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“As long as it’s on a Sunday.”
“As long as it’s on a Sunday,” she echoed.
“But why?”
There was frustration in Charley’s voice as she said, “That is the million-dollar question, Special Agent Brannigan. We get the answer to that, maybe we can get the son of a bitch.”
A noise in the other room told her that the rookie had returned. She crossed back to the living room. Brannigan was right behind her.
Jack looked eager to share what he’d managed to discover. “One of the neighbors on the floor said she thought she heard yelling coming from this apartment around noon yesterday.”
“What kind of yelling?” Nick asked. “Screams for help? An argument?”
Jack shook his head. “She just said yelling. But she said it was a man. And she thought it was the TV. You know, one of those daytime cable channel crime series that’s always being rerun. The woman said she was just about to go knock on Stacy Pembroke’s door when the yelling stopped.”
Nick exchanged looks with Charley. “Bad luck for Stacy,” he commented.
“Yeah,” Charley agreed sadly—if something as heinous as what had transpired in this apartment could be described with such sanitary words.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHARLEY PUSHED the key into the lock. Turning it took effort. She felt bushed, really bushed. Worn-out from the inside clear to the outside.
This was probably the way someone with their foot caught in a stirrup felt after they’d been dragged for three miles by a wild horse. Going around in wide, fruitless, unproductive circles always did that to her.
With a sigh almost as big as she was, Charley pushed down on the door handle and walked into her apartment. She was instantly greeted by Dakota, who moments earlier, if the warm spot that met her feet when she kicked off her shoes was any indication, had been lying on the floor directly in front of the door.
Tail wagging like a metronome on caffeine, the German shepherd ran back and forth as if she couldn’t make up her mind what to do or where to go first.
Charley laughed softly. “You and me both, Dakota.”
The dog returned to angle her head beneath her mistress’s hand. It was almost as if the animal was petting her instead of the other way around. Charley smiled to herself. Dakota had her trained well.
She could barely place one foot in front of the other and make her way to the living room where the sofa beckoned to her. Sinking into the cushion was like sinking into an old friend. The slightly worn gray upholstery embraced her.
A beat later, Dakota joined her.
Charley closed her eyes, petting the animal again. She’d long since given up trying to keep the dog off the furniture. The sofa was her favorite spot. But Dakota listened to her most of the time, which was more than she could say for the rest of the world.
After a moment, Charley forced herself to open her eyes again. It was either that or fall asleep sitting up. Turning in Dakota’s direction, she noticed that the telephone on the table beside the sofa was rhythmically blinking at her like a red-eyed, menstruating Cyclops.
Three quick blinks, then a long one. That meant three calls.
Charley frowned.
She didn’t have to listen to the messages. Experience told her who had called. He must have heard it on the news, she thought grimly. She had to psych herself up before she tackled returning the calls.
Better yet, she needed to hear a friendly voice first. Charley picked up the cordless receiver and pressed a single button on the keypad, the one connecting her to the only person she could turn to at a moment like this.
It took several rings before she heard the phone being picked up. The moment she heard the deep, rumbly voice honed by years of devoted Scotch-and-soda imbibing, she smiled.
“Hello?”
Charley didn’t bother with a greeting. She didn’t need to. Slipping into a conversation with Ben Temple was as easy as breathing.
“They gave me a new partner today.” She couldn’t help making it sound like an accusation.
She heard the voice on the other end chuckle. “About time.”
She could envision Ben leaning back in that chair he always favored, the one his late wife had begged him to get rid of. Worn, shapeless and faded in a multitude of places, the once-hunter-green recliner matched nothing in the house except for Ben. “I kept hoping you’d change your mind and come back.”
The shoulder that had caught the bullet still hurt when he moved it a certain way. It probably always would. At sixty-three, he didn’t heal the way he had at twenty.
“If I do, it’s going to be to sit behind a desk and puzzle things out, Charley. Don’t forget, I’m not the man I used to be.”
She knew Ben was only baiting her, but she hated it anyway. “You will always be the man you used to be.”
Ben chuckled again, clearly warmed by her loyalty. Childless, he thought of Charley as the daughter he would have liked to have had if Ruth could have had children. “Saying it doesn’t make it so, kid. Saddest thing in the world to watch is a player who doesn’t know when to leave the field.”
“Just because a pitcher loses his arm doesn’t mean he can’t be used for another position in the game.” She was only half kidding even though she knew that Ben had made up his mind. Had known it even when she’d gone to the hospital to visit him right after his operation. Ben’s disability leave had swiftly taken on signs of a more permanent nature. “You wouldn’t have to leap over any tall buildings in a single bound. I could do that for you.”
