LITMIR.BIZ

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not a good idea.”

      She stood, too, still forced to look up at him because of their height difference. “This isn’t your decision to make, Detective Hill.”

      He appeared startled by her comment, as though he wasn’t used to being crossed. He appeared to be a solid, healthy man used to taking control, caring but persistent, the kind who expected to shoulder every burden. There was another element to him, as well, that lurking hurt she’d seen behind his eyes.

      “I can’t offer you forgiveness for how you reacted or didn’t react when Katie asked for help,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “I’m not my sister, I can’t absolve you for her.”

      “I know,” he said softly.

      “Then—”

      “I’m not asking for you to forgive me,” he said, his gray eyes smoldering. “I know I screwed up. I know I let her down. I thought of myself…I should have—”

      He stopped himself, shook his head and added, “I’m just trying to explain why I’m back in the game. If I can’t find out what happened to Katie from within the department, then I’ll take vacation time and figure it out on my own. It’s as easy as that.”

      She had no idea what to make of this guy. She’d never met anyone quite like him.

      He added, “I’m also going to make sure you stay in one piece, Ms. Mays.”

      Annoyed, she snapped, “I’m not your concern.”

      “Hasn’t it occurred to you that whatever happened to Katie could happen to you?”

      “Why should it? I’m not a threat.”

      “No, you aren’t a threat. You just happen to look like the woman someone might have found so threatening they tried to kill her.”

      Tess shuddered deep inside. She was a veterinarian, not a policewoman, not an adventurer, not brave or resolute or any of the rest. She’d grown up sheltered from violence, quietly accepting her role as her troubled mother’s keeper, turning to animals for comfort and companionship. She didn’t even know her sister, couldn’t remember one single thing about her father. For this she might be risking her neck?

      Her life back in San Francisco—the clinic, the animals, her partners, her friends—suddenly seemed a zillion miles away.

      Where in the hell was her mother? The woman had some major explaining to do.

      “At least let me walk you back to the hospital,” Ryan said.

      She nodded, not meeting his gaze, half ashamed of her gutlessness.

      And half terrified.

      RYAN SPENT THE NIGHT trapped in a restless dream where he tried to find his kid brother, running down one empty street after another. Every time he seemed to get close, however, Peter’s frightened voice would fade away and begin again somewhere else and Ryan would be off again.

      He’d had the same dream a hundred times and it never got any easier. He never found Peter, and he was unable to save him. It was a relief to wake up to no one but his cat.

      “Morning, Clive,” he said. Clive, as usual, sat perched on the foot of Ryan’s bed, wearing his inscrutable cat gaze. A trim black wraith, he lived in a secret world of his own Ryan only occasionally caught a glimpse of. Clive had taken the concept of the mysterious cat to heart.

      Ryan’s next thought was of Tess, of the last he’d seen of her, sitting in the stiff little chair beside her sister’s bed, yawning into her hand, looking small and alone. She might act tough, but he suspected it was a front. He’d wanted to take her to his house and protect her from he didn’t know what, but he’d made himself walk away.

      And now he knew what he had to do next. First he’d go into work and read every file he could get his hands on, get caught up on Matt’s case, settle a few loose ends with Jason Hyatt, his new partner, then put in for three weeks of accumulated vacation. In that time he would make sure Tess Mays got home safely and stayed there, then he’d find out what happened to Katie and maybe even what happened to Matt. Clear the whole thing up, move on.

      Simple. He should have done it before. Clive meowed, a throaty, strangled sound that meant it was time for breakfast.

      “I suppose that’s your way of ordering eggs Benedict,” he told the cat who blinked yellow eyes.

      AS THE DAY WORE ON the huge hospital became increasingly small to Tess. The high point was meeting with Katie’s doctor and being told indications suggested a good chance of a full recovery, but he refused to be narrowed down to particulars. “Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next month,” was all the doctor would commit himself to.

      After that, she’d tried yet again to reach her mother’s new husband’s son—her new stepbrother, she realized with a start—a thirty-seven-year-old man named Nick Pierce who lived in some remote Alaskan town. Despite her mother’s efforts to get him down to California for his father’s wedding, he hadn’t come and the housekeeper who answered the phone this time would only say he was unavailable.

      The wedding, the honeymoon, a new life…it was all surreal to Tess. Up to this point, her mother’s idea of adventure had been ordering Chinese food. She’d spent most of Tess’s life hiding from reality, doing nothing but working, sleeping and reading, almost in equal proportions, frozen in twenty-seven years of grief Tess had never understood.

      Until now. Her mother had lived a hideous lie. She’d divided her children and been party to hiding the truth, something that obviously ate at her until Mr. Seattle swept into her life and somehow, finally, provided a distraction. If Tess was to be honest, she’d been weak with relief that someone else had come along to shoulder some of her mother’s care, meet some of her mother’s insatiable need.

      But it was all pretend, a fantasy her mother created to fill a void. If her mother’s lesson had been to distrust a woman’s need of a man, Tess had learned it well. Too bad her mother hadn’t followed her own counsel.

      After a short shower and a welcome change of clothes in a facility the nurse pointed out, Tess walked endless hallways that all looked the same, read countless magazines and called work where she was told to take all the time she needed, family comes first.

      Family.

      The word had a whole new concept.

      Several times she stood by the window at the end of the hall and looked out at the rain-swept city, wishing she was brave enough to go out the front door. But she stayed inside, not only because Ryan Hill had warned her to but because, face it, she was a chicken and she didn’t want someone pointing a great big white van at her.

      But honestly, was a van a very clever murder weapon? Wouldn’t a knife or an assault rifle get the job done better? After all, her sister wasn’t dead, she was injured and expected to recover.

      By late afternoon Tess had found the scrap of paper on which she’d written Ryan’s phone number. She stared at it. Tempted to call him, she left Katie’s room before she crumbled. She knew why she wanted to hear his voice—she wanted reassurance. The thought that she might be turning into a woman as weak and needy as her mother wasn’t a pleasant one. A few minutes later she caught a cab outside the hospital.

      It took barely ten minutes for the taxi to roll to a stop in front of Vista Del Mar Apartments. Tess paid the driver and stood on the sidewalk, glad the rain had let up, wishing the wind would take a hint and follow suit.

      Perhaps at one time a view of the ocean had been a possibility from the windows of the Vista Del Mar, but development around the old structure made that something of the past. The building itself was two stories of gray cement, dwarfed by the high-rise condos on either side. It looked like a poor relation, hovering in the shadows, apologetic and self-conscious.

      Tess stared up and down the darkening street. Across from a large park, numerous driveways led to high-rise condos. The telephone pole Ryan had mentioned

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