LITMIR.BIZ

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crew and her, too. Once upon a time, they’d all been one big happy family—the only family she and Lance had ever known. But time and circumstance seemed to be pulling them all in different directions.

      “Just call me when he shows up, okay?” she said.

      “And you let me know if you accept Trinity’s offer. Working with TSS will look good on your résumé.”

      “You think?” She swallowed back a sigh. They were back here again. “I kind of thought my endorsement on Trinity’s new system would look good on his résumé.”

      Her dad gave a hearty laugh, tossing his head back in a gesture that would have knocked most climbers off their center and sent them gliding toward the floor.

      Her dad wasn’t most climbers.

      “Opal was right. You’re getting cocky.”

      “And that surprises you? I’m your daughter.” Mallory didn’t care for the word cocky, but she’d earned the right to be satisfied with her work, as both her dad and Opal knew.

      “Watch out, babe. Arrogance has been the downfall of too many good men.”

      “And women?”

      “Job hazard,” he said, a little too seriously.

      “Is that why you’ve sicced Opal on me? Are you worried I’m heading for a fall?”

      Opal was another of her dad’s crew who’d been around for longer than time—although Mallory would never have dared to phrase it that way to Opal. On the down side of fifty-five, Opal liberally contributed to her plastic surgeon’s portfolio in an effort not to look older than forty.

      So far she was succeeding admirably.

      But even more importantly, Opal was the closest thing that Mallory had ever had to a mother. Not that she would have ever said that to Opal’s face, either. The term connoted an age difference that simply wasn’t part of Opal’s vocabulary.

      Nevertheless, she’d graciously played the role through the years, stepping in whenever Mallory had needed some motherly advice that Duke’s never-ending, constantlychanging stream of girlfriends couldn’t provide.

      Mallory’s own mother had abandoned her husband and infant daughter for an opportunity to perform in a Las Vegas show—her first stop on the road to stardom. Unfortunately, life hadn’t cooperated, and she’d wound up dead in a car accident before leaving Vegas for Hollywood.

      “I’m not worried you’ll take a fall,” her dad said. “And I haven’t sicced Opal on you, as you so eloquently put it. She’s just helping you out with your administrative tasks.”

      “And keeping you informed about the clients I take.”

      “A job perk.”

      He delivered that one so matter-of-factly Mallory rolled her eyes. Her dad had never been one to pull any punches.

      “Are you telling me you don’t need the help? With all the work you’ve been juggling lately…from where I’m standing, it looks like you should open a real office and hire a staff.”

      “I have a real office. Just because it’s in my house doesn’t mean it isn’t real.”

      “You have voice mail, a pager and a computer.”

      “Okay, a small office. My space is much better put to use in the workshop.” She chanced a glance away from the wall to look at him, suddenly realizing what this conversation was really all about. “The police work is bothering you, isn’t it?”

      He looked away from the wall, too, meeting her gaze with those inky-black eyes that shouldn’t have been able to look warm when he smiled, but did.

      At the moment he wasn’t smiling.

      “You’re worried,” she said.

      “Let’s say I’m reserving judgment about your latest career move. You’ve been consulting for law enforcement.” He spoke the words as though they scraped over his tongue.

      “I’m a consultant, Dad. I consult.”

      He still eyed her stoically.

      “I have no intention of turning down perfectly good money. Besides, I like the work. I feel like Nancy Drew solving mysteries.” She didn’t say that she also got a kick out of the police relying on her.

      “You also enjoy being one of the ‘experts’ that prosecution calls on for testimony in court?”

      She smiled, hoping to lighten the moment. “It makes me feel…expert.”

      “I’d rather see you focus on normal jobs.”

      She might have argued that consulting for Jake Trinity wouldn’t be anything resembling normal. She didn’t. Her dad didn’t need to know she’d been so preoccupied with the man that she could see him in memory without even closing her eyes.

      Though, in all fairness to her, Jake Trinity had been a good-looking guy with tawny hair and a sculpted bone structure that would look handsome whether he was nineteen or ninety. Ten years ago he’d screamed clean-cut good breeding with his wire-rimmed eyeglasses and preppy name brands.

      Mallory remembered thinking he’d been too good-looking to be allowed. Then again, she’d been sixteen at the time and impressionable. Had she not been so impressed with the gorgeous young man who’d popped up on the job unexpectedly, she might never been tempted to approach him.

      Nope, time hadn’t dimmed that memory. She still recalled every detail of that night with perfect clarity.

       The Commercial-Cam Monitoring Network Prototype.

      Ten years ago this video surveillance system had been state of the art. One of Innovative’s major competitors had paid her dad big bucks to acquire the prototype before the system officially launched onto the market.

      The job had been meticulously planned and about as fail-safe as any job could be—they were sort of like security systems and people, never one-hundred-percent perfect. But this particular job had been going off like clockwork, until a very handsome man who shouldn’t have been in the building showed up while she secured the egress route for her dad’s escape.

      Mallory should have hightailed it back up the rope to her own egress route on the roof. She should have radioed Polish Paul and told him she’d been made, so they could have aborted the job. That had been the backup plan. They always had a backup plan. Getting out of a building was just as important as getting in, Polish Paul always said.

      But Mallory hadn’t done either of those things. She’d confronted that handsome young man instead, thinking she could stall him long enough to buy her dad the extra minute and a half he needed to complete the job. And she had. Almost.

      But almost hadn’t been good enough. In this instance, almost meant that Jake Trinity had gotten to the silent alarm and changed their lives forever.

      Almost everyone had gotten out of the building by the time the police had arrived.

      Except for her dad.

      He’d lied and said he’d tripped the alarm. She hadn’t believed him, of course. Neither had anyone else. Duke Hunt didn’t make those kinds of mundane mistakes. Mallory knew he simply hadn’t wanted her to feel guilty about ignoring the backup plan. He hadn’t wanted her to feel responsible for him going to prison or for the crew being forced into retirement. And his lie hurt almost as much as knowing she was responsible.

      Almost as much as watching him handcuffed and thrown into the back of a police cruiser.

      Almost as much as learning that the world she’d always believed perfectly normal wasn’t normal at all. To hear the police and the child welfare people tell it, her world was an illegal and morally ugly place.

      That

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