“Charley—”
“I know, I know.” She tried to sound upbeat, but the truth was, she missed him. He’d been gone only six weeks and she’d visited him as often as she could, but she missed him. Missed seeing his rumpled, lived-in face looking at her from across their desks every day. “But you can’t like just sitting around the house, doing nothing. I know you better than that, Ben.”
“I’m not sitting around, getting bored,” he protested good-naturedly. “I signed up for a night class. I’m finally learning Spanish the way you always kept telling me to. And I’ve got twenty-eight years of TV programs and books to catch up on. Got a whole bunch of tapes and DVDs,” he added to back up his claim. “So give me a few years to get bored. I’ve earned it, kid.”
“I know you have.”
He heard the sadness in her voice and felt the prick of nostalgia. But that part of his life was behind him now, just as being part of a marriage was behind him. “So, tell me. How’s this new guy working out for you?”
Dakota had moved her chin onto her lap. Charley began to stroke the dog’s head. It soothed her. “He’s not you.”
Humor echoed in his tone. “Ugly, huh?” When his former partner didn’t immediately respond, Ben knew what that meant. He’d intended his gibe as a joke, but he’d managed to stumble on a little bit of truth in the process. “Not so ugly, I take it.”
Charley paused before answering. She wanted to be fair. Special Agent Nick Brannigan might have struck her as being a lot of things, none of which she particularly liked, but ugly was not one of them.
“No,” she finally allowed, “not so ugly.”
What she didn’t say spoke volumes to Ben. He’d tried to pair her off with one of his nephews once, but it hadn’t gone too well. That didn’t change his opinion that Charley needed someone in her life. Someone to go home to. Or with.
“So tell me about him,” he coaxed.
“Not much to tell.” She tried to remember what Alice had told her when the woman had stopped by her desk that afternoon. The A.D.’s secretary had managed to just catch her in between trips out of the office. She and Brannigan had canvassed the entire neighborhood, spoken to a good portion of the people listed in Stacy Pembroke’s address book and met with a very broken up Robert Pullman at his restaurant. The man spent most of the interview fighting tears even as he attempted to deny that he and Stacy had been romantically involved. “His name’s Nick Brannigan. He’s just transferred from Washington, D.C. Been with the Bureau for about as long as I have. Maybe longer.”
Ben picked up on the obvious. “Then you must have trained together.”
It gave her pause. For some reason, she hadn’t thought of that. She tried to recall the people in her class at Quantico. As best she could remember, Brannigan’s face hadn’t been among them. “Not that I recall. And I’m pretty sure I would have remembered him.”
Ben had spent five years learning to pick up subtle nuances in her voice. “Are you butting heads with him yet?”
“I never butt heads.”
Ben laughed. “Yeah, you do. With everything and everyone who gets in your way.” His tone grew a little more serious. He worried about her. “You don’t have me around to smooth things out anymore, Charley. You’re going to have to mind your ps and qs.”
She loved his quaint sayings. “Ps and qs I can mind, Ben. It’s orders from people when they’re clearly wrong that I’ve got trouble with.”
“Try not to have trouble with them,” Ben advised. And then he paused before saying, “I hear he’s surfaced again.”
Ben had been on the task force with her. She’d only taken over as primary after he went on disability. “Yeah. He’s crawled out of the woodwork. But this time we’re going to get him, Ben.”
He knew what it meant to her. “Just don’t get hurt doing it.”
Charley smiled. She liked her independence, liked having no restrictions except the rules of the Bureau. But she had to admit she liked to know that someone worried about her.
“I’ll do my best.” Call waiting sent a pulse through the receiver. She was tempted to ignore it, just as she was ignoring the blinking answering machine. But eventually, she was going to have to face him. It might as well be now. “Ben, I’m getting another call.”
“Maybe it’s your new partner.”
They both knew it wasn’t. She’d told Ben all about her father. About how Cristine had always been his favorite and how he hadn’t forgiven her for not being there that night to save her sister. Charley was certain her father blamed her as much as he blamed the man who had strangled Cristine.
“I doubt that.”
“Ask this Nick out for a drink, Charley,” Ben advised. “Get to know him. Your partner’s all that stands between you and the crazies.”
She knew that. The message had never been brought home as clearly as the day Ben had shielded her with his own body. She wished it had been her to catch the bullet. Then Ben would still be on the job. “They don’t make them like you anymore.”
“You never know.”
The line beeped again. She knew the more her father had to call, the more agitated he became. “I’ve gotta go, Ben. Talk to you later.”
“Anytime, kid,” he told her.
“Thanks.”
