by Diana Palmer
“Ought to,” Kilraven said, stepping forward with his hand out. “You trained me back when I worked for SAPD.”
“Kilraven? Damn, you’ve got old!” the man joked.
“Fine wine ages,” Kilraven said haughtily, “it doesn’t get old.”
“What are you doing up here? You know Rogers?”
Winnie listened idly, not participating in the conversation. Her mother’s maiden name was Rogers. What a strange coincidence. But it was a common enough name. Anyway, she was sure it wouldn’t be a relation of hers. Her mother had no relatives in Texas. They were all in Montana, and only cousins.
“Marquez called me on his way to the hospital. Rogers has been working my cold case with him,” Kilraven said. “Stubborn woman. Knowing what happened to Marquez here just made her dig her heels in harder. She’s a good detective.”
The detective sobered at once. “Damned shame about that case. I wasn’t on homicide then, I was just a patrol officer, like you. But at least one detective quit the force because he couldn’t continue on the case. He said it broke his heart.”
“It broke mine, too,” Kilraven said heavily.
The detective clapped him on the shoulder. “Even the coldest cases get solved. You wait. When Rogers gets out of here, she’ll turn San Antonio red looking for clues. They’ll wish they’d sent a better shot.”
“They won’t get a second chance at her, or me,” Marquez said solemnly. “I promise you.”
“He’s good at his job,” the suited man told Kilraven, “but he chases crooks in the nude.” He shook his head as Marquez started to protest. “Brings down the tone of the whole department.”
“The perp stole my laptop right out of my own apartment!” Marquez protested. “What was I supposed to do, get dressed before I started chasing him?”
“You could have called for backup, Marquez,” came the droll reply.
“I could have, if I hadn’t left my cell phone in my car!”
“See?” the detective told Kilraven. “Back in our day, we’d have called on a landline. I don’t guess you’ve got one of those, do you, boy?” he asked Marquez blithely.
Marquez glared at him. “Who needs a landline? It’s like carrying a telephone booth around!”
“You need a landline to save L.E.O.’s butts,” Winnie piped in when the local law looked her way, surprised. She was using the term for law enforcement officers. “I work at our county’s emergency operations center. I’m a 911 dispatcher.”
“Nice work, Kilraven,” the plainclothes detective said admiringly as he grinned at Winnie. “If you need saving, here she is.”
Kilraven chuckled. “She did save me,” he said. “Sent backup before I asked for it, and spared me a face full of buckshot from a drunken perp.”
“Good woman,” the detective said, nodding.
“Oh, he’s worth the effort,” Winnie joked, smiling at Kilraven. “We hate losing him down in Jacobsville.”
“Losing him?” the detective asked, surprised. “You working small towns these days?”
Kilraven shook his head. “I was involved in some undercover work, breaking up a kidnapping ring.”
“I heard about that. General Machado was up to his ears in it, wasn’t he?” Marquez asked.
Kilraven chuckled. “He was. Last we heard he took the ransom he got for Jason Pendleton and went back to South America to retake his country.”
“More power to him,” the detective said somberly. “There are some barbarians heading up the junta who ousted him. My niece married a professor from over there. He’s one of the people Machado’s opposition put in prison. She’s hoping she can generate enough publicity to make them turn him loose, but no luck so far.”
“How about some coffee?” Marquez asked. “I had to get out at 4:00 a.m. to investigate an attempted murder in the south side apartments. I’m about to go to sleep standing here.”
“What’s unusual about that?” the detective asked with a grin. He held up both hands. “Okay, I’ll stop. In fact, I’ll buy you a coffee, Marquez.”
“No, Hicks, I’ll buy you one,” Marquez said, moving toward the canteen. “That way, it goes on my expense account!”
Kilraven led Winnie along, her small hand tucked into his big one, down the hall to the canteen. She was in her element among uniforms. The feel of his fingers linking into hers made her heart race. She looked up into warm silver eyes that smiled at her. She felt closer to him than she ever had.
