break-ins that have been going on these last few weeks,” Bryce said, pulling his chair up a little closer to her desk as he lowered his voice just a shade.
She’d been the one to request they get to work, yet the question he’d just led with seemed almost out of the blue. So much so that it almost appeared he was asking her personally rather than just as a general introduction to the case she would be working.
Ever mindful of the possibility that Ethan was involved in these break-ins, her main concern was that, somehow, the connection would be made and once it was known that she was Ethan’s sister—even his half sister—she wouldn’t be allowed to work to clear his name.
“Why?” she responded uneasily, watching Bryce’s every move.
Bryce studied his new partner. Suddenly she appeared rather jumpy. Was that because she was the new kid on the block or was there something else going on that he needed to look into? Something he needed to know about before things went any further, both in the investigation and besides that?
After a moment he chalked up her momentary display of nerves to her wanting to do well on her first assignment in the new division. He couldn’t exactly blame her for that.
“Because it’s all over the news these days, for one thing,” he explained, still covertly studying her reaction to this whole scenario.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” she apologized. And then she knew just how to play this—survival in all sorts of situations had taught her that. “I had too much coffee this morning and I guess I just want to carry my weight right off the bat. Didn’t mean to sound jumpy.”
“Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of opportunity to carry your own weight—and mine, too,” he added with a chuckle. “I’ve got a list of people who’ve come home to find that they’ve been paid a little visit by our local friendly break-in artists. It’s here somewhere.” As he spoke, he began searching through the various files on his desk.
The files looked as if they’d been dropped on his desk by a passing hurricane. Nothing seemed to be organized.
In her opinion Cavanaugh had an awful lot of unnecessary papers scattered over on his desk. It became abundantly clear that the papers were stuck into files in no particular order, either. Finding just one specific thing would be like going on a wild-goose chase.
Finally she couldn’t hold her tongue any longer. “Wouldn’t you have more luck if you had all that on the computer?” she asked.
He countered her suggestion with a list of reasons why he hadn’t had anyone input the material into files on the computer. He was computer literate, but he had never become a fanatic about it.
“Paper files don’t suffer glitches or suddenly become unavailable because of power outages. Besides,” he said, sparing her a grin before going back to the hunt, “this way’s easier.”
Her eyes swept over the haphazard piles of files. “If you say so,” she murmured.
Eventually, Bryce laid his hands on everything he was looking for. He in turn handed them all over to his new partner.
For her part, Scottie spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon going through the various files that Bryce, his former partner and a couple of other detectives in the squad room had compiled.
There had been eight break-ins in this latest wave of home robberies. All the robberies had taken place in Aurora’s more exclusive, upper-end neighborhoods. That was the one thing all the incidents had in common. The only other thing they had in common—for now—was that there had been no one home at the time of the break-ins.
But beyond that, nothing seemed similar to her. The people who’d had their space violated had no common thread running through all their lives. They didn’t attend the same church, didn’t shop in the same stores and they didn’t send their children to the same schools. Two of the victims were single men, while the other five were families.
At first glance the break-ins seemed to all be just random invasions, haphazardly picked, but Scottie knew better than that. There had to be a common thread running through them, something that had drawn the thief’s attention in the first place, like a theme, or a memory, or payback for something.
She just prayed that the common thread running through all these home invasions wasn’t Ethan.
For the umpteenth time Scottie slipped her phone out of her pocket and swiped the screen, bringing it to life. She checked her texts and then her voice messages.
Nothing.
Ethan hadn’t called her back, hadn’t texted. Something was wrong, she knew it.
The old Ethan, the one she’d had to bail out of jail on more than one occasion before he’d finally come to his senses, wouldn’t have called her back. He would have carelessly ignored her messages until it suited his schedule to call her back. But the new Ethan, the one who was finally amounting to something, the one who gave meaning to her life, he would have definitely called her back. He would have called her the moment she’d left her first message.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t heard from Ethan in a month.
She’d just chalked it up to his being busy. She didn’t want him to feel as if she was breathing down his neck, but she really did want to know where he was.
Where are you, Ethan? she silently demanded as she stared at her phone.
“Checking for messages from your boyfriend?” Bryce asked.
Scottie swung her chair around, narrowly avoiding hitting the detective smack in his knees.
“Don’t you make any noise when you sneak up on people?” she accused.
“I think the answer to that is self-explanatory, otherwise it wouldn’t be called ‘sneaking.’ But since I have your attention, I was just curious. You’ve checked your phone at least once every hour since you started working those files. Hot date?” he asked, amused.
“To answer your question, no, I’m not checking for messages from my boyfriend. I don’t have a boyfriend, consequently there is no ‘hot date,’” Scottie informed him rather coldly.
Now that, Bryce thought, he found very hard to believe, given the way the woman looked.
But he let the topic drop, to be followed up some other time.
“Well, it’s time to call it a day, anyway. Why don’t you join me for a drink at Malone’s?” he suggested.
Malone’s, run by a retired policeman, was where more than one officer of the law could be found unwinding and temporarily setting down the burdens of the day. Bryce assumed she was familiar with it since, at one time or another, they’d all frequented the establishment.
“I thought we could celebrate your first day on the job. I’m buying,” he added, hoping that would erase any objections she might voice at the idea.
Scottie shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll have to pass. I have somewhere else I have to be.”
Before he could ask her where, Scottie had picked up her slim messenger bag, slung the strap over her shoulder and walked quickly out of the squad room.