She knew he meant it. Knew that she could call on him at any hour of the day or night and he would be there for her. During the time they had worked together, Ben Temple had not only been her partner, but her best friend and her surrogate father as well. A surrogate father who had been better than the one she’d been given at birth, Charley mused as she pressed the button on the telephone that would connect her to the incoming call.
The smile on her lips faded the moment she did. Despite her best efforts to remain calm, Charley could feel her shoulders bracing even before she heard her father’s voice. “Hello?”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Nice to hear from you, too, Dad. “Out fighting crime, Dad.”
“Why didn’t you return my calls?”
“I told you, I was out, working.” And I wish I was out there now, so I could miss this one. “I didn’t get them.”
Christopher Dow had never been known for his good humor or his patience. He displayed none now toward his remaining daughter. “You’ve got one of those remote things to get your messages, don’t you?”
She was twenty-eight years old and had been on her own for almost the past ten years. Why did he always insist on treating her like a little girl who’d misbehaved? “I didn’t have time to access them, Dad. I’ve been pretty busy today.”
She heard her father make an indistinguishable guttural sound. “That son of a bitch struck again.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You going to get him this time?” It was almost an accusation.
Charley worked her lower lip with her teeth. She stroked Dakota harder. “I’m going to do my best.”
“Your best hasn’t been good enough yet,” he reminded her coldly.
She closed her eyes. “Yes, I know.”
“He killed your sister. You can’t let him go free.”
“I don’t intend to, Dad.”
“So what are you doing about it?”
She felt even more weary than she had when she’d walked in through the door. Talking to her father always drained her. “It’s an ongoing case, Dad. I can’t talk about it.”
Anger filled his voice. “I’m your father.”
“And I’m a federal agent. There are rules. I’ve got a call coming in, Dad. I have to go.” She disconnected before he had a chance to protest. Leaving the receiver on the sofa, Charley leaned her head against Dakota and forced herself to think about nothing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WHILE JUGGLING his pizza box, Nick managed to insert his key into the lock. Because the key was new and the lock was not, there was an awkward dance between the two, a moment of inflexibility before the tumbler finally gave way and turned, allowing him into his newly rented garden apartment.
His palm had grown uncomfortably warm where it was making contact with the bottom of the pizza box. The small mom-and-pop store directly behind his apartment complex took pride in serving their food hot. Very hot. He was going to have to curb his hunger if he didn’t want to burn the hell out of the roof of his mouth, Nick thought.
He closed the door with his shoulder, then flipped the lock. This stretch of Santa Ana, where he’d chosen to live, was away from the high-crime area that marked the center of the old city. Located across the street from Costa Mesa and South Coast Plaza, touted to be the largest shopping mall west of the Mississippi, the area was almost safe enough for him to leave his door unlocked during the day.
Almost being the operative word, Nick mused as he slid the box holding his dinner onto the tiny table in his breakfast nook. Nook was a perfect word to describe the area. Nook could also aptly describe just about every part of the apartment. There was a nook where his sofa and TV set resided, a nook for his bed and battered bureau.
Maneuvering between the nooks was a challenge because, in addition to the furniture, the moving company had delivered a myriad of boxes. Within the boxes was the product of his twenty-nine years on earth. The boxes had been here, largely untampered with, for the past six days. He didn’t see a grand opening in any of their near futures.
Nick paused to remove his holster and weapon and place them on the table beside the pizza. He’d then crossed to the refrigerator and took out a can of soda.
You’d think that someone who’d moved and lived in six different states before his fifteenth birthday would be able to unpack everything and get things in their rightful place in a reasonable amount of time. The trouble was, every other time he’d moved, and this included when he’d gone to his own bachelor digs in D.C., his mother and his sister were the ones who did the unpacking for him because he just never got around to it.
It wasn’t his strong point. He knew how to work a case, had a knack for mining the hidden nuggets that could eventually lead to solving it. The gift his mother and sister possessed was that they knew how to make order out of chaos. Something he definitely was not good at.
Popping the lid on the can, he shrugged. There was no sense in unpacking what he didn’t immediately need. And, since dinner tonight had come courtesy of Salvatore and Selena’s Pizzeria, he didn’t need to unearth anything. Certainly not plates or utensils. The pizza represented the ultimate in finger food. He always drank his soda right out of the can, so no need to dirty a glass.
Taking a long sip from his soda, Nick rotated his shoulders before picking up a slice of pizza. Man, he was tired.
His body hadn’t adjusted to the time difference yet. His internal clock was still on East Coast time. It was ten o’clock in the evening back in D.C. right now and, although he’d never been one of those souls who turned in early, the day he’d spent with his new partner, coupled with the time difference, had all but wiped him out.