IT WAS ALMOST TWO hours later when Marquez went to check on Detective Rogers and came back to announce that she was in a room and complaining about the doctor’s assessment of her condition.
“We’d better get up there before she breaks out a window and tries to leave.” Marquez chuckled.
“Will they let us all in?” Kilraven asked.
“Sure they will,” Hicks drawled. “One of us can divert the nurses at the duty station while the rest of us sneak into Rogers’s room.”
“I have a better idea,” Kilraven mused. “I’ll flash my badge and tell them it’s federal business.”
“Just like a Fed, isn’t it?” Hicks asked. “They always want to steal the show.”
“Okay, flash your badge and tell them it’s police business and see how far you get,” Kilraven dared.
Hicks chuckled as they filed into the elevator. “The way my luck’s been running, I’d get arrested for impersonating a detective. We’ll do it your way.”
Kilraven could lie with a straight face and sound very sincere, Winnie thought with admiration. He got them past the nurses, although Winnie got odd looks from the staff as she followed behind the men.
She was curious about this detective, who was so brave and dogged about Kilraven’s case that she was willing to risk her life to solve it. Her own life hadn’t been overfull of women as role models, but this one sounded interesting. She was keen to meet her.
“There you are, all dolled up and looking pretty,” Hicks told the woman in the bed.
“There you are, looking like a vulture dressed up in a suit,” came the sarcastic reply. “Will you get me the hell out of here? I want to find the SOB who shot me!”
Winnie was behind the tall men and couldn’t see the woman, but she was surprised at how familiar her voice sounded.
Then she moved around Kilraven and got the shock of her life. There, in the bed, bandaged and bruised and indignant, was her mother!
Detective Rogers didn’t see Winnie, and she was furious that a little flesh wound was keeping her off the job.
“He says I can’t come back to work until he certifies me fit for duty!” she raged, alluding to the doctor. “Meanwhile, that slimy lowlife who shot me is all over San Antonio bragging about it to his lowlife friends!”
“I was in the same boat and you weren’t overflowing with sympathy for me,” Marquez pointed out.
“You got manhandled, Marquez. I got shot!” she flung back. She took a deep breath and ran a hand through her unkempt hair. “I can’t stay in here! I have to get home…”
“You get right back in that bed,” Marquez said with authority, and moved closer to force her if he had to. “You’re probably still in shock. You’re certainly foggy from the anesthetic.”
“He’s home by himself,” she said miserably. “The sitter will have to go to work. Good Lord, what time is it?”
“Eight,” Marquez said.
“She’ll leave in half an hour. He can’t stay by himself!”
“Who can’t?” Kilraven asked, moving forward, curious. “Your boyfriend?”
“My son,” she said heavily. “Matt.”
Her son? Winnie felt her head spinning. Her mother was a police detective and she had a son. Her uncle’s son. None of the family had known. She recalled the passenger in her mother’s car at the house, a short man. It had been the boy!
She moved into view. Her mother glanced at her and glowered. “Great. Just what I need to make this day perfect.”
Winnie didn’t kn
ow what to say. She was shocked speechless.
Kilraven didn’t connect the odd phrase with Winnie, so he ignored it. “I’ll go by your apartment and arrange for someone to stay with him,” Kilraven said, still unaware who Rogers was or Winnie’s connection to her. “You just get well.”
Rogers studied Winnie’s pale face. “Why are you here?”
“I’m with him,” Winnie said in a small voice, indicating Kilraven.
“Yes. We’re getting married,” Kilraven told her, curious at Rogers’s response to his blond companion.
Rogers’s eyes widened. “You’re marrying him?” she exclaimed. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Thanks a hell of a lot,” Kilraven growled.
“You’re not in any shape to be marrying anybody, least of all my daughter!” Rogers muttered.
Kilraven went very still. “Your daughter?” He glanced at Winnie. Slowly, he added up the similarity and odd bits of information. “Your daughter.”
“Yes. I left her father twelve years ago.”
“And married my uncle,” Winnie said coldly.
