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up the suspense. Instead, she told him point-blank, “Word of mouth.” And then she smiled. She was leading him to a sunrise and his eyes were firmly shut. “The gaming community is both larger and smaller than you think.”

      Alex looked at her as if she had begun babbling gibberish. “Is that some kind of riddle for the ages?”

      His sarcastic tone didn’t faze her. Growing up as the youngest had allowed her to be ready for anything and had given her a hide like a rhino. Her heart, though, was still her own and it was, for the most part, soft.

      “Just a piece of information to contemplate,” she told him with a smile. “And I really think that you’re going to want me to go with you.”

      They had different definitions of the word want, he thought. And his definition had nothing to do with the job and everything to do with this gut reaction he was experiencing. If ever there was a “tread lightly” situation, this was it.

      “And why is that?” Alex asked her.

      “Well, for one thing I think I know where you can find Wills,” she told him.

      “And for another?” he asked because she clearly was building up to something.

      “You’re liable to need a translator,” she told him, using the word liable out of consideration for the ego he had to have. Everyone was born with an ego and she had a feeling that his might be affected if what Wills told him—probably in a matter-of-fact voice—went straight over his head.

      Alex was taking her words literally and he scowled. “He’s foreign?”

      “No, born right here in Silicon Valley,” she attested, “but he might toss around terminology in his explanation that’ll confuse you.”

      He wondered if she realized that she had just insulted him. “I’m not exactly a functioning illiterate.”

      “It has nothing to do with literacy, Brody,” she assured him. “Gamers and hackers live in a different world from regular people—normal people if you will,” she tacked on for his benefit. “I’m just saying that he might start tossing around terms that won’t mean anything to you—and why should they? Gaming isn’t your world.”

      She saw that her explanation didn’t sit well with him. Most likely because she’d hurt his pride. She gave him a way out.

      “Besides,” she reminded him tactfully, “how can you be my mentor if I’m here in the office and you’re out there in the field? How am I supposed to learn from you?”

      Alex shrugged dismissively. “That wasn’t my first thought,” he told her.

      Not to be put off, Valri suggested gently, “Maybe you can find a way to work it in.”

      She might look like a ball of fluff that was an easy pushover, but she was tenacious, he’d give her that. And he didn’t feel like arguing the point. It wasted too much time.

      “You want to come along that much, okay, fine. You’re coming along,” he told her, throwing in the towel for now. “Let’s go.”

      “Can I drive?” she asked brightly, falling into step with him as he went into the hall.

      “No.” The single word was filled with finality, leaving absolutely no room for argument. Or so he believed.

      “But I’m the one who knows the way,” Valri pointed out.

      He punched the down button on the wall, summoning the elevator car. “You also know how to talk—God knows you know how to talk,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “That means that you can tell me how to get to Wills’s place while I’m driving.”

      “It’d be easier if I just drove,” she informed him a tad stubbornly.

      That was not his definition of easy. Nothing about this exuberant, temporary detective was easy—and he’d bet his last dime that she knew it.

      “That all depends on whose point of view you’re looking at this from—yours, or mine,” he told her. “And since it’s my car, I win. You can still stay back in the office and play twenty-one pickup with the laptop, you know. Nobody’s stopping you.”

      “I’ll ride shotgun,” she said, resigning herself to sitting in the passenger seat. She was not about to petulantly remain in the office because she didn’t get her way.

      “Nice of you to come around,” Alex told her.

      It was the first time since they had been introduced in the chief of Ds’ office that she had seen her new partner smile.

      She had an instant reaction to the smile, starting with the very center of her stomach. If she didn’t know better, she would have said that it had done a complete flip, spinning around a full 360 degrees and causing something akin to a tidal wave.

      This man could very well be lethal, given the right set of circumstances.

      It would be up to her to make sure that those circumstances never came together, at least not where she was concerned. She was here to learn, to advance, not be the target for advances.

      Despite her wise words to the contrary, it took a while for her stomach to settle down.

       Chapter 4

      Buckling up, she gave Alex the gamer’s address, then resisted the temptation to offer directions once he had pulled out of the parking lot and was on the main thoroughfare.

      Since Brody was the native—or so she assumed—and she was the transplant, Valri figured that he knew the streets of Aurora far better than she did. Following that logic, she knew it was to her advantage not to offer a running commentary about distance, speed and the availability of shortcuts.

      Even so, it was a temptation she had to do battle with, albeit silently. She’d learned long ago that men like Brody didn’t enjoy following someone else’s lead in any manner if they could help it. She’d seen that same trait manifested in her brothers, and while she could simply ignore it to her heart’s content when it came to Brennan, Duncan, Bryce and Malloy, they were family and had to get along with her no matter what. That was just the Cavanaugh way: criticize all you want, but always be there for family when the chips were down.

      Brody, on the other hand, could just up and dump her if the mood moved him, so she had to take care not to annoy him—at least not until they had a more secure partnership going. And she knew that nothing annoyed a man more than being given directions when they weren’t asked for. For some reason that sort of thing was at the top of the list of things that seemed to threaten their manhood.

      “You run out of words, Cavanaugh?” he asked her, curious as to what brought on this sudden, atypical silence. Alex glanced at the woman in the passenger seat to reassure himself that she hadn’t fallen asleep for some reason. She hadn’t. But she had been quiet for at least ten minutes. So far, from what he’d seen, that seemed out of character for her. Maybe if he knew what triggered it, he could use the information to cause her silence when he needed to.

      As if deep in thought, Valri jumped in her seat at the sound of his voice. “What?”

      “I asked if you ran out of words,” he repeated. “You’re being quiet,” he added by way of an explanation for his question.

      Valri laughed shortly. “I didn’t think you noticed.”

      “When the wall of noise suddenly just breaks apart like that, a person tends to notice.” After all, she’d been talking almost nonstop before they got into his vehicle.

      Valri shrugged. “I didn’t want to get on your nerves.”

      If that had been her goal, she pretty much failed, Alex thought.

      “Too late for that,” he quipped. In case she was one of those

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