“How kind of you to join us, Parker,” Lieutenant Sam Adams drawled from the doorway of his office when Dylan walked past. “I hope we didn’t interfere with anything important.”
“I was interviewing a victim, sir.”
“Really? Did a case come in I hadn’t heard about or were you just driving around looking for one?”
Dylan was used to his superior’s sarcasm. He looked across the room to where his partner, Celeste Dante, sat at her desk. She was engrossed in reading something on her computer monitor. Or at least pretending to be engrossed in the contents. He found no help there.
“Then let me take a wild guess where you were.” Sam wasn’t about to let him get off easily. “Could it have something to do with the Spencer assault?”
“Right,” Dylan cheerfully agreed.
“Wrong. You don’t cover robbery cases.”
“I hate to argue with you, sir, but Dante and I cover Domestic Crime,” Dylan pointed out. “Domestic means local and what happened to Ms. Spencer was clearly a local crime.”
Celeste shook her head and covered her face with her hands.
“Parker, if your ex-wife utters even one word of complaint against you, you are off the case,” Sam added. “Do not even think about stepping on Robbery’s toes.”
Dylan breathed a silent sigh of relief. “Got it.”
“And if the lady shoots you, you know she’ll probably receive a medal for performing a good deed.”
“I’ll keep my Kevlar vest within reach.” Dylan escaped to his desk. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure the man was out of earshot. “What got into him?”
Celeste shrugged and leaned across her desk. “I heard Alex thinks the two of you are still married,” Celeste said.
“I informed her otherwise, but her memory still has gaps.” He slumped in his chair. He glanced at his desk. “Where’s my muffin?” When they worked the morning shift, they took turns bringing in muffins for each other. Today was Celeste’s turn. Even after eating a large breakfast, Dylan had been looking forward to having his cinnamon muffin.
“You were late. I was hungry.” She smiled, looking not the least bit apologetic.
“Marriage should have mellowed you,” he muttered, grabbing his coffee cup and heading for the coffeemaker.
“Do you know who caught the case?” he asked Celeste.
Her smile was his first warning that he wouldn’t like what she was about to tell him. “Whitmire.”
Dylan felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. “The Whitmire who lost us the softball league championship last summer?”
Celeste nodded. “Yes, the man who broke your nose when you said he couldn’t catch a ball if it was handed to him on a silver platter.”
Dylan shook his head. “All he had to do was catch the damn ball.” He laid his hand over the telephone. “Maybe I’d be better off talking to his partner.” He paused. “I haven’t offended him lately, have I?”
“You’ll find out when you call him, won’t you?”
“You are an evil woman,” he muttered, punching out the extension. He groaned when he heard a sonorous voice on the other end. “Hey, Whitmire. Dylan Parker. I’m calling about the Spencer mugging.” He picked up a pencil and balanced the point on his fingertip. “Yeah, it’s going to take some time for her to fully recover her memory. I’m calling because the lieutenant said I can help you out on the case.” He tossed the pencil up into the air and caught it, then stabbed the air with it. “Yes, I know it’s your case and no, I’m not looking to push my way in. It’s just that Alex is in a fragile state right now and considering everything, I could— Yeah, I’ll run everything by you first. Thanks.” He practically snarled the last word.
“He’s not going to make it easy for you,” Celeste said.
Dylan stared at his desk. He felt unsettled inside. Itchy. He felt uncomfortable inside his own skin. It had taken him a long time to get past the pain of his divorce. Now he was back with the woman who’d caused him so much heart-ache. And damn, he still had feelings for her. He recalled the good times they’d once shared. Dylan thought of the hours they’d spent in their house talking about the future. He thought of them as opposites that not just attracted, but worked well. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to last.
The coffee he drank burned like acid through his stomach as he remembered he hadn’t made it any easier when he and Alex were together, hadn’t placed any blame on himself. Deep down, he knew it was just as much his fault as hers because he hadn’t bothered to try to resolve their problems.
The divorce should have been the end of it, but Dylan found himself haunted by the memory of her face, her touch…. He stared at his desk, then shook his head to clear his thoughts and reached for the telephone.
“Hey, Greg, it’s Dylan Parker,” he identified himself to the criminalist. “I’m coming down to see those tapes.”
Dylan discovered watching the security tapes didn’t give him any new information other than the attacker’s height and the realization that he’d attacked her from behind. Sitting there, seeing Alex struck and her falling, hitting her head against her car, sent painful needles through his gut. After learning her car had been towed into the police yard, he decided to drive out to the airport and check out the scene.
The small airport set on the outskirts of town was ideal for small-plane owners and commuters flying into and out of San Francisco. Dylan drove through the long-term parking lot until he reached a section that still displayed pieces of yellow crime-scene tape fluttering in the morning breeze.
“Trust Alex to pick an out-of-the-way spot as a means to protect her precious car,” he commented, pulling into the closest empty parking space. He climbed out and walked around, noting a security officer in a golf cart patrolling the area. The man nodded and moved on when he saw Dylan’s shield hooked to his belt.