“Briefly,” Rogers replied with faint humor. “I divorced him six days later.”
Winnie gaped at her.
Rogers shrugged. “He was so strung out on coke, he didn’t know his name.”
“Right up until the end,” Kilraven agreed. “But I’m still not sure he wasn’t helped into the next world. He might have known something, too.”
“Indeed. But that has to be looked into before we’ll know for sure.” Rogers regained her composure. “There’s a Hispanic woman, Señora Del Rio, who lives two doors down from my apartment. She’s Juana’s grandmother. Juana’s sitting with Matt today.” She gave him the address. “Ask her if she’ll keep Matt until I get out of here, and I’ll make it right with her. Juana’s got six kids,” she added with a wan smile, “and they love Matt. He lets them play games on his old Nintendo. But she can’t keep him at night. She works. The kids stay with her aunt.”
Games. Kilraven’s eyes lit up. “I’ll find her. You stop worrying.”
Rogers lay back on the pillows and grimaced. “I hate bullets.”
“So do I,” Kilraven said heavily. “I remember how much they hurt. Don’t you do something stupid, like trying to escape from here. We’ll just hunt you down and bring you back.”
She made a face at him. “Okay.”
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Marquez asked Kilraven.
“Sure.”
The uniformed officers said their goodbyes and filed out while Marquez and Kilraven were in the hall. Winnie moved closer to the bed to stare at her mother.
“You didn’t say what you did for a living,” she told her mother.
Rogers stared at her without smiling. She looked terrible, washed-out and pale and in pain. “You didn’t need to know.”
“You have a son,” she began hesitantly. “Dad never told us…”
Rogers stared at her with icy brown eyes, the same shade as Winnie’s. “My life is none of your business. I made a mistake and paid for it. I’m still paying for it. You don’t need to stick around to rub it in. You made your opinion perfectly clear the last time I saw you.”
Winnie hesitated. She’d been so sure of herself, of her righteous indignation. Now she felt oddly in the wrong.
“Do you need anything from your apartment?” Winnie asked politely.
“If I do, I’ll ask one of the officers to get it for me.”
It was a cold rebuff, but Winnie was too shocked to take offense. She was reeling from the revelations of the night.
Kilraven walked back in. “We’ll get on the road. Need anything?”
Rogers shook her head. “Just to get out of here. I guess you don’t take bribes?”
He raised an eyebrow. “What would you bribe me with?”
“I’m broke until payday, so you’ll have to do it for affection,” Rogers laughed. “Tell Matt to get me a couple pairs of pajamas, my robe and my slippers. I’ll ask one of the boys to pick them up tomorrow.”
“I’ll bring them back tonight,” Kilraven told her firmly. “But you owe me.”
She made another face.
Kilraven caught Winnie’s hand. “I’ll be back later,” he told the detective.
“They won’t let you in,” Rogers told him.
“I’m a Fed. They’ll let me in.”
“Snob,” Rogers murmured, but the aftereffects of the anesthetic were catching up with her. She closed her eyes and nodded off. Winnie was still reeling from the news that she had a half brother that neither she nor her brothers knew about, and that her mother was in law enforcement. It was a shock.
THEY WERE HALFWAY TO the apartment before Kilraven spoke. “You never told me she was your mother.”
“I didn’t make the connection,” she said. “The last we heard, she was living with my uncle in Montana. Then she showed up at the house with the jewelry. I was horrible to her,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to be. I thought she came to see us to get money.” She shook her head. “And she’s a cop. I can’t believe it.”
“She’s a detective,” he corrected. “A damned good one, too.”
She wasn’t handling this well. She wasn’t ready to have a new member of her family, and she hated being put in the position of having to deal with a child.
“I wonder how old he is?” she said aloud.
“Who?”
“My mother’s son.”
He glanced at her with narrow silver eyes. “Your brother,” he corrected. “Jon and I don’t share a mother, but that doesn’t make us less related.”
Her jaw tautened. “Yes, well, you’ve had your whole life to get used to having him around. I only found out about mine a few minutes ago.”
