LITMIR.BIZ

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always said. A man’s man, Cody Dumont had been far more comfortable with aphorisms and sports metaphors than one-on-one conversations. But was he right?

      Even Alissa had suggested she tone down the attitude, and that wasn’t Alissa’s style. As Cassie dug down to the farthest reaches of the original excavation and resieved the muddy slime for a bone or bullet fragment they might have missed, she wondered whether her friends had a point.

      It wasn’t Varitek’s fault she didn’t fit in. It was hers. Maybe Lee had been right, after all. Maybe she couldn’t cut it.

      At the thought, she heard the clatter of something distinctly unmudlike in her sieve. “Hey! I’ve got something!”

      Varitek was at her side in an instant. “Bone?”

      “No. Metal. Jewelry, maybe?” Professional excitement buzzed through her as she worked the object free of the clingy, frozen earth, careful to set aside the surrounding material for further analysis. “A ring, I think.”

      Sure enough, once she rinsed it in the bucket of water she’d set aside for the purpose, she caught the glint of yellow gold and the flash of a fat red stone.

      Varitek squinted at it. “A class ring, I think. Should be traceable.” He grinned at her and nodded. “Good work.”

      The two words shouldn’t have warmed her so thoroughly. She told herself it was professional pleasure that he’d credited her with the discovery, cop-to-cop.

      She almost believed it.

      She photographed, bagged and tagged the evidence, then stowed it in her kit to take back to the lab.

      They wouldn’t expect to get any trace evidence off it—previous testing of the strata and bones had indicated that the skeleton had been in the ground for ten to fifteen years—but if they were lucky, it would help them identify the remains.

      And from there, maybe the killer.

      “Want to keep going?” Varitek asked.

      She rocked back on her heels and surveyed the scene. “Well, we’ve gone down to the original excavation and past it by about six inches. We’re in undisturbed ground for the most part, so we probably won’t find anything else. That being the case, let’s go down another two inches just to be sure.”

      He nodded. “Works for me.” He glanced at the sky, which was clear and bright with spring. “The weather’s on our side, and putting a name to this skeleton would be a huge break.” He dug in. “Besides, the next task force meeting isn’t until this evening.”

      The chief had timed their meetings for the overlap when the day shift went off and the night shift was just coming on. It sounded good in theory, but in practice the task force cops worked pretty much round the clock and reported in when they had something.

      Knowing it, Cassie kept one ear out for the ring of her cell as she and Varitek skimmed off another layer of wet grit.

      The first call was from the ME, Boniface, who reported that the young man had died of strangulation, as the ligature marks had suggested, and that the finger wound had likely been caused by a smooth bladed knife. He couldn’t explain the cautery of the wound, but theorized that the knife could have been heated.

      Cassie made a mental note to check the wound scrapings for carbonization that might support the hypothesis.

      Other reports filtered in as the afternoon grew long and the grave widened. Mendoza and Piedmont reported that the apartment where the body was dumped had been rented six months earlier in the name of Randy Meyers, but things got complicated after that. Meyers, a midlevel extreme skier, had been tracked down in Tahoe. He claimed to have handed the apartment over to a female friend when he’d grown bored of the Bear Claw slopes. She, in turn, had sublet to some guy, first name Nevada, last name unknown.

      They would identify the body eventually, but it would take time.

      After that report, there was a lull in the phone traffic and the silence hung heavy. Finally, almost unwillingly, Varitek said, “You mentioned that your mother died when you were young. That must have been tough.”

      Cassie wasn’t sure which surprised her most, that he’d made a personal comment, or that he remembered her passing mention. Then again, they were up to their elbows in a grave. Death seemed like a reasonable topic.

      “My father raised me from five on,” she answered, “and my four older brothers pitched in. They nearly smothered me with their good intentions, but I love them dearly.” She paused, then added, “From a distance.”

      Varitek smiled slightly. The expression softened his face just enough to take it from fierce to unexpectedly sexy. “I have an older sister,” he said. “CeeCee was overprotective as hell when we were kids. I can’t begin to imagine what four brothers must’ve been like.”

      “A little like you times four,” she said without thinking, disarmed by the fact that they were actually having a pleasant conversation, “only they don’t have the tall, dark and handsome thing going for them.”

      Then she froze. Oh, God. Please tell me I didn’t just say that aloud.

      But his sudden, complete stillness told her that she had, indeed.

      She climbed to her feet, stripped off her gloves and faced him. Blood tingled in her cheeks. “Sorry. That was uncalled for, especially after I lectured you about treating me like a cop. Let’s forget I said that. Let’s forget I even thought it.”

      But when Varitek stood and faced her, his expression was intent and wholly focused on her. “You want to know why I reached the crime scene before you yesterday? Because I was already in town. I’d driven down here for no real reason except to drop in on you and see…” He twisted his lips with more self-deprecation than humor. “Hell, I don’t know why. Because I couldn’t get you out of my head, I suppose.”

      Blood skimmed through her body, just below her skin, warming her, worrying her. She blew out a breath and said, “Look, Varitek—”

      “You should probably call me Seth at this point, don’t you think?”

      “Look,” she said, and skipped the name entirely, “this is a really, really bad idea. We can barely hold a civil conversation, and I’m not in the market for a…whatever.” She’d been uncomfortable talking about her emotions ever since her relationship with Lee, who had been a master of taking those emotions and turning them back on her until she wasn’t sure where her opinion left off and his began. Besides, she wasn’t about to name the things that flitted through her mind, like…lover. Boyfriend. Husband. Soul mate.

      “I’m not in the market for a whatever, either.” A dark, introspective smile touched his lips. “I think maybe that’s why I came down. So I could remind myself that we’d be wrong together.”

      “We’d be terrible,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “I’m cranky and territorial. You’re controlling and overprotective. Hell, we don’t even work well together.” Although they had excavated the grave shoulder-to-shoulder and it hadn’t been as awful as she’d feared. Indeed, it had been almost…solid. Good. She felt the hard bump of the class ring folded in its plastic envelope and knew they’d made progress.

      But she’d let physical attraction override common sense once before and it had been a disaster. Hell, it’d nearly ruined her career. No way she was letting that happen again.

      She was older and smarter now.

      Wasn’t she?

      HOURS LATER, after they’d attended the task force meeting and logged in the evidence from the old grave site, Cassie finally signed out and headed home. With her truck impounded as evidence—wasn’t that ironic?—she had no wheels, so she didn’t even bother with a token protest when Varitek offered to drive her home.

      She bristled when he walked her to the door.

      Key in hand, she faced him on the front porch.

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