Dylan turned in a slow, tight circle to view his surroundings. His imagination turned it from day to early evening. Memory prodded the reminder of the lowlying fog the previous night. He knew the mist had drifted along the ground, obscuring normal vision.
He squatted down and studied the asphalt as if it would give up its secrets. It took him a moment to rein in his emotions. He straightened up and rested his hands on his hips as he studied his surroundings. That cop sense he relied on was working overtime. “It walks like a random mugging. It talks like a random mugging,” he mused. “So why the hell doesn’t it feel like a random mugging?”
Logic told him it was just that, but something deep inside kept saying it was something more personal. Working Domestic Crimes showed him just how personal an attack could be. He knew that there had been other prospective victims in the parking lot that night. So why was Alex chosen?
How am I going to make sense of all of this before me?
Alex couldn’t look at her desk any longer. Janet had spent the past ninety minutes with Alex going over her client list and calendar for the past month. Alex was still reeling from the sheer abundance of information.
She couldn’t believe she carried this heavy a workload and managed to stay sane. When had she had time to sleep, much less maintain a marriage? She remembered keeping a journal, so she should have one that might cast some light on what happened to their relationship. But a part of her was afraid she might read something she wouldn’t like. Alex knew she never backed down from a fight, but she also knew this was different. This was personal.
She was also curious about the obvious hostility Janet had displayed toward Dylan when they arrived at the office, but she didn’t think it was a good idea to question her assistant about it. Alex already had enough to think about.
For now she felt the sudden urge to go home and lock the door behind her. She told herself there was nothing wrong in desiring the safety of her apartment until her memory returned. It might even be best all the way around.
“Are you sure you should be here?” Her assistant looked concerned as she rose to her feet. “I mean, I know you beli
eve work is everything, but this isn’t the same as you coming in to work last winter with the flu and a temperature of a hundred and two. This time you’re suffering from a head injury.”
“I came in sick?” Alex made a face. “I didn’t give you my flu, did I?”
Janet smiled and shook her head as she confided, “I sprayed a lot of Lysol around.”
Alex waved Janet back to her chair. “There are a lot of things that seem familiar to me, but there’s even more that isn’t. I’m afraid I’m going to need you to help me with this obstacle course called my work.”
“You know I’ll do anything I can to help,” Janet vowed.
“Thank you.” Alex felt as if her head was ready to split apart. “Janet, could you see if there’s any herbal tea?” Once her assistant was gone, she got up and headed for the ladies’ room. As she passed several people she smiled and spoke, relieved she remembered names, and judging by their responses, she knew she had put the right names to the right faces. But she couldn’t miss their covert glances at her face. It only made her feel uncomfortable and ready to hide back in her office.
Hoping Dylan would show up, say, in the next five minutes, she felt an increasing sense of suffocation. If she didn’t leave soon, she might end up having a full-blown panic attack. She turned her chair to look out the window and focused on slowing down her racing heartbeat.
“So this is what you do all day? Sit there and look pretty? If I’d known that’s all that was required to be a lawyer on the fast track I would have gone to law school. Then again, probably not. Too much homework.”
Alex spun around in her chair. Her lips started to tilt upward in a bright smile, then froze. If they were divorced, why did she feel this happy to see Dylan?
He stood in the doorway, one shoulder resting against the jamb with his arms crossed in front of his chest. The grin on his face warmed her inside and banished the insecurity she’d been feeling as she faced an office that was both familiar and unknown.
“That’s how I talk judges into ruling in my favor,” she replied, using her feet to send the chair spinning in a slow circle. “Plus, this is a really cool chair. Not only comfy but very functional—my own personal merry-go-round.”
Dylan’s eyebrow lifted. “Really?” He smiled and shook his head as he straightened up and moved forward until he reached the edge of her desk. He spent several moments studying her. “How’s the head?”
“I no longer feel as if someone took a baseball bat to it,” she admitted. “Now it’s more like someone driving an ice pick through my brain.”
“Talk about a gross image.” He tapped his fingers on the desk’s surface. “So you ready to blow this pop stand?”
Alex leaned forward and confided in a stage whisper, “If I say yes, you won’t think I’m weak, will you?”
He grinned at her. “You’re the last person I would ever think of that way.”
Janet walked in, glared at Dylan, then turned to Alex, who was busy stacking files in a leather case she’d found in her bottom desk drawer.
“Are you feeling worse?” She started forward. “Would you like some aspirin?”
“She needs rest,” Dylan stated. “We made a deal. She could come in this morning as long as she was ready to leave when I came by.”
Janet looked unsure, as if she wasn’t certain how to handle a boss who suddenly realized her physical limits.
“Thank you for your help this morning,” Alex said. “Seeing a list of who I saw in San Francisco gave me a start.”
“I can’t imagine any of them would want to hurt you,” Janet pointed out.
“When you don’t like to get your hands dirty, you hire someone to do it for you,” Dylan said, then turned to Alex. “Thought you’d like to know your car has been released, and I picked it up for you earlier. I ran it through the car wash at the gas station on the corner, then had an officer leave it at your place.”
“I can imagine it needed a wash after the fingerprint powder they probably dusted it with,” she said. “But why didn’t you just have someone drop it off here?”
