Her Lawman On Call

She’d never heard a tone so devoid of emotion. Or sound so incredibly empty. Beneath that emptiness, she had a feeling there was an endless abyss filled with pain. Guilt tightened her stomach.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I didn’t mean to sound so flippant.” Sasha spread her hands, feeling restless. “I do that when I get nervous.”

She saw him slant a glance at her and it took everything she had not to shift in her seat. “Do I make you nervous?”

Sasha knew he was asking not as a man, but as a cop. She supposed he had to rule out everyone.

“No. But seeing Angela like that did. Does,” she amended, since she was still fidgeting inwardly. “Everybody loved Angela.”

“Obviously not everybody,” he pointed out. “Someone killed her.”

She couldn’t bring herself to believe it was on purpose. Angela had never hurt anyone. But her purse was still beside her body, so robbery hadn’t been a motive. If the killer had stolen Angela’s purse, Sasha thought, he would have found very little in it. A single mother who doted on her daughter, Angela was always struggling to make ends meet. That was why she was hoping to become a nurse practitioner.

Sasha pressed her lips together as they emerged out of the structure. There was no moon out tonight, but the streetlights made up for it. “Maybe it was just an accident.”

There was something in her voice that caught his attention. “You do know something, don’t you?” He looked at her as he turned right at the end of the next block. “Was there an ex-boyfriend in the picture?”

“An ex-husband,” Sasha corrected. Alex was his name. Angela didn’t have time for a boyfriend. Her daughter and the hospital took up all her time. And then, because she knew the detective would find out, she added, “Angela had a restraining order against him.”

“Why?” He fired the question at her before she was even finished.

Angela had confided in her and telling the detective felt as if she was breaking a trust. But death had changed the guidelines.

“Because he couldn’t see his way clear to letting her leave him, even after the divorce papers went through. But he’d never hurt her,” she added quickly. “Not like that.” If you loved someone, you couldn’t just put a bullet in the center of their forehead, she argued silently.

The light turned red. Tony looked at her, his voice steely. “What way would he hurt her?”

She remembered the black eye, the bruises that Angela had tried to pass off as clumsiness until she’d finally been convinced that she was setting a bad example for her daughter by remaining. “He hit her a couple of times. That’s why she left him.”

Tony nodded, doing a little math in his head. “Doesn’t take much for abuse to escalate into something lethal.”

Something in his voice sent a chill down her spine. “You speaking from experience?” she heard herself asking even though it was none of her business. She fully expected him to say as much.

He didn’t.

“Yes.” And then he looked at her as they came to another red light. “I’m supposed to be the one asking questions,” he informed her mildly. “Not you.”

She couldn’t help herself. Ever since she’d been a little girl, she had always pushed the envelope a little further than it was supposed to go, always wanted to know everything about everything. And to help if she could. It was in her nature. In her genes. Nothing had changed with age.

“Who did you abuse, Detective?”

“I didn’t,” he told her tersely.

And he never would. Not after growing up in a house where abuse was as regular as the seasons. Not after having his father beat his mother. He’d jumped to her defense, hitting his father over the head with a frying pan, then calling 911.

After his mother’s death a few days later from the severity of the abuse, he and his brothers were propelled into the quagmire that was the state’s foster-care system, moved around from house to house like unwanted pieces of furniture until his mother’s Aunt Tess came forward to take them in.

“Your father—?” Sasha guessed, only to have him cut her off. More with his expression than with anything he actually said.

“I’m not one of your patients, Doc.”

There was a warning note in his voice, a warning that told her if she continued to cross the line he’d drawn in the sand, there would be consequences to pay.

Instead of retreating, she flashed a smile. The first she’d felt capable of mustering since she’d seen Angela lying on the ground, dead. “You couldn’t be. I’m an OB-GYN. You’re the wrong gender.”

“First time anyone’s ever said that to me,” he quipped.

Sasha glanced at Santini’s rugged profile as he signaled for another turn. That, she thought, she could well believe.