He sighed. “Point taken. I guess it was a shock.”
She shook her head. “Dad never said a word! He must have known, especially if she’s been living in San Antonio all this time!”
“Maybe it was too much for his pride to admit that his brother had a child with his ex-wife,” Kilraven ventured.
“Her son was with her at the house,” she said dully. “We saw someone in the car with her, but he didn’t come in.”
“She came to see me later that same day, I guess. I saw him, too, but I didn’t make the connection that he was her child. I knew she’d been married and that she’d had some personal problems. Marquez didn’t elaborate.” He glanced at her. “I don’t suppose he connected her with your family, either. Certainly, she never told us that she was related to anyone in Jacobsville.”
Almost, she thought, as if her mother was ashamed to admit it. Perhaps she was. She’d said that she made a mistake that she was still paying for. Winnie had only thought of her own ordeal because of her mother’s desertion, and Boone’s and Clark’s. It had never occurred to her that her mother wasn’t happy, or that she might have divorced her new husband so quickly.
“How strongly was my uncle connected to your case?” she wondered aloud, remembering their talk about her uncle.
“I don’t know. The thermos is a strong indication that he might be,” Kilraven told her. “I just can’t be certain how he would have fit into this, unless he had some connection with Hank Sanders, the senator’s criminal brother.” He glanced her way. “Given your uncle’s apparent drug use, Hank might have been his supplier. Or he might have done odd jobs for Sanders. I don’t know yet.”
“It’s a sick feeling, to think that a member of my family might be responsible for someone’s death.”
“Winnie, it doesn’t mean that you’re in any way responsible for it,” he said gently. “Don’t think like that.”
She bit her lower lip. “Sorry. I’m just nervous.” She watched cars whiz by in the other lane. Neon signs flashed past as they drove. “Her son is going to be scared to death when he finds out what happened to his mother.”
“Obviously.”
“But she’ll have to stay in the hospital for several days,
won’t she? What if the woman can’t take care of him?”
“Let’s cross bridges when we get to them, okay?” He turned a corner. “If she’s not available, I’ll find someone who is. He can’t be left alone.”
“No. Of course he can’t.”
KILRAVEN DROVE SLOWLY down the street, looking for the apartment number Rogers had given him. He stopped in front of a unit and cut off the engine.
It wasn’t a good neighborhood. The apartments needed a paint job. The number signs on them were faded. It looked as if the shingles hadn’t been replaced in recent memory. The street sign nearby had gang graffiti.
Winnie was taking all that in, thinking what a comedown it must have been for a woman who lived with a millionaire to find herself here, in this type of neighborhood.
“Let’s go in,” Kilraven said, opening his door.
They walked up on the concrete front porch, what little there was of it, and knocked on the door.
“¿Quién es?”
“Somos amigos de la señora que vive aquí,” Kilraven replied in his elegant Spanish.
The door was opened, just a crack, by a dark-haired young Hispanic woman. Her black eyes surveyed the two people outside. She must have decided that they looked trustworthy, because she undid the chain latch and opened the door.
There were three children gathered around a small color television set, playing an old Xbox game. Two were Hispanic. The third had thick, dark brown hair and brown eyes, and an olive complexion. He was wearing jeans and a faded black T-shirt. He looked up.
“Hello,” he greeted them, curious. “Did you come to see my mom? She’s not home yet. Juana and her kids were staying with me, but she has to go to work soon.”
Winnie was shocked at the boy’s appearance. Her uncle had been almost blond, like her mother. The boy was the spitting image of Boone and Clark.
“Are you Matt?” Kilraven asked.
The boy seemed to sense something. He put the controller down and lifted his chin. “It’s my mother, isn’t it? Something’s happened to her.” He waited, stiff-lipped, for the reply.
“She’s been shot, but she’s all right,” Kilraven said quickly.
“Shot?” The boy seemed to crumple for a minute, but then he rallied. He took a deep breath, as if to steady himself. “Shot. But she won’t die?” he added quickly, hopefully.