Revelations

Because she was a woman, he concluded. And his gut instinct told him she was emotionally fragile, despite her kick-ass persona.

He didn’t want to worry about someone else. He could hardly deal with his own problems.

Ask for a change of partner, he thought, but knew he wouldn’t. If she found out he’d put in a request, he’d wound her, and he never wanted to do that. Besides, they worked well together now that they’d straightened out a few kinks.

He was exasperated to realize he’d worry about her even if they weren’t working together. Maybe especially if they weren’t. She was bullheaded sometimes. She needed him to moderate her tendency to charge ahead.

Uh-huh, his inner voice taunted. She needs you to protect her.

He swore out loud just as he pulled to the curb in front of her apartment complex. The piece of grit irritating his instep felt like a jagged chunk of gravel right now.

Caldwell stirred up something…brotherly in him. Yeah, that was it.

He was just damn grateful she was as plain as the cream-colored facade of her building, and that his flashes of awareness were few and far between.

Brotherly. Okay, he could be brotherly, even though he didn’t need another sister.

Diaz leaned on the horn.

CHAPTER TWO

“I’VE BEEN THINKING.” Seat-belted in, Ann took a cautious sip of the hot coffee she’d poured into an insulated cup just before she left the house.

After a glance to check for traffic, her partner accelerated away from the curb. “Yeah, me, too. I’m thinking we’ll find the slug who went berserk with the bowie knife holed up at his mama’s house. Hell, she’s probably doing his laundry, wondering why the water is running red.”

“Come on. He must have been soaked with blood. She isn’t wondering anything. If she’s doing his laundry, she knows she’s washing evidence.” Ann took another, more confident swallow of coffee. “But that’s not what I was thinking about.”

“No?” Diaz gave her an odd look before returning his attention to the road ahead.

She frowned, hoping she wouldn’t sound wacko. No, part of her wanted him to tell her she was just that. Convince her to drop the whole, creepy line of speculation.

“What I’m thinking,” she said, “is that two cops have died in really stupid accidents.”

“Two?” Another surprised, then speculative, glance. “Your father?”

“You don’t think not wearing a seat belt was stupid?”

“Yeah, I think it was stupid. Just…”

“Normal stupid? Instead of unbelievably stupid?”

“Right.” He slowed as a light turned yellow ahead. “Wiring two aluminum ladders together and then climbing damn near to the top of them, especially when you aren’t a lightweight… That’s unbelievably stupid.”

“Okay. Yeah. I agree.” She continued to frown. “Still…”

“Still, two cops have died in stupid accidents. Which took place six months apart.”

“That’s true. But do you remember a few months ago, when Reggie Roarke told everybody who’d listen about how someone tried to kill him?”

Diaz snorted. “Because he was on his back under a car raised by two flimsy jacks?”

“Uh-huh. Doing something stupid.”

Braked at the stoplight, he was silent. When she stole a glance, she saw that her partner was frowning, too.

“Something,” Ann added, “between normal stupid and unbelievably stupid.”

“Damn stupid,” Diaz supplied, but automatically, as if he was thinking hard.

Ann waited.

The light turned, and he started forward with the other cars. She wondered where they were going. No, she knew: the berserk biker’s mama’s house. At least this murder, hideous as it was, held no mystery. Half a dozen witnesses had seen the assault. Two, to their credit, had tried to stop it, and had gotten their hands and forearms sliced viciously for their efforts.

“He was high,” one of them said, shaking his head. “Crazy high.”

“On?” Ann had asked.

“Crack. But he might’ve had some other stuff, too.”

Unbelievably stupid seemed to be going around.

Now, still frowning, Diaz asked, “What was it Roarke claimed? That the car rocked, like someone was pushing it?”

“He said he heard footsteps. Thought it was his wife and started talking to her. Then the car rocked and he told her to knock it off. But it rocked harder, and he started scooting out. Didn’t make it before the first jack collapsed.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Diaz said thoughtfully. “I remember his face.”

With a bulbous nose, thick jowls and a bull-like neck, Big Reggie Roarke wasn’t a candidate for a calendar of hot law enforcement guys at the best of times. With a black eye, plaster across his nose and a cheekbone blossoming purple and puce, he’d probably scared his own grandkids.

She gave a quiet grunt of amusement. Yeah, okay. He probably scared them without the added beauty treatment. When she was a kid, he’d scared her when he came to the house.

“He was lucky,” Diaz ruminated. “Damn near got his skull crushed.”

Ann waited some more.

“You’re saying…what? That someone pushed the car off the jacks? That he wasn’t making it up to hide how damn careless he’d been?”

Trying not to sound tentative, she said, “Maybe.”

“And that your father and Leroy Pearce’s ‘accidents’ weren’t.”

“A little shove would have taken care of Leroy.”

Diaz made a sound of disgust. “A belch would have catapulted the idiot into space.”

“But what if you were watching, waiting for them to do something stupid? How much easier could murder get?”

He was shaking his head before she finished. “You’re reaching. What if we looked county-wide at accidental deaths in the past six months. You know what we’d find.”