Night Shift

by Nora Roberts

  “Look—”

  “No, you look.” He was angry, furious. He hadn’t realized it himself until that moment. She was shaking, and despite the chill wind, her cheeks were deathly pale. Listening to the tapes hadn’t been the same as being there when the call came through, seeing the blood drain out of her face and her eyes glaze with terror. And not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. “You’re a mess, O’Roarke, and I’m not letting you get behind the wheel of a car.” He stopped next to his car and yanked open the door. “Get in. I’ll take you home.”

  She tossed the hair out of her eyes. “Serve and protect, right?”

  “You got it. Now get in before I arrest you for loitering.”

  Because her knees felt like jelly, she gave in. She wanted to be asleep, alone in some small, quiet room. She wanted to scream. Worse, she wanted to cry. Instead, she rounded on Boyd the second he settled in the driver’s seat.

  “You know what I hate even more than cops?”

  He turned the key in the ignition. “I figure you’re going to tell me.”

  “Men who order women around just because they’re men. I don’t figure that as a cultural hang-up, just stupidity. The way I look at it, that’s two counts against you, Detective.”

  He leaned over, deliberately crowding her back in her seat. He got a moment’s intense satisfaction out of seeing her eyes widen in surprise, her lips part on a strangled protest. The satisfaction would have been greater, he knew, if he had gone on impulse and covered that stubborn, sassy mouth with his own. He was certain she would taste exactly as she sounded—hot, sexy and dangerous.

  Instead, he yanked her seat belt around her and fastened it.

  Her breath came out in a whoosh when he took the wheel again. It had been a rough night, Cilla reminded herself. A tense, disturbing and unsettling night. Otherwise she would never have sat like a fool and allowed herself to be intimidated by some modern-day cowboy.

  Her hands were shaking again. The reason didn’t seem to matter, only the weakness.

  “I don’t think I like your style, Slick.”

  “You don’t have to.” She was getting under his skin, Boyd realized as he turned out of the lot. That was always a mistake. “Do what you’re told and we’ll get along fine.”

  “I don’t do what I’m told,” she snapped. “And I don’t need a second-rate cop with a John Wayne complex to give me orders. Mark’s the one who called you in, not me. I don’t need you and I don’t want you.”

  He braked at a light. “Tough.”

  “If you think I’m going to fall apart because some creep calls me names and makes threats, you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t think you’re going to fall apart, O’Roarke, any more than you think I’m going to pick up the pieces if you do.”

  “Good. Great. I can handle him all by myself, and if you get your kicks out of listening to that kind of garbage—” She broke off, appalled with herself. Lifting her hands, she pressed them to her face and took three deep breaths.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “For?”

  “For taking it out on you.” She dropped her hands into her lap and stared at them. “Could you pull over for a minute?”

  Without a word, he guided the car to the curb and stopped.

  “I want to calm down before I get home.” In a deliberate effort to relax, she let her head fall back and her eyes close. “I don’t want to upset my sister.”

  It was hard to hold on to rage and resentment when the woman sitting next to him had turned from barbed wire to fragile glass. But if his instincts about Cilla were on target, too much sympathy would set her off again.

  “Want some coffee?”

  “No, thanks.” The corners of her mouth turned up for the briefest instant. “I’ve poured in enough to fuel an SST.” She let out a long, cleansing breath. The giddiness was gone, and with it that floating sense of unreality. “I am sorry, Slick. You’re only doing your job.”

  “You got that right. Why do you call me Slick?”

  She opened her eyes, made a brief but comprehensive study of his face. “Because you are.” Turning away, she dug in her bag for a cigarette. “I’m scared.” She hated the fact that the admission was shaky, that her hand was unsteady as she struck a match.

  “You’re entitled.”

  “No, I’m really scared.” She let out smoke slowly, watching a late-model sedan breeze down the road and into the night. “He wants to kill me. I didn’t really believe that until tonight.” She shuddered. “Is there any heat in this thing?”

  He turned the fan on full. “It’s better if you’re scared.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll cooperate.”

  She smiled. It was a full flash of a smile that almost stopped his heart. “No, I won’t. This is only a momentary respite. I’ll be giving you a hard time as soon as I recover.”

  “I’ll try not to get used to this.” But it would be easy, he realized, to get used to the way her eyes warmed when she smiled. The way her voice eased over a man and made him wonder. “Feeling better?”

