with Dr. Phil in the car. You want to analyze somebody—”
She held up her hand, not in surrender but to get him to curtail what he was about to say. “Sorry, just making conversation.”
“Well, don’t.”
Unbuckling her seat belt, she turned to look at him. The intensity on her face took him by surprise. “You know, Cavanaugh, someday you just might need someone to watch your back for you.”
“If and when I ever do, it sure as hell isn’t going to be you.”
She paused for a moment, and then she gave him a bright smile. “Roughage.”
Had she lost her mind? What kind of a birdbrain were they cranking out of the academy these days? “What?”
“Morning roughage. Does wonders in clearing out all those poisons that seem to be running around all through you,” she declared, getting out of the car. She paused to look in for a last second before closing the door. “I’ll only be a minute.”
Patrick frowned to himself. Even a minute seemed too long to remain in the car, surrounded the way he was with her perfume. What he needed right now more than solitude was air. He got out.
When she looked at him curiously, he muttered, “I need to stretch my legs.”
She pretended to glance down at them. “And long legs they are, too.”
Not waiting for him, Maggi hurried across the street, wanting to put a little distance between herself and Mr. Personality before she said something she meant and blew everything. She held her hand up, stopping traffic as she darted toward the other side.
She supposed having him this ill-tempered made her job easier. It took away any qualms she might have about spying on him.
“Hey, didn’t they teach you not to jaywalk at the academy while you were busy graduating at the top of your class?”
For less than two cents, she’d tell him what she thought of him. Exercising extreme control, Maggi turned around when she reached the curb. “You want to give me a ticket?”
“I don’t want you risking your fool neck needlessly.” What he wanted to do was give her her walking papers, but there was nothing he could do about that here.
Resigned, and far from happy about it, Patrick pushed the glass door open and crossed the threshold ahead of her. She looked surprised when he held the door for her.
“I see someone must have taught you manners somewhere along the line,” she said.
“It’s expedient. If I let the door go, you would probably walk into it and make the ER our next stop. We have to get back to the station.”
She refused to let him get to her. She knew that was what he was after, to get to her so badly that she’d march into Reynolds’s office and declare that she wouldn’t work with him, the way all his other partners had. Except for Ramirez.
Ain’t gonna happen, Cavanaugh, she thought as she walked by him.
“You can huff and puff all you want, Cavanaugh,” she informed him brightly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
With that, she picked out the shortest line. Patrick stopped by the small table with all the deposit and withdrawal slips, looking annoyed. Mercifully, this wasn’t going to take long. Mondays were usually slow.
Except where homicides seemed to be concerned, she thought, thinking back to the crime scene they’d just left. Something like that made grabbing lunch a challenge to intestinal fortitude.
The teller in the window directly to her left screamed.
The next moment, the man standing before the window whirled around.
There was a gun in his hand.
“Everyone freeze,” he announced loudly. “This is a holdup.”
Chapter 3
The man’s eyes bounced around like pinballs that had just been put into play. He seemed to aim his weapon at everyone in the bank at the same time. Patrick could almost hear the bank robber’s nerves jangling.
“Get down!” the man shouted. “Everyone get down on the floor!” His gun moved erratically from person to person, turning each into a potential target, a potential victim. “Now!”
Patrick did a quick calculation. There were fourteen other people in the bank, not counting the bank robber. Five of them tellers. The gunman looked so rattled he could start firing away at any second. It had all the signs of becoming a bloodbath at the slightest provocation.
Going through the motions of dropping down to the floor, Patrick reached for his pistol.
The rest happened so fast he only had the opportunity to absorb it after the fact. Before he knew what she was doing, the partner the department had saddled him with cried out in what sounded like utter panic. His head jerked in her direction. The bank robber stared at her.
Maggi’s eyes were wide as they were riveted on the bank robber and she was trembling. Her hands were raised above her head in total submission.
“Omigod, it’s a gun.” Panic escalated in her voice. “He’s got a gun. Oh, please don’t shoot me,” she implored. “I just found out I’m pregnant. You’d be killing two people, not just one. Me and my baby. I don’t want to die, mister. I’ve got everything to live for. Please don’t kill me.”
With each word she uttered, Maggi edged closer and closer to the bank robber. She was breathing heavily and still trembling.
“Shut up, you stupid bitch. Nobody’s going to die, just do what I tell you.” The bank robber looked panicked himself as he trained the gun on her.
“All right, all right—” Maggi’s voice hitched “—if you promise you won’t hurt me. Pretty please?”
The last two words she uttered were distinctively different from the rest. As she seemed to sag down right in front of him, Maggi grabbed hold of his gun hand. Catching him by surprise, she violently jerked his arm behind his back. In less than half a heartbeat, her own gun was in her other hand. She held it close enough to the robber’s temple to get her point across.
“Drop the gun.” He did as he was told, cursing her roundly. “Now apologize to the nice people and say you’re sorry.”
“What the—” At a loss for coherence, the bank robber let loose a string of profanities that only made Maggi shake her head.
“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” she marveled. Relieved that the situation was over, Maggi took a deep breath, trying to get a hold of her own nerves. They felt as if they’d been stretched to the limit. Adrenaline still raced through her veins. “Keep that up and we’re going to have to wash your mouth out with soap, aren’t we, Detective Cavanaugh?”
As if waiting for some kind of word of concurrence, Maggi raised her eyebrow toward Patrick. He merely grunted as he pulled the man’s hands behind him and snapped handcuffs around his wrists. The look he gave her left Maggi short on description.
