LITMIR.BIZ

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      Patrick spared the woman sitting beside him in the front seat a look. It was cold outside and he had the windows of his car rolled up. He hadn’t counted on the fact that along with the added warmth he’d be trapping the scent of her perfume within the vehicle.

      Citing that they were partners until the captain tore them asunder, something Patrick was counting on happening in the very immediate future, the woman had hitched a ride back into town with him. When he’d asked her how she’d come to the crime scene in the first place, she’d told him that she’d caught a ride with one of the patrol cars.

      The officers were still back at the scene, protecting it from contamination as best they could. With them out of the picture, Patrick’d had no choice but to agree to let her come with him.

      He didn’t particularly like being agreeable.

      He liked the idea of being a chauffeur even less.

      “Why don’t you do that after hours?” he bit off tersely.

      She shifted in her seat. Again. The woman was nothing if not unharnessed energy, exuding enough for two people. She could have been her own partner, and should have been. Anything but his.

      Maggi pointed to the building in the middle of the tree-lined block. “C’mon, Pat, we’re passing it right now. It’ll only take a minute.”

      She slid a glance in his direction. If looks could kill, she knew she would have been dead on the spot.

      “All right, as long as you promise never to call me ‘Pat’ again.”

      “Deal.” Like it or not, she was going to have to spend some time with him. She wanted it to be as stress free as she could make it. “So, what do you like being called?”

      “I don’t like being called at all.”

      No one said the assignments were going to be easy. “In the event that I have to get your attention,” Maggi began gamely, “do you prefer ‘hey you,’ or shall I just throw sunflower seeds at you until I get you to turn around?”

      He could see her doing it, too. She had that kind of bulldog quality about her. “Cavanaugh’ll do.”

      “Not even Patrick?”

      He slowed down. There was a parking spot almost directly across the street from the bank. Patrick guided the car into it, then pulled up the hand brake. Only then did he turn to look at her.

      “Let’s get something straight, McKenna. We’re not friends, we’re partners. We’re not even going to be that for very long, so quit coming on like some Girl Scout and stop trying to sound like you’re going to be my lifelong buddy.”

      She sat there quietly for a long moment, trying to get a handle on this man. “Losing Ramirez hit you pretty hard, didn’t it?”

      The look he shot her was darker than black. “The last thing I need or want is to ride around with Dr. Phil in the car. You want to analyze somebody—”

      She held up her hand, not in surrender but to get him to curtail what he was about to say. “Sorry, just making conversation.”

      “Well, don’t.”

      Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned to look at him. The intensity on her face took him by surprise. “You know, Cavanaugh, someday you just might need someone to watch your back for you.”

      “If and when I ever do, it sure as hell isn’t going to be you.”

      She paused for a moment, and then she gave him a bright smile. “Roughage.”

      Had she lost her mind? What kind of a birdbrain were they cranking out of the academy these days? “What?”

      “Morning roughage. Does wonders in clearing out all those poisons that seem to be running around all through you,” she declared, getting out of the car. She paused to look in for a last second before closing the door. “I’ll only be a minute.”

      Patrick frowned to himself. Even a minute seemed too long to remain in the car, surrounded the way he was with her perfume. What he needed right now more than solitude was air. He got out.

      When she looked at him curiously, he muttered, “I need to stretch my legs.”

      She pretended to glance down at them. “And long legs they are, too.”

      Not waiting for him, Maggi hurried across the street, wanting to put a little distance between herself and Mr. Personality before she said something she meant and blew everything. She held her hand up, stopping traffic as she darted toward the other side.

      She supposed having him this ill-tempered made her job easier. It took away any qualms she might have about spying on him.

      “Hey, didn’t they teach you not to jaywalk at the academy while you were busy graduating at the top of your class?”

      For less than two cents, she’d tell him what she thought of him. Exercising extreme control, Maggi turned around when she reached the curb. “You want to give me a ticket?”

      “I don’t want you risking your fool neck needlessly.” What he wanted to do was give her her walking papers, but there was nothing he could do about that here.

      Resigned, and far from happy about it, Patrick pushed the glass door open and crossed the threshold ahead of her. She looked surprised when he held the door for her.

      “I see someone must have taught you manners somewhere along the line,” she said.

      “It’s expedient. If I let the door go, you would probably walk into it and make the ER our next stop. We have to get back to the station.”

      She refused to let him get to her. She knew that was what he was after, to get to her so badly that she’d march into Reynolds’s office and declare that she wouldn’t work with him, the way all his other partners had. Except for Ramirez.

      Ain’t gonna happen, Cavanaugh, she thought as she walked by him.

      “You can huff and puff all you want, Cavanaugh,” she informed him brightly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

      With that, she picked out the shortest line. Patrick stopped by the small table with all the deposit and withdrawal slips, looking annoyed. Mercifully, this wasn’t going to take long. Mondays were usually slow.

      Except where homicides seemed to be concerned, she thought, thinking back to the crime scene they’d just left. Something like that made grabbing lunch a challenge to intestinal fortitude.

      The teller in the window directly to her left screamed.

      The next moment, the man standing before the window whirled around.

      There was a gun in his hand.

      “Everyone freeze,” he announced loudly. “This is a holdup.”

      Chapter 3

      The man’s eyes bounced around like pinballs that had just been put into play. He seemed to aim his weapon at everyone in the bank at the same time. Patrick could almost hear the bank robber’s nerves jangling.

      “Get down!” the man shouted. “Everyone get down on the floor!” His gun moved erratically from person to person, turning each into a potential target, a potential victim. “Now!”

      Patrick did a quick calculation. There were fourteen other people in the bank, not counting the bank robber. Five of them tellers. The gunman looked so rattled he could start firing away at any second. It had all the signs of becoming a bloodbath at the slightest provocation.

      Going through the motions of dropping down to the floor, Patrick reached for his pistol.

      The rest happened so fast he only had the opportunity to absorb it after the fact. Before he knew what she was doing, the partner the department had saddled him with cried out in what sounded like utter panic. His head jerked in her direction. The bank

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