LITMIR.BIZ

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witness. We lose them now and then. Except...”

      “Except what?” Craig asked.

      “She’s not one of ours, I’m pretty sure. I’m here because they want every t crossed on this thing. If she had been ours, we would have known something. Everyone in every local agency knows about this—we all know enough to know we don’t know a damned thing but that someone thinks they’re getting away with murder.”

      “Not this time,” Kendall said flatly.

      “Nope, not this time,” Mike agreed. “Hell, the best of the best, right? We’re all on it.”

      Nods went around.

      “We’ll keep it tight,” Mike said. “I’ll be the liaison between agencies—make sure we’re always all up to speed on what’s going on.”

      LeBlanc thanked him and headed on in as they continued out to the street.

      “So the woman—our dead woman—knew your girlfriend by name,” Kendall said to Craig as they reached the street.

      “We established that the other night,” Craig said.

      “There has to be a reason,” Kendall said.

      “Yes, we actually figured that, too,” Mike said quickly, his tone easy, as if he was afraid that Kendall and Craig might get heated over the facts. “But, as you know, Kieran had never seen the woman before. Of course, we all realize that the woman knew about Kieran somehow—or, perhaps, she knew about Fuller and Miro and knew that Kieran handled a great deal of their therapy and exploratory work. She might have a reputation for having tremendous empathy—as someone who would take care of a baby.”

      “And Kieran still can’t think of anything or anyone who might feel that way about her?” Kendall asked Craig.

      “No. And it’s driving her crazy.”

      “Might have to do with that thing in the subway from a couple of years ago now. Miss Finnegan was all over the news then,” Kendall said.

      Craig wasn’t sure why Kendall reminding him of Kieran’s situation in the subway a few years back disturbed him so much. Actually, she had been meant as a target—but a young girl had wound up being pushed and nearly died a horrible death as a train was speeding into the station.

      Kieran had caught her. And when assailed by the press, she just murmured, “Anyone would lend a helping hand.”

      It became a temporary motto for the city.

      Actually, it was a pity it hadn’t seemed to have stuck around longer.

      “That is possible,” Mike said.

      Craig knew why he was disturbed.

      Damn it. The man was right. Maybe whoever this woman was, she remembered the subway incident, too. And she had heard of Kieran and...

      If someone could save a baby, maybe it was her?

      “I’m not sure it matters how this woman found Kieran. The thing is, she did,” he said gruffly. “But, that it was Kieran she found may not mean a thing. What’s important is that she was brutally cut down on the street after handing the baby over.”

      Kendall nodded thoughtfully. “It’s a good thing your girlfriend is smart as a whip as well, warning the building security clerk, calling 9-1-1 and you. Because if you think about it—there were cops already on the way when the woman was stabbed. The killer might have seen them milling on the street. If there hadn’t been cops around and he saw Kieran with the baby, he might have taken the time to retrieve his weapon and attempt to kill Miss Finnegan, as well. After all, at that point, she had the baby.”

      Again, Kendall was probably right.

      Again, it irritated Craig.

      “Yeah. Thank God she’s smart,” he said evenly.

      Mike offered Lance Kendall his hand. “Detective, we’ll keep tight on this. The city is in an uproar.” He hesitated and shrugged. “A woman murdered on the street in the middle of a crowd, and a baby involved. We’ll be on it day and night.”

      “Ditto. So, we learn anything, we keep one another posted,” Kendall said.

      “Yes,” Mike agreed.

      Kendall looked at Craig and offered him his hand.

      “Detective,” Craig said. He accepted the handshake.

      They parted ways. As they started walking, Mike punched Craig in the shoulder.

      “Hey!”

      “You know, men—and women—in different agencies can be jerks.”

      “Yeah, they can.”

      “Don’t you be the jerk, huh?”

      Craig lowered his head with a half smile on his face.

      Mike was right.

      He was being a jerk. But a jerk doubly convinced that they had to find a killer—and fast.

      He looked at Mike. “How’s your Russian?” he asked.

      “Worse than my Spanish,” Mike told him.

      “You don’t speak Spanish at all,” Craig reminded him.

      “I rest my case. Actually? I’m kind of lying. I do speak some Russian. Had a Russian great-great-grandma who watched after me when I was a kid. Why?”

      “I was thinking we might head out to Brighton Beach,” Craig said. They had a friend working at a restaurant out by Brighton Beach pier. Jacob Wolff had been born in America; his mother had been Russian and his dad had been born in Israel. He worked undercover for a division of the FBI linked with Homeland Security—his job was to blend in with the locals so that he could hear all the chatter. Russian mob operations had become a more and more serious factor to the city in the past few years. So far, he’d been able to warn the authorities in time to stop two car bombs and the assassination of a local councilman—all without giving away his cover.

      He listened. And when people were comfortable in a place, they tended to speak a little too openly—dismissing a waiter as a nobody.

      “What? You don’t think his friends will look at us and think, Well, hell, they’re FBI right off the bat?”

      “Not if we go undercover, too.”

      Mike groaned. Craig had done a lot of undercover work, changing his look drastically for each assignment. Mike was an up-front, flat-out, find-the-truth kind of a guy.

      Dress up wasn’t his thing.

      “So swim shorts and Crocs, huh? Enough to look like we’re wannabe beach boys, huh?”

      “No one is ever going to call me a boy,” Mike said. He had Craig by a decade and was—as Craig liked to tease him—an old geezer in his midforties.

      “Wannabe beach whatevers? Come on, we won’t really be working. I’ll buy you a fizzy drink with an umbrella,” Craig said.

      “Don’t you dare.”

      Craig grinned. “We’ll head to my apartment.”

      “Thought you were mainly living at Kieran’s apartment.”

      “Yep, that’s why we’re heading to my place.”

      “Think you ought to call her? Let her know that the case is a priority for us and that we’re part of the joint task force?” Mike suggested.

      “I’ll let her know,” Craig told him. “I just...”

      “What?”

      “I just need to try to figure out something to tell her that actually suggests we’re making headway on solving the case.”

      * * *

      “You know you did

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