  “Lots. Thanks.” She tapped out her cigarette as he guided the car back on the road. “I take it you know where I live.”

  “That’s why I’m a detective.”

  “It’s a thankless job.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. They would talk, she decided. Just talk. Then she wouldn’t have to think. “Why aren’t you out roping cattle or branding bulls? You’ve got the looks for it.”

  He considered a moment. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment, either.”

  “You’re fast on the draw, Slick.”

  “Boyd,” he said. “It wouldn’t hurt you to use my name.” When she only shrugged, he slanted her a curious look. “Cilla. That’d be from Priscilla, right?”

  “No one calls me Priscilla more than once.”

  “Why?”

  She sent him her sweetest smile. “Because I cut out their tongues.”

  “Right. You want to tell me why you don’t like cops?”

  “No.” She turned away to stare out the side window. “I like the nighttime,” she said, almost to herself. “You can do things, say things, at three o’clock in the morning that it’s just not possible to do or say at three o’clock in the afternoon. I can’t even imagine what it’s like to work in the daylight anymore, when people are crowding the air.”

  “You don’t like people much, do you?”

  “Some people.” She didn’t want to talk about herself, her likes and dislikes, her successes, her failures. She wanted to talk about him—to satisfy her curiosity, and to ease her jangled nerves. “So, how long have you had the night shift, Fletcher?”

  “About nine months.” He glanced at her. “You meet an … interesting class of people.”

  She laughed, surprised that she was able to. “Don’t you just? Are you from Denver?”

  “Born and bred.”

  “I like it,” she said, surprising herself again. She hadn’t given it a great deal of thought. It had simply been a place that offered a good college for Deborah and a good opportunity for her. Yet in six months, she realized, she had come close to sinking roots. Shallow ones, but roots nonetheless.

  “Does that mean you’re going to stick around?” He turned down a quiet side street. “I did some research. It seems two years in one spot’s about your limit.”

  “I like change,” she said flatly, closing down the lines of communication. She didn’t care for the idea of anyone poking into her past and her private life. When he pulled up in her driveway, she was already unsnapping her seat belt. “Thanks for the ride, Slick.”

  Before she could dash to her door, he was beside her. “I’m going to need your keys.”

  They were already in her hand. She clutched them possessively. “Why?”

  “So I can have your car dropped off in the morning.”

  She jingled them, frowning, as she stood under the front porch light. Boyd wondered what it would be like to
walk her to her door after an ordinary date. He wouldn’t keep his hands in his pockets, he thought ruefully. And he certainly would scratch this itch by kissing her outside the door.

  Outside, hell, he admitted. He would have been through the door with her. And there would have been more to the end of the evening than a good-night kiss.

  But it wasn’t a date. And any fool could see that there wasn’t going to be anything remotely ordinary between them. Something. That he promised himself. But nothing remotely resembling the ordinary.

  “Keys?” he repeated.

  After going over her options, Cilla had decided his was best. Carefully she removed a single key from the chain, which was shaped like a huge musical note. “Thanks.”

  “Hold it.” He placed the palm of his hand on the door as she unlocked it. “You’re not going to ask me in for a cup of coffee?”

  She didn’t turn, only twisted her head. “No.”

  She smelled like the night, he thought. Dark, deep, dangerous. “That’s downright unfriendly.”

  The flash of humor came again. “I know. See you around, Slick.”

  His hand dropped onto hers on the knob, took a firm hold. “Do you eat?”

  The humor vanished. That didn’t surprise him. What did was what replaced it. Confusion. And—he could have sworn—shyness. She recovered so quickly that he was certain he’d imagined it.

  “Once or twice a week.”

  “Tomorrow.” His hand remained over hers. He couldn’t be sure about what he’d thought he saw in her eyes, but he knew her pulse had quickened under his fingers.

  “I may eat tomorrow.”

  “With me.”

  It amazed her that she fumbled. It had been years since she’d experienced this baffling reaction to a man. And those years had been quiet and smooth. Refusing a date was as simple as saying no. At least it always had been for her. Now she found herself wanting to smile and ask him what time she should be ready. The words were nearly out of her mouth before she caught herself.

  “That’s an incredibly smooth offer, Detective, but I’ll have to pass.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t date cops.”

