LITMIR.BIZ

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the name. He’d heard several of the men at the precinct mention the woman, saying their wives and girlfriends swore by her. He grasped at the tidbit, needing something to do, to make himself useful. Anything to keep him from coming face-to-face with the past and have to deal with it.

      “I can have her paged,” he told the paramedic. He turned to go to the registration desk.

      “Don’t bother, we’ll call her office,” an amiable, matronly-looking nurse told Dylan as she came up to join the delegation around the gurney.

      He fell back without a word, feeling useless.

      “Don’t go,” Lucy called to him. “I want to talk to you. About Ritchie.”

      “It’ll have to wait until we get you cleaned up, honey,” the nurse told her. “My, but that is one beautiful baby. You do nice work.” She glanced at Dylan. “Is this the baby’s daddy?”

      Lucy forced herself not to look in Dylan’s direction. “No.”

      Dylan tried to grab at the excuse the nurse had inadvertently given him. It was a legitimate way out of this uncomfortable situation. And he did have to get to the stakeout.

      But Lucy’s eyes were imploring him to stay. The excuse died on his lips before he had a chance to say it. There was no way around it. They had unfinished business to tend to.

      “I’ll wait in the hall until you’re ready,” he called after her.

      She raised her voice. They were almost around a corner. “Promise?”

      “Promise.”

      Her voice lingered after she disappeared from view. “I’ll hold you to that.”

      His lips curved before he could think better of it. “I know.”

      Chapter 3

      Dylan straightened up slowly. His back had begun to ache, and it felt as if it was taking on the shape of the hospital wall he’d been leaning against. He’d been waiting out in the maternity ward corridor far longer than he figured he should have.

      He glanced at his watch. It was time to go.

      He’d put in another call to dispatch the moment Lucy’s gurney had disappeared behind closed doors. This time he’d had them patch him through to Dave Watley, the man he’d been partnered with off and on over the years. The message was short, terse. He was going to be late. Watley had been surprised, but he’d hung up before the man could ask why.

      Even as he’d rung off, Dylan had fought his own silent battle over the wisdom of hanging around outside Lucy’s hospital room.

      He had a job to do and it wasn’t here.

      Still, he hadn’t given Lucy any sort of accounting about her brother. In his defense, there’d been next to no time. But that didn’t change the fact that he owed it to her.

      Frustrated, he shoved his hands into his pockets, purposely avoiding looking in the general direction of the nursery. He didn’t need that sort of distraction right now.

      And Lucy didn’t need to listen to the grisly details about her brother’s death right now, he thought. She certainly wasn’t in any shape to answer questions. Though part of him wanted to get this all over with and put everything behind him so he could start fresh again, he knew it’d be better for both the department and Lucy if he came back later, when she was up to it.

      Or maybe not at all. Maybe if someone else handled this, it’d be for the best all around.

      “Excuse me?”

      Having made up his mind, Dylan had turned toward the elevators and his escape route. The low voice, aimed in his direction, momentarily put his plans on hold. Dylan looked over his shoulder to see a refined, tall blonde comfortably attired in a white lab coat that partially covered a blue sundress. She was looking straight at him. “Are you Detective McMorrow?”

      “Yes?”

      The verification was tendered slowly, cautiously, telling Sheila Pollack that this man was more accustomed to receiving bad news than good. And that, police detective or not, the tall, rangy man before her was a private person. Not a bit like her Slade.

      With a smile meant to put him at his ease, she offered him her hand.

      “Hi, I’m Sheila Pollack, Lucy’s doctor. She told me you delivered the baby.” She smiled and offered Dylan her hand.

      He shook her hand mechanically, surprised at the firmness of the woman’s grip. “The baby more or less delivered herself. I was just there to catch her.”

      “That’s not the way Lucy tells it.” Her smile grew sunnier. “Nice job.”

      Dylan shrugged, accepting the compliment the way he accepted any compliment that came his way, offhandedly and with little attention. It was criticism that helped a man grow, not empty words. His father had beaten that one into him until he’d been able to defend himself.

      He looked over the doctor’s head toward the room where they had taken Lucy and her baby. “How she’s doing?”

      “Mother and daughter are fine, no small thanks to you. Right now, they’re both asleep. I think the ordeal exhausted them.” She studied him for a moment. “Lucky for Lucy that you were there.”

      “Yeah, lucky,” he muttered more to himself than to the statuesque woman. She was looking at him as if she could read his mind. Annoyed with himself, he dismissed the thought as ridiculous. “Well, I’m on duty, Doctor. I’d better go.”

      Sheila nodded. She had other patients on the floor to look in on. And a roomful waiting for her back at her office. But because each of her patients was more than simply just that to her, she paused where she was for one more second.

      “Want me to tell Lucy anything when she wakes up?” When he made no reply, she asked, “Will you be back to see her?”

      Dylan thought it an odd question. For all she knew, he’d just been someone passing by at the right time, or the wrong time, depending on whose view you took. But, then, he amended, maybe Lucy had told her that they’d known each other once.

      For the sake of brevity and to prevent any possibility of further discussion, he said, “Yeah, sure,” and quickly walked away.

      Sheila spared herself a moment to watch him go, aware that she had just been brushed off. Instinct told her that there was a great deal more going on here than was evident at first.

      Turning away, she smiled to herself. He’d be back. Whether he realized it or not, he’d be back. She was willing to lay odds on it.

      Detective Dave Watley glanced up from the video camera he was adjusting. It was perched on a tripod, its powerful telephoto lens aimed at the entrance of the restaurant five stories below and across the street. “What the hell kept you?” he asked Dylan when his partner entered the apartment.

      Pulling up a folding chair to the partially curtained window with one hand, Dylan placed the paper tray with its two cups of coffee on the unsteady card table. Besides a beaten-up sofa that had been abandoned by the last tenant who lived in the apartment, the card table and two chairs represented the only furniture in the studio apartment. Watley had brought the table. He needed someplace to put the puzzles he was so fond of working on.

      “I was detained.” Dylan pried his own cup from the holder, leaving the one he’d picked up for Watley where it was.

      Watley looked at him with good-natured disgust. “No kidding, Sherlock. I kind of figured that part out for myself. Detained how?”

      As far as Watley knew, his rather closed-mouth partner had no personal life to speak of, no relatives he ever mentioned, and certainly no woman in his life. The man lived and breathed the job, which made him a good man to have watching your back, but not exactly the best to share a long stakeout with. And this one had all the signs of being a long one, even though it was

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