LITMIR.BIZ

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detective with almost twenty years on the job, came up to the bar to get another refill. It was obviously not his first refill of the evening.

      Crawford stumbled a little as he leaned against the counter and fixed Nik with a look. “If he doesn’t take you up on it, I’m free,” he told her.

      Finn scowled at him. “Why don’t you try that again when you haven’t had a few too many, Crawford?” he suggested.

      Crawford turned his head, then waited as his surroundings came back into focus. “Sorry, didn’t mean to tread on your territory,” he said, addressing Finn. “You Cavanaughs always do get the best pickings.”

      That was not the impression he was trying to project. The scowl on Finn’s face intensified. “Nobody’s picking anybody and you owe the lady here an apology,” he informed Crawford.

      “Yeah, yeah.” Crawford waved his hand at Finn. Leaning into Nik, he said, “Sorry you wound up with him.” Pushing his empty mug to the very edge of the counter, the older detective raised his voice and called out, “Fill her up, Devin.”

      Finn pulled the empty mug over to his side. When Crawford glared accusingly at him, Finn said, “I think you’ve had enough for one night, Crawford. Why don’t I just call you a cab? You’re in no shape to drive anywhere.”

      The other detective instantly took offense. “Who the hell died and made you boss of the world?”

      “I did,” Devin informed his inebriated customer as he came up to Crawford’s end of the bar. “From where I’m standing,” he continued, “a cab sounds like a really good idea.”

      Crawford’s scowl just grew deeper. “Don’t like other people driving me home, putting their hands all over me getting me in and out of the back seat of some guy’s cramped little car,” the police detective grumbled.

      Devin spoke up. “It’s either that or sleeping it off on my sofa in the back office.” The bartender looked Crawford over, as if sizing him up. “You look a little big for the sofa.”

      Resigned, Crawford sighed dramatically. “Okay, okay,” he said, surrendering. “Cab it is.”

      “Smart. Hey, Dan, call this man a cab,” Devin called out to the man he had clearing off the tables.

      “Sure thing, boss,” Dan McGuire answered. At six foot five, with a frame to match, it was easy to see that Devin had him doubling as a bouncer whenever the occasion arose. Luckily for Devin, it rarely did.

      Exercising great care for a man his size, Dan slipped his arm around Crawford’s tilting form.

      As Dan took the swaying detective in hand, Devin looked at Nik and aimed his apology at her. “Look, I’m sorry about that. The people here are usually a lot better behaved.”

      “Nothing to apologize for,” Nik assured the owner. “Trust me, I’ve been subjected to a great deal worse.” For a split second, she saw a look of mild interest flash in Finn’s dark green eyes, but then it receded as if it hadn’t existed at all. He was going to be a hard nut to crack, Nik thought.

      Devin nodded in response to what she had just said. “Still, these are on me,” he told the woman and Finn, indicating the two tall foamy drinks before them on the bar.

      With that, Devin moved away to give them the privacy he naturally assumed they were looking for.

      Nik turned back toward Finn. “So?” she asked, waiting.

      “So?” Finn questioned. Because of Crawford’s interjecting himself into the scene, he had lost the thread of whatever it was that she was asking him—and he was content to let it remain that way.

      Because of the previous misunderstanding, Nik decided to reword her question. “Have you thought about what I said regarding our working together?” Before he could answer, she added, “Two heads are better than one, you know.”

      Yeah, he’d thought about it, Finn thought. And he’d totally rejected the idea from the get-go. He knew she had to be bright enough to pick up on that. “You are annoyingly persistent, you know that?” he said to the woman.

      Again, she smiled, as if they were sharing some sort of inside joke. “I think the word you mean is stubborn. Polish women are known to be very stubborn,” she told Finn. Before he could say anything, she added, “And if you think that I’m stubborn, you really should meet my sister.”

      “I think I’ll just pass on that,” Finn told her in a flat tone. He hadn’t wanted to meet her, much less any other stray family member, he thought. All he wanted right now was just to get rid of her.

      “Stubbornness really is an asset in my line of work,” Nik assured him. Hoping he might be weakening, she added, “You’ve got nothing to lose if we work together…and everything to gain.”

      Finn finished off his beer in one long draw. It was clear to him that he was not about to get that peace of mind he’d come in for so he might as well leave.

      “I’m not in the market for a hundred-pound headache,” he told her, putting his empty mug squarely down on the bar.

      Nik considered his remark. He obviously was referring to her. “Flattering,” she called out to his back. “But I’m actually a hundred and twenty pounds.”

      “Even worse,” Finn said over his shoulder as he walked out of Malone’s.

      For a moment Nik thought about following him out and continuing to try to win him over, but although she was every bit as stubborn as she claimed, it wasn’t in her to try to wear him down by making a pest of herself. She was fairly confident that Cavanaugh would come around eventually.

      And if he didn’t, she had other contacts to turn to. Contacts who would let her know if and when Finn Cavanaugh and his team made any headway in the search for Marilyn and why she’d been part of that carjacking.

      She remained where she was, nursing her drink until she was certain that Cavanaugh had driven away, and then she left Malone’s.

      The phone rang at a little after two o’clock in the morning, jarring Finn out of an unusually sound sleep. Focusing on the light his cell phone emitted, he was almost tempted to ignore it, thinking that that pushy woman had somehow gotten his phone number.

      But being a cop was too ingrained in him to let his phone ring without answering it.

      He picked up the cell and swiped open the screen. “Finn Cavanaugh,” he all but barked into the phone.

      “Yeah, I know,” the voice on the other end of the line said. “Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, Cavanaugh, but I think you’re going to want to hear about this.” Recognition sank in. The voice belonged to the man who was sometimes his partner, Joe Harley.

      Sleep instantly evaporated from his brain. Instincts honed on the job, as well as at family gatherings, told him this had to be about his current case.

      “Go on,” he urged.

      “It looks like that woman who carjacked the chief’s father’s car might have just added murder to her list of offenses,” Harley told him.

      Maybe he was sleepy, Finn thought. He wasn’t processing what Harley had just told him. Taking a breath, he waited for the information to make sense. “Start from the beginning,” he insisted.

      “Okay.” Harley paused, then said, “A homeless guy looking for food in a Dumpster behind a restaurant found more than he bargained for.”

      Impatience flared. “Harley, I’m not in the mood for games.”

      “You’re even less fun after midnight than you are before,” his occasional partner complained. Enunciating very slowly, Harley told him, “A homeless guy found the body of a woman. She’s been dead

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