Twice A Hero, Always Her Man

Besides, there was nothing like the feeling that came from actually being able to close a case rather than having it linger on indefinitely, doggedly haunting him because he hadn’t been able to solve it.

What he especially liked about this last case—other than the fact that it had introduced him to the sexy reporter—was that the thief had been taken down, so to speak, without his having to fire a single shot. Not all cases involving robbery ended so peacefully.

More often than not, someone was hurt, sometimes fatally. Colin didn’t admit it out loud, but he took it hard when that happened. It wasn’t that he thought of himself as some kind of superhero who should be able to prevent things like that from happening. He didn’t think of himself as a hero at all, but the fact that he wasn’t able to prevent a fatality really ate away at him for a long time.

Maybe that was why before Heather had become his responsibility, he had lived a faster life, determined to enjoy himself as much as possible. Partly because life was short and could end at any time and partially to erase certain images from his mind.

Images like having a would-be hero’s blood pool through the fingers of his hand as he desperately tried to stem the flow, desperately tried to keep the man alive. But he’d come on the scene just minutes too late. Too late to stop the gunman from firing that lethal shot, but at least not too late to take the gunman down.

It still kept him up at night sometimes or disturbed his dreams, intruding like an uninvited, unwanted visitor determined to disrupt everything. Those were the nights when Heather came into his bedroom to wake him up instead of the other way around.

They were a pair, he and Heather. Both trying to act as if nothing bothered them. She was becoming more like him each day, he realized, wondering how Ryan would have reacted to that little piece of news.

He found himself wishing Ryan was around to react to anything.

Colin rotated his shoulders, then just got up from his desk altogether. There was only so much sitting at a computer, inputting information, that a man could be expected to do.

He needed to get some air, he decided.

“See another art thief darting by?” Marconi, another detective sitting close by, asked as he looked up to see him walking out.

Colin took the remark in stride. “Very funny. I need to stretch my legs.”

“Hey, Benteen, so when do we get to see that chiseled profile on TV?” another detective, Al Sanchez, asked, speaking up.

Colin merely shrugged. That alluring reporter had said she’d get back to him, but she hadn’t mentioned when. “Beats me.”