Sally Howe, the love of his life his last year in high school, to pick out her senior prom dress.
Neither teen in front of him seemed to have sucked enough air into his lungs to attempt to explain why they would break into an abandoned department store. Instead, the taller of them had only two words, barely audible, to offer.
The moment Chris heard them, he realized that he wasn’t being told why they had entered the building, but why they had exited it in such a huge hurry and why their complexions had turned so pasty white in the process.
“Dead body!”
Sean Cavanaugh was accustomed to being the first one in the crime lab each morning. As the day shift crime scene lab manager, he liked getting a jump start on the day, as well as any work that might have been left over from the night before.
He had a top-notch, highly skilled crew that needed no hand-holding or close overseeing, beyond what might have been deemed necessary from a general organizational standpoint.
However, he could no longer lay claim to being the first one in each morning, not since his newest crime scene investigator had transferred in from out of state a little over nine months ago. Susannah Quinn, affectionately referred to by the people who worked with her as Suzie Q, seemed to always be somewhere on the premises no matter what the hour. She came in before anyone else, and no matter how late Sean stayed, she frequently stayed even longer. She also pulled double shifts on occasion and thought nothing of covering for her fellow CSI agents if they called in sick or took an unexpected vacation day.
The fact that she didn’t rust in the occasional California rain was just about the only thing that convinced Sean the newest addition to the team wasn’t a robot.
Walking into the lab on the way to his office, Sean, father of seven, uncle of countless more, many of whom were on the Aurora police force, stopped by Suzie’s work area and set down a large covered cup of coffee he had picked up on his way in to work.
“Good morning. What’s this?” she asked her superior, nodding at the container.
He’d picked up a smaller container of black coffee for himself. Sean liked his coffee the way he preferred his cases: simple. Young people, he’d discovered, liked creative coffee.
“I’m told it’s the latest in fad coffee,” he told her.
“And you bought it for me?” Suzie asked uncertainly.
Was he doing it in order to soften a blow? she couldn’t help wondering. She’d come to like Sean Cavanaugh a great deal, since taking this position at the crime lab, but she had paid a painful price to learn to take nothing—and no one—at face value.
Sean nodded. “I knew you’d be here.” After removing the lid from his own coffee, he paused to take a sip of the black liquid, savoring the heat as it wound through his veins and kick-started his system. “You know, Suzie,” he went on, snapping the lid back on the container, “indentured servitude was abolished in this country about four centuries ago. People who get paid for what they do for a living get to keep regular hours—at least most of the time. That means—in most cases—they come in at a reasonable hour in the morning and then go home at a reasonable hour at night.”
She smiled at him. It was a sunny smile that lit up a room and was meant to put whoever was speaking to her at ease. For the most part, it did, but every so often Sean had a feeling there was something behind the smile that no one was supposed to see. A secret that only Suzie was privy to.
Since he was a firm believer in other people’s privacy, Sean made no effort to push through the barriers. He did, however, do what he could to make it clear to Suzie that if she ever needed to talk about anything—and that included subjects that had nothing whatsoever to do with work—she could always talk to him.
“I know that,” she responded cheerfully. Reaching into the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled out the small messenger bag she kept there. Taking out her wallet, she asked, “What do I owe you for the coffee?”
“How about you go home early for a change and we’ll call it even?” Sean suggested.
It wasn’t a deal Suzie felt she could honor. She shook her head, sending her straight hair swinging.
“That’s okay. I don’t mind staying longer if the job calls for it,” she replied. “Besides, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I left early.”
She thought Sean would drop the subject there, but she thought wrong. He actually had a list of suggestions ready for her. “You could get a hobby, get a pet, catch a movie, enroll in a cooking class, learn to windsurf.” The smile on his lips was nothing if not encouraging as he paused before adding, “The possibilities are endless.”
One by one Suzie addressed his points matter-of-factly. “My hobby is crime solving. With the hours I keep, I wouldn’t leave a pet alone all day—it wouldn’t be fair. There’s nothing currently playing in the movie theaters that I want to see. And FYI, I already know how to cook and windsurf,” she concluded. “Besides, I like my job, so why shouldn’t I put in some extra hours every now and then?”
Sean bit his tongue to keep from pointing out that it was a lot more than “every now and then.” It seemed she put in extra hours every day.
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?” he said with a laugh.
Suzie was careful when she made her response. She didn’t want Sean thinking of her as being argumentative. “At least for the points you raised.”
Sean looked at the young woman thoughtfully. The way Suzie had worded her reply made him think that there was something she didn’t have an answer to, something she wasn’t willing to talk about. He was tempted to ask if he was right, but again, that would be prying, and if she wanted him to know more than what she’d said, she would have told him.
The woman was a puzzle, no doubt about it. But puzzles took time to solve. Time and patience. Fortunately, he had both.
“Then I’ll leave you to those reports.” He started to leave, but then paused to add one more thing. “You do realize that you’re probably the only one of my people who willingly sits down to face reports without being hounded and threatened to do it.”
That in itself had him wondering about her. Susannah Quinn was young, beautiful and smart. Surely she had to have a life beyond these four walls and the crime scenes she investigated.
But from all indications, as far as he could see, she didn’t. There were no pictures on her desk, no mention of family or friends. There wasn’t even a next-of-kin or the name of someone to notify in case of an emergency on her work application.
Why?
Suzie turned his comparison over in her head. “Paperwork isn’t exactly something people really aspire to do.”
“But you do it,” Sean pointed out.
To her, paperwork was something to do to stave off going home and being alone with her thoughts. With her memories.
But she couldn’t tell Sean this.
So
