been a bullet to the head at close range. “I’m sorry. That just came out. I didn’t mean—”
She didn’t want him feeling guilty. Not when he’d always been there for her. “I know you didn’t.”
She was right not to tell him about the other nightmares. The ones about Ben being shot, about his being beaten and tortured and clubbed in the face. His teeth were all destroyed in an obvious ploy to hide his identity on the off chance that his body would wash up on shore. Which it had.
Lila could shut it down during the day, but at night, it was a different story. Asleep, she envisioned all of it on a recurring basis.
That, too, made her hate going to sleep in the empty house.
Brian could almost see her pulling away. He knew her well enough, even now, to pick up on the signs. Maybe it was time to revert back to why she’d sought him out. “About this not-so-heavy breather of yours—”
Lila waved her hand, dismissing the topic. “Forget it.”
“No,” he replied in the soft, no-nonsense voice that his detectives had learned could not be opposed. “I won’t. It was important enough for you to break your self-imposed exile and come look me up.”
Because it was more than a little true, she took exception to his words. “There was no self-imposed exile.”
“Then why have you been avoiding me all this time?”
Shrugging, she went for the obvious. “We work on different floors.”
“But not different countries,” he pointed out. “Last time I looked, the station had elevators and a phone system. I know, I used both.” When he heard she was back and then again when Ben had been murdered, he’d tried to get in touch with her. To no avail. “And every time I tried to get in contact with you, you were either dashing off somewhere or your machine would pick up. Eventually, even someone as thick-headed as me takes the hint.”
“There were no hints,” she insisted, feeling guilty about having treated him that way. Feeling guiltier
about lying now. “I was just busy.”
“Twenty-four, seven?”
She was in too deep to abandon the lie now. “Twenty-five, eight,” Lila countered. What good would it do either of them for him to know that she hadn’t been up to facing him, not up to having to defend her husband to someone who’d once been her best friend?
Would all that ever be completely behind her? Would she ever be able to be as open with Brian as she once had been? God, she hoped so.
“I’m not as fast as I used to be,” she told him.
One eyebrow rose in a silent, skeptical declaration. “Ha. That’ll be the day. There is no slowing you down.”
He made her laugh. He always made her laugh, she recalled. Even when things at home were unbearable, she could always count on Brian to divert her for a little while, to come through and make things seem better.
She looked at him now and wondered if she could still count on him. Or if, ultimately, time had changed that, too.
Chapter 3
The next words out of his mouth told her that her faith had not been misplaced.
“I’m going to have a tap put on your phone,” Brian told her. “See if we can find out who this night caller of yours is and ‘politely’ suggest he get his entertainment some other way—or face prosecution.”
She didn’t want it to come to that. She just wanted it to stop. More than likely, it was someone who thought she was somehow involved in the mess that had ended Ben’s life. So many rumors abounded around that time. Some had her killing Ben herself and using the drug cartel scandal as cover. Others thought she was as deeply involved as they said Ben was, taking money from the drug dealers to look the other way. There were as many different rumors as days of the week. She learned not to pay attention to any of them and waited for the air to clear. And eventually it did. But some rumors died harder than others.
She wondered if Brian had been tempted to believe any of them. But this wasn’t the time to ask. So she nodded in response to his offer.
“I’d appreciate it.” And then she hesitated. “Brian, you won’t…”
“Tell anyone?” he guessed. “I’ll have to tell the guy running the tap, but I’ll swear him to secrecy,” he quipped. “I’d offer to blindfold him if you like, but then he might not do the best job.”
Brian smiled at her understandingly. He could only guess at what she’d gone through. If she hadn’t been so damn stubborn, he might have been able to help long before this. But then, he supposed, she wouldn’t have been Lila. Independent as hell.
“It’ll be off the record,” he assured her. He saw a hint of skepticism in her eyes. “You don’t put in as much time on the force as I have without gathering a few favors to call in.”
He liked the way relief softened her expression. “I really appreciate this, Brian,” she repeated. “I know you probably think I’m overreacting.”
“Lila, when we were partners, I learned to respect your gut instincts. You never overreacted then and you’re probably not overreacting now.”
She caught the one word he had glossed over. “‘Probably.’”
Brian smiled. The wording was a result of on-the-job indoctrination. “Being the chief of d’s has taught me to be cautious.”
Brian set down his mug, finished with his beer, but she was still nursing hers. “Well, I’m glad something finally did. For a man with four kids, you were always a little reckless,” she remembered, then took another long swig of the amber brew.
As he recalled their partnership, Lila was always the one to rush in where angels feared to go, not him. “Look who’s talking.”
She had the good grace not to argue. “Maybe you have a point.”
Folding his hands before him, he watched her for a long moment. Humor faded in the face of more serious memories. “If you’d been a little less gung ho, I would have been the one who caught the bullet that night. And a lot of things might have been different.” For one thing, she would have continued on the job and he would have refused to retire, the way Ben had made her do. They would have continued working together and she would have never withdrawn from him.
Lila could almost hear what he was thinking. No point in going there, that path led nowhere. So she did her best to lighten the moment. “Yeah, you would have been dead because blood makes me squeamish. I could have never done what you did, put my hand over the hole to try to get it to stop bleeding.”
Brian knew better. Knew that when they were partnered, she had always been there for him. That she had his back no matter what.
“Somehow, I don’t think so.” He paused for a moment, debating whether to take on more serious subjects. There was so much to talk about. So much to try to catch up on. Even after their partnership had terminated, even after she clearly began to avoid him—because of Ben, he’d like to believe—he’d thought about her. Thought about her a lot if he were being honest with himself. He’d wondered what she was doing, how she was getting along and if he should take it upon himself to barrage into her self-imposed solitude.
He never did. Maybe he should have. Because God knew he’d missed her.
Impulse, something he rarely experienced and even more rarely gave in to, had him asking, “Listen, would you like to have dinner sometime?”
Lila’s mouth curved slowly, like a flower responding to the first rays of the summer sun. “Sometime,” she echoed.
Heartened, Brian pressed on. “How about tomorrow night?”
She blinked.