  Before she could weaken, she slipped inside and closed the door in his face.

  ***

  Boyd shuffled the papers on his desk and scowled. The O’Roarke case was hardly his only assignment, but he couldn’t get his mind off it. Couldn’t get his mind off O’Roarke, he thought, wishing briefly but intensely for a cigarette.

  The veteran cop sitting two feet away from him was puffing away like a chimney as he talked to a snitch. Boyd breathed in deep, wishing he could learn to hate the smell like other nonsmokers.

  Instead, he continued to torture himself by drawing in the seductive scent—that, and the other, less appealing aromas of a precinct station. Overheated coffee, overheated flesh, the cheap perfume hovering around a pair of working girls who lounged resignedly on a nearby bench.

  Intrusions, he thought, that he rarely noticed in the day-to-day scheme of things. Tonight they warred with his concentration. The smells, the sound of keyboards clicking, phones ringing, shoes scuffing along the linoleum, the way one of the overhead lights winked sporadically.

  It didn’t help his disposition that for the past three days Priscilla Alice O’Roarke had stuck fast to his mind like a thick, thorny spike. No amount of effort could shake her loose. It might be because both he and his partner had spent hours at a time with her in the booth during her show. It might be because he’d seen her with her defenses down. It might be because he’d felt, fleetingly, her surge of response to him.

  It might be, Boyd thought in disgust. Then again, it might not.

  He wasn’t a man whose ego was easily bruised by the refusal of a date. He liked to think that he had enough confidence in himself to understand he didn’t appeal to every woman. The fact that he’d appealed to what he considered a healthy number of them in his thirty-three years was enough to satisfy him.

  The trouble was, he was hung up on one woman. And she wasn’t having any of it.

  He could live with it.

  The simple fact was that he had a job to do now. He wasn’t convinced that Cilla was in any immediate danger. But she was being harassed, systematically and thoroughly. Both he and Althea had started the ball rolling, questioning men with priors that fit the M.O., poking their fingers into Cilla’s personal and professional lives since she had come to Denver, quietly investigating her coworkers.

  So far the score was zip.

  Time to dig deeper, Boyd decided. He had Cilla’s résumé in his hand. It was an interesting piece of work in itself. Just like the woman it belonged to. It showed her bouncing from a one-horse station in Georgia—which accounted for that faint and fascinating Southern drawl—to a major player in Atlanta, then on to Richmond, St. Louis, Chicago, Dallas, before landing—feetfirst, obviously—in Denver at KHIP.

  The lady likes to move, he mused. Or was it that she needed to run? That was a question of semantics, and he intended to get the answer straight from the horse’s mouth.

  The one thing he could be sure of from the bald facts typed out in front of him was that Cilla had pulled herself along the road to success with a high school diploma and a lot of guts. It couldn’t have been easy for a woman—a girl, really, at eighteen—to break into what was still a largely male-dominated business.

  “Interesting reading?” Althea settled a hip on the corner of his desk. No one in the station house would have dared whistle at her legs. But plenty of them looked.

  “Cilla O’Roarke.” He tossed the résumé down. “Impressions?”

  “Tough lady.” She grinned as she said it. She’d spent a lot of time razzing Boyd about his fascination with the sultry voice on the radio. “Likes to do things her own way. Smart and professional.”

  He picked up a box of candy-coated almonds and shook some into his hand. “I think I figured all that out myself.”

  “Well, figure this.” Althea took the box and carefully selected one glossy nut. “She’s scared down to the bone. And she’s got an inferiority complex a mile wide.”

  “Inferiority complex.” Boyd gave a quick snort and kicked back in his chair. “Not a chance.”

  With the same careful deliberation, Althea chose another candied almond. “She hides it behind three feet of steel, but it’s there.” Althea laid a hand on the toe of his boot. “Woman’s intuition, Fletcher. That’s why you’re so damn lucky to have me.”

  Boyd snatched the box back, knowing Althea could, and would, methodically work her way through to the last piece. “If that woman’s insecure, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “You don’t have a hat.”

  “I’ll get one and eat it.” Dismissing his partner’s instincts, he gestured toward the files. “Since our man isn’t letting up, we’re going to have to go looking elsewhere for him.”

  “The lady isn’t very forthcoming about her past.”

  “So we push.”