Sasha sighed as she let herself into her small three-bedroom apartment. It was just a few minutes after one o’clock in the morning and she was beyond exhausted at this point. A second wind had come and gone and so had a third. At the moment, her energy was totally depleted, leaving her feeling barely human and incredibly sad.

The handsome detective with the permanent scowl on his face had wound up asking her more questions on their way down to the precinct than he actually did once he was at his desk and typing out her responses. In reality, there wasn’t all that much more she could tell Santini beyond what she’d already said. What that amounted to was that as far as she knew, Angela Rico had no known enemies. Yet someone had deliberately killed her. Executed her, she thought, numbed by the thought.

Dutifully, she had given the detective the name and address of Angela’s mother. Selena Cruz watched Rita, Angela’s three-year-old, while Angela worked at the hospital. She assumed that Angela’s mother might be able to give the detective information about Angela’s ex, although she still didn’t think Alex Rico could have killed his wife. If he had, he would have killed himself as well, because he maintained that he couldn’t live without Angela.

Walking across the threshold, Sasha closed the door behind her. The single twenty-five-watt bulb they always left on for one another in the hallway cast dim pools of light on the floor beneath it. She yawned and sighed, debating just falling on her face on the sofa. Her bedroom seemed to be too far away.

A click vaguely registered in the back of her mind and suddenly, the apartment was flooded with light.

Sasha covered her eyes, blinking several times until she got them acclimated to the brightness. “You’re blinding me,” she accused whichever sister had turned the light on.

“My God, are you operating in the middle of the night now?” Natalya wanted to know.

Dropping her hand, Sasha saw Natalya coming into the living room, frowning at her. She and Natalya, eleven months her junior, shared high cheekbones and a passion for healing. Beyond that, they were as different as night and day. Natalya was shorter, with more curves and medium-brown hair that brushed against her shoulders. Her sister’s eyes were brown, not blue, and right now, they were fixed on Sasha’s clothing and filled with confusion and concern.

“Sasha, you’re covered in blood,” she cried. “What happened?”

She’d forgotten about that, Sasha thought. But before she could answer, another light went on, this time from the bedroom on the right. Leokadia, barefoot, her eyes half closed, stumbled into the room. The oversized T-shirt she had on indicated that of the three, she’d been the only one who had actually made it to bed tonight.

She didn’t look any the more cheerful for it. “You two want to hold it down? Some of us are actually trying to get some sleep around here. You do remember sleep, don’t you?” Kady looked accusingly at her sisters. “It’s—oh my God, what happened?” Her mouth dropped open as she stared at her oldest sister. “Are you all right?” she cried, rushing toward Sasha. “Are you hurt? Whose blood is that? Sash, sit down,” the petite blonde ordered, pointing to the sofa. “Can I get you something? Do you want—?”

In an effort to get her own word in edgewise, Natalya put her hand over her younger sister’s mouth. She looked at Sasha, who everyone else had always regarded as the rock of the family. “Whose blood is that, Sasha?”

“Angela’s. Angela Rico’s.”

Pressing her lips together, Sasha paused for a moment, struggling with her emotions as the reality of the situation finally sank in. The next moment, she offered her sisters a halfhearted smile of apology. At times it was hard to remember that although they all worked at the same hospital, Patience Memorial, or PM as everyone who worked there affectionately referred to it, they all had different areas of expertise. That meant that their spheres didn’t always cross, which, in turn, meant that they didn’t always know the same people.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “She was a nurse on the maternity ward.”

Natalya nodded. “I’ve heard you mention her.” Her voice was soft, gentle. It was unnerving for them to see Sasha like this. Except for when her fiancé had been mugged and fatally stabbed, it was generally believed that Sasha had nerves of steel.

Coming up on her other side, Kady placed her hand on Sasha’s arm. “What happened to her, Sash?” she asked softly.

“Someone killed her in the parking structure.”

Very slowly, her hand now on Sasha’s wrist, Kady was drawing her over to the sofa. “Do the police have any idea who?”

Numbly, Sasha shook her head. Her legs seemed to give out from beneath her just as she came to the sofa. “I was just at the precinct.”