friends for drinks or something. But to tell you the truth, I was busy with my own work, and we weren’t getting along for a while before we split. I just can’t be sure what he’d been up to recently. Can I ask you a question?” The words were addressed to Nate. Risa assumed when the woman leaned in confidingly, the gape in her blouse was for his benefit, as well.
“Of course.”
“I don’t want to be indelicate, but I don’t know when I’ll be able to talk to someone about this.” She moistened her lips and then curved them slowly. “Since we weren’t divorced yet . . . do you know if that means I’ll get Mark’s pension?”
“Ni-ice,” Risa drawled as they headed back to Nate’s office. “Seems doubly a shame that he was murdered. Being married to her should have qualified as suffering enough.”
“Hell of it is, unless he changed his will and the beneficiary on his pension, she’ll probably get everything. I’ll have Alberts and Finnegan search his house again, this time concentrating on any financial information he might have around. One thing is certain, he wasn’t regularly working overtime for extra money. The city pulled out all the stops for this task force, but we’re usually in a budget crunch. They discourage overtime, and she made it sound like he worked extra shifts, which is impossible.”
“So we have four victims who were doing ‘something’ in their spare time. We know that something equaled a big payoff for at least Parker.” She and Nate reached out for the doorknob for his office in tandem. Her jacket gaped open. When she saw his gaze fix on her weapon, she let her hand drop to her side. Just the act of loading and strapping on her weapon had had her shaking the entire ride to work this morning. Probably would have had her jittery all day if she hadn’t had far worse to concentrate on.
The memory of the blackened form in the crumbling cellar spilled across her mind like a dark stain. There was nothing quite as torturous as “knowing” something and still being unable to prevent it. Because it was knowledge she shouldn’t have and couldn’t explain.
And in Mark Randolph’s case, it had come much too late.
“It’s been a long day after staying late last night.”
She sat down at her computer as Nate was talking. When he didn’t finish, she turned to look at him inquiringly.
He looked oddly ill at ease. “I’m just saying, if you want to call it a day, I don’t expect you to keep pace with the hours I’m putting in here.”
“Trying to get rid of me?”
He gave a purely masculine shrug and rounded his desk. “Just offering you an out. You seemed . . . on edge today.”
She stilled. Of course he would notice. Which meant that she wasn’t nearly as good at hiding her nerves as she would like to believe. She wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised when she offered him a shred of truth. “Raiker insists on his investigators being armed at all times.” Just talking about it had her palms dampening. “He cleared it with the commissioner when he offered him my services. I haven’t touched my weapon since my last case. In Minneapolis.”
His dark gaze met hers. She thought she couldn’t bear the question in his eyes. Found the understanding there somehow worse. “The one where you were wounded?”
“It ended badly,” she said bleakly. Badly. An innocuous word for a scene that had ended with several SWAT operatives wounded, two of them fatally. A five-year-old boy dead. And left Risa doubting she’d ever be able to bring herself to face another case again.
“Yet here you are,” he murmured.
“Here I am.” Because she needed to look away, needed something, anything else to focus on, she powered up her computer. “I won’t take you up on your offer to cut out early, but I wouldn’t say no to a pizza. Meat lovers with extra cheese.”
“A woman after my own heart.”
The pizza had been devoured, and despite Nate’s convenient memory, it was he who’d eaten two-thirds of it. He’d been in and out of the office, on the phone and then poring over reports at his desk. She’d overheard the tail end of one phone conversation that had sounded as if it was personal. His low tones had made it impossible to make out all of the words, but it had sounded like an argument. She wondered if he was