  Althea considered a moment. Then she shifted her weight gracefully, recrossed her legs. “Want to flip a coin? Because the odds are she’ll push back.”

  Boyd grinned. “I’m counting on it.”

  “It’s your turn in the booth tonight.”

  “Then you start with Chicago.” He handed her the file. “We got the station manager, the landlord.” He scanned the sheet himself. He intended to go far beyond what was printed there, but he would start with the facts. “Use that sweet, persuasive voice of yours. They’ll spill their guts.”

  “Thousands have.” She glanced over idly as an associate shoved a swearing suspect with a bloody nose into a nearby chair. There was a brief tussle, and a spate of curses followed by mumbled threats. “God, I love this place.”

  “Yeah, there’s no place like home.” He snatched up what was left of his coffee before his partner could reach for it. “I’ll work from the other end, the first station she worked for. Thea, if we don’t come up with something soon
, the captain’s going to yank us.”

  She rose. “Then we’ll have to come up with something.”

  He nodded. Before he could pick up the phone, it rang. “Fletcher.”

  “Slick.”

  He would have grimaced at the nickname if he hadn’t heard the fear first. “Cilla? What is it?”

  “I got a call.” A quick bubble of laughter worked its way through. “Old news, I guess. I’m at home this time, though, and I— Damn, I’m jumping at shadows.”

  “Lock your doors and sit tight. I’m on my way. Cilla,” he said when there was no response. “I’m on my way.”

  “Thanks. If you could break a few traffic laws getting here, I’d be obliged.”

  “Ten minutes.” He hung up. “Thea.” He caught her before she could complete the first call. “Let’s move.”

  Chapter 3

  She had herself under control by the time they got to her. Above all, she felt foolish to have run to the police—to him—because of a phone call.

  Only phone calls, Cilla assured herself as she paced to the window and back. After a week of them she should have a better handle on it. If she could tone down her reaction, convince the caller that what he said and how he said it left her unaffected, they would stop.

  Her father had taught her that that was the way to handle bullies. Then again, her mother’s solution had been a right jab straight to the jaw. While Cilla saw value in both viewpoints, she thought the passive approach was more workable under the circumstances.

  She’d done a lousy job of it with the last call, she admitted. Sometime during his tirade she’d come uncomfortably close to hysteria, shouting back, pleading, meeting threats with threats. She could only be grateful that Deborah hadn’t been home to hear it.

  Struggling for calm, she perched on the arm of a chair, her body ruler-straight, her mind scrambling. After the call she had turned off the radio, locked the doors, pulled the drapes. Now, in the glow of the lamplight, she sat listening for a sound, any sound, while she scanned the room. The walls she and Deborah had painted, the furniture they had picked out, argued about. Familiar things, Cilla thought. Calming things.

  After only six months there was already a scattering of knickknacks, something they hadn’t allowed themselves before. But this time the house wasn’t rented, the furniture wasn’t leased. It was theirs.

  Perhaps that was why, though they’d never discussed it, they had begun to fill it with little things, useless things. The china cat who curled in a permanent nap on the cluttered bookshelf. The foolishly expensive glossy white bowl with hibiscus blossoms painted on the rim. The dapper frog in black tie and tails.

  They were making a home, Cilla realized. For the first time since they had found themselves alone, they were making a home. She wouldn’t let some vicious, faceless voice over the phone spoil that.

  What was she going to do? Because she was alone, she allowed herself a moment of despair and dropped her head into her hands. Should she fight back? But how could she fight someone she couldn’t see and didn’t understand? Should she pretend indifference? But how long could she keep up that kind of pretense, especially if he continued to invade her private hours, as well as her public ones?

  And what would happen when he finally wearied of talk and came to her in person?

  The brisk knock on the door had her jolting, had her pressing a hand between her breasts to hold in her suddenly frantic heart.

  I’m your executioner. I’m going to make you suffer. I’m going to make you pay.

  “Cilla. It’s Boyd. Open the door.”

  She needed a moment more, needed to cover her face with her hands and breathe deep. Steadier now, she crossed to the door and opened it.

  “Hi. You made good time.” She nodded to Althea. “Detective Grayson.” Cilla gestured them inside, then leaned her back against the closed door. “I feel stupid for calling you all the way out here.”

  “Just part of the job,” Althea told her. The woman was held together by very