to make nice here.”
He raised his eyes, meeting hers for a fleeting second. “Don’t.”
There was no such thing as don’t in her language. Jaren tried again, relying on logic, something she felt probably appealed to him. “Until one of us transfers or dies or they rearrange the room, we’re going to be stuck facing each other like this five days a week. Don’t you think it would make things a little easier on both of us if you stopped acting as if I’m the devil incarnate?”
“Nope.”
She sighed and shook her head. “I think you should know I don’t give up easy.”
She wished he didn’t look so damn sexy as he raised his eyes again and said, “You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to do.”
She had no idea if she was being warned, put on notice or dismissed. But she wasn’t about to put up with any of that.
Before she could think of something to say in return, she saw the lieutenant walking toward them. Barone held a slip of paper with writing on it in his hand.
“Dispatch called to say a hysterical receptionist just got in to the office to find the doctor she worked for—a Richard Barrett—dead.” The lieutenant held out the slip of paper that contained pertinent information, including the address. “You two are up.”
Mentally, Kyle winced. He wasn’t ready to work a case with Little Miss Perky, but there was apparently nothing he could do about it. Resigned, Kyle pushed himself away from his desk. But by the time he got to his feet, Jaren had taken the slip of paper from Barone.
“We’re on it,” she assured Barone as she slid her arms through the sleeves of her jacket.
Frowning, Kyle confiscated the slip of paper from her and glanced at the address. He spared the lieutenant a look as he shoved the paper into his pocket. “Pricey part of town.”
“Rich people get killed, too,” Barone replied. “The details are a little freaky, so get back to me on this as soon as possible.”
“What do you mean by freaky?” Jaren asked before Kyle could voice the same question.
The woman had a mouth set in fast-forward, he thought darkly.
“You’ll see,” was all Barone promised.
“Freaky doesn’t begin to cover this one,” Kyle commented under his breath as he looked down at the slain doctor. Parts of the expensive Persian rug he lay on was discolored. Blood oozed from the man’s chest.
Dr. Richard Barrett was a respected, well-known neurosurgeon whose skill was only equaled by his ego. Said to be almost a miracle worker, his services were sought from all over the country. Consequently, he had an incredibly long waiting list.
According to what Barrett’s receptionist told them in whispered confidence, as if the dead surgeon could still somehow hear her, he’d had the bedside manner of Attila the Hun.
“Care to be more specific about that?” Kyle prodded the nervous young woman.
“He always made you feel as if you were beneath him,” Carole Jenkins told them. She averted her eyes from the slain figure on the floor. The sight of him had made her turn a very unbecoming shade of green. “To be honest, I think Dr. Barrett even felt he was above God.”
Jaren glanced down at the man’s face, frozen in horror. That kind of an attitude would have won the neurosurgeon no friends.
“So, you’re saying that Dr. Barrett had a lot of enemies?” Jaren asked.
The receptionist backpedaled a little, as if she didn’t want to speak ill of the dead. “He had a lot of grateful patients,” she assured them hastily, and then relented, “but yes, he did have a lot of people who didn’t like him. I don’t know if you’d call them enemies, but he had a tendency to rub everyone the wrong way. But I never thought…” Her voice trailed off as she glanced at the body on the floor and then shivered.
Kyle squatted down beside the body, his attention focused on the large wooden stake protruding from the man’s chest.
“Death by wooden stake. Don’t think I’ve ever come across that before,” he said more to himself than to his partner. “This does seem to be a little extreme.”
“I’ll—I’ll be in the next room if you need me,” Carole stammered, already backing away from them—and the corpse. “I—I just can’t—”
Giving her a comforting smile, Jaren took the woman’s arm and escorted her out of the doctor’s study.
“You just sit down at your desk and we’ll get back to you if we have any more questions,” she said kindly. Turning around, she appraised the slain surgeon. The stake had been driven into the middle of his chest. Deeply. “Think it’s a statement?”
Kyle glanced at her over his shoulder. “That someone hated him?”
She was going for something a bit more colorful. “That someone thought of him as a vampire.”
Kyle stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Come again?”
“Are you baiting me?” she asked. A frown was the only answer she received. Humoring the man, she went into detail. “Everyone knows that the only way to kill a vampire is to drive a stake through his heart.”
It didn’t make any sense to him. They weren’t living in the Middle Ages, they were living in an enlightened society. “So, someone was calling Barrett a vampire?”
“Blood sucker, most likely. Maybe they were protesting his fee. Or a surgery that went wrong,” she suddenly guessed. In her opinion, those could have all been viable reasons for murder, given the right person.
Kyle wasn’t ready to grant that she’d had an interesting theory just yet. “Don’t you think that’s a little off the wall?” he scoffed.
“To you and me, yes,” she agreed. “But maybe not to the killer.” And it was the killer’s mind they were attempting to assess.
Jaren had pulled on a pair of rubber gloves the minute they’d gotten off the elevator on the third floor. As Kyle examined the doctor more closely, she went through the surgeon’s things on his desk and shelves, looking for a lead.
When she came to a black-bound, hardcover book, she paused. There it was, in plain sight on the shelf behind his desk.
“Well, how about that.”
The bemused note in her voice caught his attention. Though he wanted to pretend he hadn’t heard her, something about the woman was hard to ignore.
“What?”
Jaren turned from the shelves, holding a thick volume in her hands. “The good doctor’s reading material might have given our killer the idea.”
Damn but he missed his old partner’s monotone, straightforward voice. When Castle talked, it wasn’t in circles. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Jaren held up the book she’d found.
“The Vampire Diaries” Kyle read and then scoffed. “Who reads trash like that?”
His reaction to the book didn’t surprise her. “Apparently, enough people to put this on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks.”
Few things caught him off guard, but she’d scored a point. “You’re kidding me.”
“I don’t think it’s possible to kid you,” she added when he eyed her curiously. “But to answer your question, no, I’m not kidding. The Vampire Diaries has been on the list for close to five weeks now.” She flipped some of the pages. “Not a bad story, as far as things like that go.”
Kyle stared at her as if she’d just announced that she was an extra terrestrial, sent down to conquer Earth. “You read it?”
If he was trying to embarrass her, he was going to have to do a lot better than that, Jaren thought wickedly. “Yes, I did. I wanted to see what the fuss was about. I like leaving myself open to new experiences—like getting along with a partner who acts as if he’s constantly got a bur under his saddle.”
