LITMIR.BIZ

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way of thinking, the house had dodged a bullet—and so had Matt. Now all she had to do was make her brother see it. She could be extremely persuasive when she had to be but this, she knew, was going to take every single trick she had in the proverbial book—and maybe even more than that.

      Putting the sedan into Park, Charley ended her call, tucked the cell into her pocket and got out of the car. She pressed her lips together as she surveyed the front of the house.

      “I swear I don’t know what I’ll do if I find you on the floor, sleeping off a bender,” she muttered to both herself and the brother who wasn’t there.

      Charley fished out the spare key that Matt had given her but found that she had no need of it. Not only was the front door unlocked, it was standing slightly ajar, as well.

      “Well, this is a new low in carelessness for you. Are you daring the neighborhood thief to come in and ransack the place—or think he can do it only to have you get the drop on him? Are you really that hard up for entertainment?” she asked.

      Charley lightly made contact with the door and pushed it a fraction at a time until the door was open all the way off to one side.

      “Matt?” she called out hesitantly. “Are you in there? Matt, it’s me, Charley. I elected myself to drag your sorry butt in to work before your lieutenant gets it into his head to fire you and you decide you have no choice but to move in with me. You know you’ll just wind up cramping my style.”

      Not that she had anything that would have remotely passed for something as structured as a “style.” Charley was far too busy these days trying to work her way up the ladder, trying to make something of herself within the department.

      Trying to, she secretly admitted, to make Matt proud of her.

      Because they were both part of the police force, someone might have thought that Matt and she were in competition with one another, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Matt and she had always been a team, a smooth-running, entirely supportive team. If there were shots to be called, she always let Matt call them.

      Quite simply, unlike most brothers and sisters, Charley adored the ground Matt walked on and she knew the reverse was true as well, even if he never said as much. He didn’t have to. His actions spoke louder than any words.

      Matt was her rock.

      Which was why seeing him this way, consumed with sorrow because of a woman so unequal to even the dirt beneath his fingernails was just killing her. She didn’t know how to snap him out of it. She only knew she had to—because he’d obviously had a relapse.

      “Matt?” she called out again, feeling her heart constrict when she didn’t receive an answer. “Are you here? You’d better be, otherwise leaving this door unlocked was a really stupid move, you know that, right? And if there’s one thing Matthew Michael Holt isn’t, it’s stupid. Except whenever you’re around ‘Fluffy,’” she said, referring to Melissa by the less-than-flattering nickname she’d given the woman. “Then you have the brainpower of an amoeba on drugs.

      “Matt, come out, come out wherever you—”

      That was when she saw him.

      And that was when she stifled the scream that rose up to her throat, a scream that came from Charley, Matt’s sister, not Charley Randolph, police detective.

      Stunned, frightened and in a complete daze, she dropped to her knees beside the body.

      This was a dream, a nightmare, right? This wasn’t happening. It wasn’t!

      “Matt, Matt, what has she done to you? Matt, talk to me,” she pleaded even as she felt his throat for his pulse.

      And found none.

      Somewhere in her horror-stricken haze, Charley managed to pull out her cell phone and press a key that was preset and quickly connected her to the necessary emergency number.

      Her voice trembled as she spoke. “This is Detective Charlotte Randolph.” She rattled off her badge number. “I need a bus. Officer down, I repeat, officer down. At 4832 Wayne Avenue. Hurry,” she begged.

      She’d requested an ambulance rather than the coroner’s wagon because maybe she was too numb to find the pulse, maybe he was still alive, his pulse reduced to a reedy whisper of a beat, hardly detectable at all.

      The pulse Charley was praying that she had somehow missed.

      * * *

      Detective First Class Declan Cavanaugh turned in his swivel chair as he both listened to and watched his about-to-be-ex-partner Hollis Spenser give him the big news. Two years his senior, Hollis was leaving. Leaving the partnership, the department, the force. Leaving Aurora, California, for greener pastures.

      “You’re kidding.”

      Hollis moved the thatch of blond hair out of his eyes. “Nope. My new father-in-law thinks his daughter deserves a husband who comes home at night still breathing.”

      Cavanaugh frowned, regarding the man. “You look like you’re breathing to me.”

      “You know what I mean.” Hollis futilely pushed the hair out of his eyes, subconsciously knowing it would be back to position one in seconds. “Detectives who work in the private sector don’t get shot at.”

      “Usually,” Declan corrected. They all knew exceptions to that rule.

      “Better odds,” his partner of the past fifteen months corrected his almost-ex-partner’s correction. Some habits died hard.

      “Boring odds,” Declan allowed. He shook his head as if he really pitied the man—and, in a way, he did. Hollis had just agreed to go willingly to serve a life sentence—unless this was his trade-off, what he intended to do until something better struck his fancy.

      Still, Declan didn’t back off right away. “You’re going to be doing what, taking photographs of cheating husbands cheating on their wives, wives cheating on their husbands? Is that really what you want to be doing with your life ten years from now? Trying to do with your life?” he amended in case the battle wasn’t going to be won with just one major skirmish.

      “The pay’s a lot better,” Hollis confided with a triumphant air. “I’m going to be earning at least three times as much as what I get here. And no more 2:00 a.m. calls. I can sleep in.”

      “You sleep in half the time now,” Declan pointed out to the man, his expression completely deadpan.

      Hollis snorted as he went on packing up his desk. Eighteen months amounted to three boxes—full to capacity. “You’re just jealous.”

      “Hey, you’ve got a pretty girl there, no doubt about it,” he acknowledged, referring to his partner’s new wife—everyone in the department had been invited to the reception and he had seen the woman up close and personal—or as personal as an ice cube could get. “But if regular hours means I’ve got to get married first, then you’re welcome to regular hours.

      “As for me, I’m never settling down just to constantly keep finding the same warm body next to me in bed morning in, morning out. I’m just not made that way. Can’t think of anything worse,” he admitted, adding in a shiver to underscore his feelings.

      “Suit yourself,” Hollis told him with a shrug. “But loving the same woman for the rest of your life, it has a lot going for it. I should know.”

      Yeah, Declan thought, he should. But it was obvious that his ex-partner didn’t. He’d been brainwashed by a pro, if he knew his women.

      “Enjoy it for both of us,” he said philosophically, then sighed. “I guess this means that I’ve got to break in a new partner—again.”

      Hollis grinned. The look didn’t suit him. It made him appear a little goofy, as if his energy was just flowing away. “Operative word here being break?”

      “Hey, if they’re not tough, they’ve got no business being a detective

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