LITMIR.BIZ

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let it go.

      Or she could go digging for the truth and deliver more dirt than a home and garden feature on Big Boy Tomatoes.

      No neon sign hung over the door of the Joint on Belmont Street, only a black-and-white ad for Old Style: Bottles And Cans. The bar’s patrons—cops and police groupies—didn’t need more. Either you knew what waited beyond the heavy wood door, or you didn’t belong.

      Jarek belonged. One week away didn’t change that.

      Responding to a tip, a middle of the night phone call, he’d left his king-size bed and tidy three-bedroom house to drive an hour and twenty minutes south to Chicago. When he opened the bar door, the warmth and the smells, the smoke and the noise, swirled to greet him. He breathed them all in, let them wrap him like a favorite old sweater.

      The place was full. The four-to-midnight shift had ended two hours ago. Four-to-fours, they called it, because most cops didn’t roll home until four in the morning. His ex-wife had hated that part of the job. Had hated most parts of his job, actually.

      Jarek scanned the room. His brother Aleksy—Alex—was sitting in a booth by the pay phone with a beer in front of him and three off-duty detectives beside him. Catching Jarek’s eye, he raised his beer in silent salute before tipping the neck of the bottle toward the bar.

      Jarek looked where his brother pointed. And there, perched on a bar stool like any badge bunny, sat Teresa DeLucca in black leather pants and a midriff-skimming top that raised the temperature in the crowded, narrow bar another twenty degrees. She was talking with his former partner, Steve Nowicki, a good detective with the biggest mouth in Area 3. And Stevie, who looked like he couldn’t believe his luck, was pouring out his heart and practically drooling down her cleavage.

      Hell. Jarek ordered a beer and considered his options.

      Aleksy slid out from the booth and sauntered over, still in his street suit. His dark hair was ruffled and his eyes were wicked.

      “It took her fifteen minutes to zero in on Nowicki,” his brother informed him, “and he’s been bending her ear for over an hour. Who the hell is she?”

      Jarek accepted his beer with a word of thanks to Pat behind the bar. “Teresa DeLucca. She’s a reporter for the local paper.”

      Aleksy raised his eyebrows. “No kidding. You actually have news in Mayberry?”

      A reluctant smile tugged Jarek’s mouth. “Brother, in Eden, I am the news.”

      “So, her interest in you is purely professional?”

      Jarek took a careful sip of his beer, pushing away an inconvenient memory of Tess’s soft lower lip and candid eyes. He had a department to run and a daughter to raise. A relationship with any woman would be a distraction. A preoccupation with some puzzle of a reporter would be a disaster.

      “Absolutely,” he said.

      “And your interest in her? You get to put her in handcuffs yet?”

      Jarek narrowed his eyes in warning.

      Aleksy backed off, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Just asking, big brother. Something got you out of bed in the middle of the night.”

      “You did,” Jarek reminded him. “You called me.”

      “Yeah, and as soon as you heard this babe was here asking questions, you hotfooted it down. I told you I could handle things for you. In fact,” Aleksy waggled his eyebrows, “I’d be more than happy to handle her.”

      Jarek’s burst of male territorial instinct surprised him. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to find himself marking trees and pawing at the ground. “Holster it, hotshot,” he ordered briefly. “She’s too old for you.”

      “Are you kidding? She can’t be a day over twenty-five.”

      “Thirty.” He’d run her driver’s license. “And you date nineteen-year-olds.”

      Aleksy shrugged. “Only when they ask me nicely.”

      Jarek smiled faintly, his attention still fixed on Nowicki and Tess at the other end of the bar.

      Aleksy’s dark eyes danced with mischief. “Anyway, isn’t she a little old for you, too? I thought you were totally involved with a nine-year-old these days.”

      “Ten,” Jarek corrected him absently. “Allie’s ten. And I’m not getting involved with the woman.”

      “Really? What are you going to do with her? Arrest her?”

      Jarek’s jaw set. “Like you said, she’s over twenty-one. She has a right to drink in a public bar.”

      “She’s still invading your space, bro.”

      “My turf,” Jarek said, setting down his beer. “My rules.”

      Quietly he moved along the bar. Under the drifts of conversation, the bursts of laughter, his former partner’s voice carried plainly.

      “—was always the calm, collected one,” Nowicki was saying, leaning forward earnestly to look down Tess’s top. “Like a computer, you know, storing up all these names, pictures, little connecting things you’d think wouldn’t matter to anybody and then—click, click, click!—the picture comes up and he’s put it all together, who, why, how, the whole puzzle.” Nowicki took a long pull on his bottle. “Working with somebody like that makes it a pleasure just to show up in the morning.”

      “You must miss him,” Tess observed.

      “Hell, yeah, we all miss him. He was a terrific guy. A great detective. We miss him a lot.”

      “You can stop the commercial, Nowicki,” Jarek said. “I don’t think Miss DeLucca’s buying.”

      His partner turned, genuine pleasure lighting his broad face. “Ice Man! We were just talking about you.”

      “I guessed,” Jarek said. He looked past Nowicki to Tess on her bar stool, her casual posture a pose, her eyes a challenge. His libido flared. Annoyed with himself, he spoke coolly. “Hello, Tess.”

      Nowicki’s head went back and forth. “You two know each other?”

      “We’ve met,” Tess murmured. “How’s it going, Ice Man?”

      She didn’t miss a trick, Jarek thought, torn between admiration and annoyance.

      He spoke without moving his gaze from hers. “Would you give us a minute, Steve?”

      Nowicki laughed, four beers past discretion. “Don’t be a spoilsport, Jare. We were getting somewhere here.”

      “Someone was getting something,” Jarek said. He jerked his head slightly, an unmistakable signal to his partner to get lost.

      Nowicki sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m gone.”

      Jarek stepped back to let him pass and then slid onto his abandoned stool. “This is a hell of a place to be at two o’clock in the morning,” he said quietly.

      Tess arched her eyebrows. “You’re here.”

      “We’re not talking about me.”

      “No,” Tess agreed. “That was the problem.”

      “It doesn’t have to be your problem.”

      “It’s my story. And you’re still holding out on me.”

      “So what?”

      “So, it’s a challenge.” She flipped her dark hair over her shoulders and shot him a look that dried his mouth. “I’ve never been able to resist a challenge.”

      He sipped his beer, which bought him some time and lubricated his tongue enough so he could talk again. He didn’t need any more challenges. He had all he could handle sleeping tucked up in his old bedroom under the eaves of his parents’ house. A ten-year-old challenge

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