went into this room. Heck, for that matter, he rarely had guests. Between fatherhood and his job, there wasn’t much time for anything else.
Madeline Cooper turned. Their eyes met, and Bo made a split-second cop’s assessment of her. Tall, about five-nine. Average build. Shoulder-length, straight brown hair. Green eyes. A full mouth. Very little makeup, just a touch of pink color on her lips. She wore matching olive-green pants and a sweater. The outfit was nondescript. Definitely not flashy.
She was not a woman who wanted to draw attention to herself.
But something about her caught Bo’s attention.
“Do I know you?” he immediately asked.
“No.” Her answer was immediate, as well. Maybe too immediate.
“You look …” Bo didn’t know where to go with that. Several things came to mind, including, much to his surprise, that she looked damn attractive. But what also came to mind was that she was “… familiar.”
“Oh.” It was her only response.
Bo was ready to launch into more questions, but his phone rang. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and looked at the screen. It was Sergeant Garrett O’Malley from headquarters.
“Please excuse me a second. I need to take this call. Duggan,” he answered after his guest nodded.
“I ran the license plate on that black van you thought might be following you,” O’Malley informed him. “It must be fake. No record of it.”
Hell. That was not what Bo wanted to hear. “What about the van itself—was it stolen?”
“That’s my guess. I checked, and there were two black vans reported stolen in the last twenty-four hours.”
Bo didn’t like that, either. “Keep digging. Try to locate that vehicle. And call me if you find out anything else.” He kept his instructions vague since he had an audience nearby. Madeline Cooper seemed to be hanging on his every word.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, her forehead bunched up.
“No problem.” At best, that was a hopeful remark. At worst, a lie.
He might not know which was the truth for a while.
Bo walked closer, studying her and trying to figure out why bells the size of Texas were going off in his head.
“You have a lovely home,” she commented. She folded her arms over her chest and tipped her head to the photo on the mantel. “That’s your wife?”
Bo glanced at the photo of Nadine. She sported a grin from ear to ear, because that picture had been taken the day she learned she was pregnant.
“My late wife,” he corrected. “She died not long after giving birth.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss.” It sounded heartfelt, as if the loss had been hers, as well. Strange. “Do you have a son or daughter?”
“Both. I have twins.”
She glanced away but not before Bo saw something flicker through her eyes. What, exactly, he didn’t know, but it didn’t seem to be a normal reaction.
“I remember your name now,” she continued. “Wasn’t your wife at the San Antonio Maternity Hospital during that hostage standoff?”
Bo let the question dangle between them for several seconds. It was definitely an uncomfortable silence, and if he’d had any doubts that his guest was nervous, he didn’t have them after that. “That’s right. My wife had the babies by herself while hiding in a nurses’ lounge. She had internal bleeding and died.”
The lack of emotion in his tone certainly didn’t mean there was a lack of emotion in his heart. No. Losing Nadine had been the most difficult thing he had ever faced. If it hadn’t been for the babies, he would have shut down and died emotionally right along with her. But he’d survived for their children and because that’s what Nadine would have expected him to do.
“So, you had questions about the neighborhood?” Bo asked, changing the subject.
She nodded. “Um, is it safe?”
He thought of the van and hesitated. “I’m a cop. I wouldn’t be living here with my children if it wasn’t.”
Another nod. She moistened her lips. Hell. That mouth was so familiar. Where had he seen it before?
“Are you from San Antonio?” he asked.
“No. Born and raised in Dallas, but for the past two years I’ve been traveling so much that I don’t really have a place to call home.”
“No family?”
There it was. Another flicker in her eyes before she glanced away again. “No family.”
“You’re not a very good liar.” Bo hadn’t intended to be so blunt, but frankly he was tired of this conversation. For a woman who wanted to know about the neighborhood, she didn’t have much interest in it. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you’re really here?”
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Stared at him. And looked even more uncomfortable. He knew how she felt. Bo was uncomfortable, too.
He stared at her, waiting for an explanation that one way or another he was going to get. He wouldn’t let her leave until he knew if she were connected to that van. He was about to toss that particular accusation at her, when something flashed in his head.
And he knew where he’d seen that face and that mouth.
“I know why you look so familiar,” he told her. “The surveillance video at the hospital.”
She shook her head. “What video?”
“The one I studied a thousand times after the hostage standoff. A woman wearing green scrubs left the area of the nurses’ lounge only seconds before I got there. The hair is different, darker, but the mouth—it’s the same.”
She didn’t deny it. In fact, her body language confirmed it. “I have a problem,” she practically whispered. “A serious one.”
“Yeah, you do. You left the scene of a crime, lady, and the police want to question you. Hell, I want to question you. What were you doing in that nurses’ lounge with my wife and newborn babies?”
She stood there, blinking hard as if fighting back tears. “I was a hostage, too. I was trapped there like everyone else on the ward.”
Bo hadn’t known what answer to expect, and he wasn’t sure yet if he believed her. After all, she’d fled the scene, and people didn’t usually do that sort of thing unless they were running from the law. But there was something in her voice. Something in her eyes. Some deep pain. Bo understood that and knew she probably wasn’t faking it. He’d already determined she wasn’t much of a liar.
He went closer to her so he could keep watch with his lie-detector eyes. “You were with my wife?”
“Yes.”
