Dear Maggie

There was another pause, this one even longer than the first.

Zachman: John? Are you still there?

Mntnbiker: Sorry. Listen, I have to run, but I’ll write you later. Okay?

Maggie frowned at her screen. They’d been together online for ninety minutes, but there was still a good hour before she had to leave for work. She wasn’t ready to let him go and couldn’t figure out why he’d suddenly turned cold.

Jeez, I’m lonelier than I realized, she thought. Now I’m clinging to a man I’ve never actually met. She groaned and smacked her forehead. Snap out of it, Mag!

Zachman: Sure. I have to get to work, anyway.

WHEN MAGGIE ARRIVED at the office, she found Nick Sorenson slouched in her chair, his legs stretched out in front of him, his eyes on her pictures of Zach.

Surprised, she drew to a halt and gaped at him over the partition that divided her small space from everyone else’s. “What are you doing at my desk?”

He smiled and stood. “Waiting for you.”

“For me?”

He handed her a slip of paper. Maggie glanced at it and immediately recognized the scrawl—Jorge, the cop reporter who had the shift before hers—but she didn’t take time to read his note. Nick was talking, explaining.

“Jorge’s son is having his fourteenth birthday tonight. Whole family’s going to be there. He wanted to take the call but couldn’t miss the party. So it’s your story now.”

“If I want it.” She forced her gaze away from Nick’s rugged face and looked more closely at Jorge’s note.

Police on their way to the burger stand at Broadway and 14th Avenue. Drive-by shooting. Don’t know details. Call just came in.

She raised her brows in speculation. Broadway and 14th. Oak Park. It was the roughest area in Sacramento.

“Let me guess,” he said. “You want it.”

She eyed him narrowly. “Let me guess,” she said. “You’re the only photographer available for this.”

His grin showed white teeth contrasted against a day’s beard. “Yep. Don’t you trust me to get the pics right?”

Maggie didn’t trust him, period. She drew a deep breath, trying to put a finger on what was bothering her tonight. Nick had invaded her personal space, which was presumptuous, even rude, especially since he was still so new. But it was more than that. He acted as though he was in complete control, even in a place where he should’ve been out of his element. He was obviously someone who enjoyed the upper hand, she decided, someone who was used to having it, like Rock Tillman. But after Tim, Maggie had promised herself that she’d never let a man take control of her life again. And she meant that. Any man who stepped on her toes was going to hear about it.

“Just one thing,” she said.

“What’s that?” He watched her from beneath thick dark lashes, the perfect frame for the unusual color of his eyes. Not quite brown, not quite gold, they were somewhere in between, like tortoiseshell.

“The next time you feel the need to wait for me, do it at your own desk.”

Maggie had expected him to bristle at the firmness in her voice and was prepared to stand her ground. But he only chuckled softly. “Anything you say, Maggie.”

Her name sounded strangely intimate on his lips. She almost demanded he call her Mrs. Russell but immediately realized how silly that would be. Everyone in the office called her Maggie. Her gray-haired ex-mother-in-law was Mrs. Russell.

He brushed past her and headed down the aisle, and for a moment, Maggie swam in his scent. Whether it was his aftershave, soap, cologne or shampoo, she didn’t know, but whatever the combination, it was more evocative than she would have expected and caused a butterfly-like sensation in her stomach.

“Oh, God. Not Nick Sorenson,” she muttered to herself, trailing him at a distance. “Think John. Nice, tender, sensitive John, who tells you your father would be proud of you, who takes you on creative and thoughtful cyber-dates.” Just because he wouldn’t send her a picture didn’t mean he looked like a monster. He was just more enlightened than most. He understood how little looks truly mattered in the overall scheme of things. She understood that, too.

So why, then, was she having such a difficult time keeping her eyes averted from the physical perfection of Nick Sorenson’s butt?

CHAPTER FIVE

THE VICTIM WAS a young black male, probably no more than fifteen.

Maggie stared down at the limp form sprawled on the sidewalk, watching as the paramedics worked to resuscitate him, and couldn’t help imagining his mother’s grief. No doubt the poor woman would want to know how her child’s life could end this way. What had happened? Why?

They were the same questions Maggie would have to ask but for different reasons. She would ask because it was her job.

“This kind of tragedy makes me sick,” she told Nick, who was standing next to her.

“Gangs,” he replied, a frown tugging down the corners of his mouth.

Maggie clenched her fists at her side and prayed silently that the boy would live. Come on, come back, she chanted, you should have another sixty years.

But it was only a few minutes later that the two paramedics rocked back on their haunches and stared at each other in silent communication. It was over. He was gone. There was nothing else they could do. Their faces grim, they loaded the boy on a stretcher and transferred him to the ambulance. The motor rumbled, the siren wailed, the lights flashed and soon only a dark puddle remained beneath the streetlights, along with four firemen, their bright red truck, and a gathering crowd of spectators.

Distance yourself, Maggie commanded. She couldn’t think about the violence, the senseless suffering, the mother’s bewilderment—or she’d be too angry to be objective.

Nick put his hand on the small of her back and looked down at her. “You okay?”

For a moment, Maggie forgot that she didn’t want anything to do with the Trib’s new photographer. She forgot about his arrogance, his fantastic body, his “love ’em and leave ’em” aura. She even forgot about Rock Tillman. After what they’d witnessed, nothing other than the basic issues of life and death seemed to matter. She turned her face into his chest and let him stroke her back. Then she took a deep breath and gathered the willpower to do her job and to let him do his.

“HAVING A HARD TIME staying awake?”

At the sound of Nick’s voice, Maggie lifted her head off her arms and glanced up at him, wanting to curse him for looking so alert at four o’clock in the morning. They’d gotten back to the office around midnight. She’d found a message on her desk from Ben, her editor, demanding her follow-up to the Ritter murder and had spent the next two hours trying to get hold of someone at police headquarters to confirm what Mary Ann had told her. But no one would go on record, least of all the two detectives working the case. So she’d been forced to write the story using an unidentified informant as her source.

Despite that, she was pleased with the way it had turned out. And she was glad to have it behind her. For the past hour she’d been incapable of accomplishing anything more industrious than monitoring her scanners. “I’ve been up too long,” she said.

“Why don’t you go home and get some sleep?”

Maggie rubbed her cheek, hoping she didn’t have waffle face. “Because it’s my job to stay here until the morning shift comes on. And because that guy who killed Sarah Ritter might strike again. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, but if it’s going to happen, I can’t miss the story. I have to justify my paycheck somehow.” She shoved a copy of her latest article at him, and his eyes cut to the headline: RITTER LATEST OF SEVEN.

“Ritter’s murderer has killed before?” he asked, his expression pensive.

She nodded.

“How do you know? The police tell you that?”

“Not in so many words. Other sources—and a little research—confirmed it.”

“What other sources?”

Maggie gave him a sly smile. “A good reporter never reveals her secrets.”

“Seems I’ve heard that line in the movies. But we’re on the same team here, right?”