“Because I don’t think you should be driving yet,” Dylan said.
Alex would have liked to argue that she was perfectly able to drive herself, but with her head pounding she knew that wasn’t the case.
“Give me a minute and I’ll be ready to go.” She walked around her desk and left the office for the ladies’ room.
Janet looked at Dylan. “I do not want to be in your shoes when she realizes exactly what you did with her car,” she said in a heated whisper. “She has it detailed once a week.”
“Yeah, I thought it was pretty inspired myself.” He grinned. “I guess you’ve noticed she isn’t exactly acting like herself. I guess I wanted to see if I’d get a reaction.”
“No wonder people get mad at you.” She kept her voice low. “You didn’t hear her last month when she received that order of sushi. She wanted to cut your heart out with a chopstick.”
“Hey, that wasn’t just any old sushi. That was one hundred dollars’ worth of the best sushi in the county,” Dylan said proudly.
“She still wanted to cut your heart out.”
“The judge never specified it had to be paid in cash or by check,” he pointed out.
“Which led you on the quest to pay it in any way guaranteed to tick her off,” Janet said.
“Some months I succeed better than others.”
She took a quick look to make sure Alex hadn’t returned yet. “You know what they say about people who perform such crazy stunts? That person must still have feelings for the other and does those stunts to get attention.”
Dylan reared back in shock. “Whoa, way off the mark, sweetheart.”
She still looked skeptical. “And your reason for coming around here acting more like a solicitous husband than a police detective?” With that, Janet returned to her desk to answer the phone.
Dylan felt a punch to his gut at Janet’s question. What was his reason? The moment he’d heard Alex was hurt he hadn’t hesitated in heading for the hospital. Did this mean those old feelings for her were still there? God help him if that was the case.
Janet looked over at Alex, who had just returned. “Alex, there’s a Detective Whitmire downstairs. He wants to talk to you about the robbery.”
Alex momentarily closed her eyes. She wished Dylan had shown up five minutes earlier. “Have him come up.”
“Wait a minute.” Dylan held one hand up. “Janet, tell him that Ms. Spencer has left for the day, but he can catch her at her home,” he instructed.
Janet looked at Alex, who shook her head. “I’d rather get it over with now,” she told him.
“You’re white as a sheet and your head is pounding,” Dylan said.
“And if you were the investigating detective, you would have politely pushed to see me now while I had those few details still in my mind,” she pointed out.
“True, but I’d also try to cut you some slack. You’ve had a lot to deal with in less than twenty-four hours.”
“Let me tell him what I know, so I can get back to my life,” she said. “If you’d rather, you can wait out in the reception area.” She knew he wouldn’t go for the idea. His making himself comfortable on her couch was proof of that.
Alex settled behind her desk and waited. Within moments, Janet announced the detective’s presence.
Alan Whitmire was built like a brick wall in navy slacks, a white-and-navy striped dress shirt and a navy tie. Alex immediately sensed his personality went along with the conservative clothing. She had no doubt that Detective Whitmire was one of those men who wouldn’t veer from his chosen path no matter how tempting it was. Looking at his unsmiling features, she sensed the stiff-necked detective preferred to deal with cold hard facts, while the more laid-back Dylan coupled evidence with his gut instincts. There was also something about the man that irritated her. She’d be glad when his interview was over.
“Ms. Spencer.” His expression and voic
e showed no inflection as he offered her his hand. “Thank you for seeing me.” He pointedly ignored Dylan.
Alex smiled. “Of course. I don’t know what I can tell you, though. I didn’t see the person who attacked me.”
“You still might have noticed something,” he insisted as he began questioning her.
Alex was tempted to mention she’d already gone over this with Dylan, but something told her that observation wouldn’t be welcome.
“Is there a chance you’ve had a relationship go bad recently?” Detective Whitmire asked.
Alex frowned. There was that stabbing pain again! “Not that I recall, but then since I’ve forgotten the past two years I wouldn’t remember, would I?” she snapped, finally weary of it all.
The detective nodded. “I’m sorry, but I had to ask. I would also like to pull your cell-phone records for the past two weeks,” he said. “We might be able to find something important from those.”
Dylan leaned back in his chair, looking a little pleased at the cool way she was handling his counterpart.
“Perhaps Janet can help you with the records,” Alex suggested.
“Your assistant isn’t trained in police work,” Detective Whitmire stated.
“But she knows whom I’ve dealt with most recently,” she said smoothly, and breathed a silent sigh of relief when he remained silent as he finally closed his notebook.
“To be honest, Ms. Spencer, the evidence is telling us that you were the unfortunate target of a random mugging,” he said slowly. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to cancel your credit cards and change your locks. We’ll do what we can, but this kind of crime, with so little evidence is—”
“Is low priority for you,” she said, choosing to finish his sentence for him.
“No, but it is difficult to solve,” he corrected her. “I am sorry you were injured. Naturally, I—” he glanced at Dylan with a meaningful look “—will contact you if anything comes up. And if you remember anything, please contact me immediately.” He handed her his card.
Alex produced a bland smile. She knew a brush-off when she got one. “Thank you, Detective.”
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