mannequin, which burst out of a closet near the track, and plenty of gore. We got out of the car and scouted a couple of spots where he might have been but wasn’t. Then we hopped into the car again before it could leave the set.
So it went, on through a ghoulish graveyard, a troglodyte-teaming cavern, and a literal Old West ghost town. We came up with nothing, but we moved well as a team, better than I could remember doing with anyone before. Everything felt as smooth and natural as if we’d been moving together our whole lives. We did it in total silence, too, divining what each other would do through pure instinct.
Even great teams lose a game here or there, though. We came up with diddly and emerged from the Tunnel of Terror with neither Maroon nor any idea where he’d gone.
“Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “This week has been an investigative suckfest for me.”
Murphy tittered again. “You said suck.”
I grinned at her and looked around. “Well,” I said, “we don’t know where Maroon went. If they hadn’t made us already, they have now.”
“Can you pick up on the signal-whatsit again?”
“Energy signature,” I said. “Maybe. It’s pretty vague, though. I’m not sure how much more precise I can get.”
“Let’s find out,” she said.
I nodded. “Right, then.” We started around the suspect circle of attractions, moving slowly and trying to blend into the crowds. When a couple of rowdy kids went by, one chasing the other, I put an arm around her shoulders and drew her into the shelter of my body so she wouldn’t get bowled over.
She exhaled slowly and did not step away from me.
My heart started beating faster.
“Harry,” she said quietly.
“Yeah?”
“You and me . . . Why haven’t we ever ...” She looked up at me. “Why not?”
“The usual, I guess,” I said quietly. “Trouble. Duty. Other people involved.”
She shook her head. “Why not?” she repeated, her eyes direct. “All these years have gone by. And something could have happened, but it never did. Why not?”
I licked my lips. “Just like that? We just decide to be together?”
Her eyelids lowered. “Why not?”
My heart did the drum solo from “Wipeout.”
Why not?
I bent my head down to her mouth and kissed her, very gently.
She turned into the kiss, pressing her body against mine. It was a little bit awkward. I was most of two feet taller than she was. We made up for grace with enthusiasm, her arms twining around my neck as she kissed me, hungry and deep.
“Whoa,” I said, drawing back a moment later. “Work. Right?”
She looked at me for a moment, her cheeks pink, her lips a little swollen from the kiss, and said, “Right.” She closed her eyes and nodded. “Right. Work first.”
“Then dinner?” I asked.
“Dinner. My place. We can order in.”
My belly trembled in sudden excitement at that proposition. “Right.” I looked around. “So let’s find this thing and get it over with.”
We started moving again. A circuit around the attractions got me no closer to the source of the energy I’d sensed earlier.
“Dammit,” I said, frustrated, when we’d completed the pattern.
“Hey,” Murphy said. “Don’t beat yourself up about it, Harry.” Her hand slipped into mine, our fingers intertwining. “I’ve been a cop a long time. You don’t always get the bad guy. And if you go around blaming yourself for it, you wind up crawling into a bottle or eating your own gun.”
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “But . . .”
“Heh,” Murphy said. “You said but.”
We both grinned like fools. I looked down at our entwined hands. “I like this.”
“So do I,” Murphy said. “Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?”
“Beats me.”
“Are we just that stupid?” she asked. “I mean, people, in general. Are we really so blind that we miss what’s right there in front of us?”
“As a species, we’re essentially insane,” I said. “So, yeah, probably.” I lifted our hands and kissed her fingertips. “I’m not missing it now, though.”
Her smile lit up several thousand square feet of the midway. “Good.”
The echo of a thought rattled around in my head: Insane . . .
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, hell’s bells.”
She frowned at me. “What?”
“Murph . . . I think we got whammied.”
She blinked at me. “What? No, we didn’t.”
“I think we did.”
“I didn’t see anything or feel anything. I mean, nothing, Harry. I’ve felt magic like that before.”
“Look at us,” I said, waving our joined hands.
“We’ve been friends a long time, Harry,” she said. “And we’ve had a couple