the street.”
Well, at least they were in agreement on that point, she thought. “Nevertheless, I’m impressed anyway,” she told him. “Consider it icing on the cake.”
The laugh was less than warm. Warmth came, though, when she looked into his eyes. “Icing rots your teeth,” he told her.
Kari shook her head. Roguishly good-looking or not, how was she supposed to survive this partnership? “God, but you are a downer.”
He saw the look in her eyes, saw another question all but bubbling on her lips. She was going to ask him again what had made him this way. The memory was far too painful to unearth.
“Leave it alone, Hyphen,” he warned in a low voice, “or you’ll be looking for a new partner.”
She raised her hands as if in surrender and glibly said, “Okay, this is me, leaving it alone.”
He snorted, knowing that this wasn’t the last of it. People like Kari got things in their head and kept after it no matter what. Approaching it at all different directions, all different angles, until the item finally cracked open and was theirs.
But at least he’d gotten her to drop the subject for now and that was all he was asking for. Just a few short hours of respite.
* * *
Kari debated what her next step should be. Not with the investigation—she knew what to do there—but to get to the bottom of what exactly had transformed the charismatic high school quarterback she remembered into the sullen, brooding man she’d been partnered up with.
She knew she could always go back to Brenda. But she’d already imposed on her enough. Granted that the woman was the Chief of Detectives’ daughter-in-law, which meant that she wasn’t going to get into any trouble on the force unless she killed someone. But she didn’t want to put Brenda on the spot by asking her to delve into closed files that were deemed to be secret and redacted.
Besides, she needed to save the savvy computer tech for bigger things. No, this time around she was going to have to find another venue to obtain her information.
Still chewing on the problem of Fernandez’s drastic transformation, she decided to approach the man who in her opinion had all the answers. If there was an answer to dispense, the call, one way or another, was ultimately his.
Squaring her shoulders and summoning her courage, Kari went to see the Chief of Detectives.
* * *
Brian Cavanaugh was about to finally call it a day. His wife was waiting for him at their favorite restaurant. It was his way of paying her back for putting up with all the long hours that he was on the job and away from home. But then, Lila understood.
He’d met Lila on the force years ago. Eventually, she became his partner and after almost dying in his arms when she was shot by an enraged gunman, Lila was assigned to a desk job. But even there she knew all about the demands that were made on a law enforcement officer, especially a high-ranking one.
In all the years they’d been together, he’d never once heard her complain. But that didn’t mean that there weren’t times when she was rightfully resentful of having to share him with an entire department of men and women—and usually getting the short end of the stick.
So when he saw his brother’s daughter, Kari, standing in the doorway of his office, Brian was surprised as well as somewhat impatient.
With effort he banked down the latter for the moment and said, “I’m on my way out, Kari. Is there something I can do for you?”
Talk about awful timing, she thought with dread.
“I can come back,” she volunteered.
“Is this something that I can handle quickly?” he wanted to know. He’d never liked putting things off if he could help it. He’d learned the hard way that regrets were often tied to procrastination.
“That depends on your answer,” she told him honestly, rather than giving a blanket yes so that he would feel obligated to help her, only to discover that the matter needed more time than he could accommodate.
“On my answer to what?” Brian asked as he sat down behind his desk again. He was prepared to allow her fifteen minutes, the same he would allow any other police officer who came to him. His goal ever since he’d taken on this position was to treat everyone fairly.
“What’s Detective Fernandez’s story?”
He looked at her for a long moment, trying to ascertain exactly what she meant by that. “Which