style="font-size:15px;"> “You’re going to give me more of a hint than that, Cavanaugh. You’ve got three sisters,” Santini reminded him.
“Callie.”
Clay couldn’t remember his older sister ever looking so excited. She’d waited until they’d all sat down to Sunday dinner. For once, his father had managed to corral everyone, even his uncle. They’d all but poured out of the dining room, even with the extra leaves added on to the table his dad had specially made for family affairs.
Putting two fingers into her mouth, Callie had whistled the way she used to as a kid, getting the roar at the table to die down to a whisper and then, as sweet as could be, she’d made the announcement. She and Brent were getting married. And just like that, he was going to become an uncle, thanks to the judge’s five-year-old daughter, Rachel.
“You’re kidding me.” Santini whistled, shaking his head. “Damn, and here I was hoping she’d give me a tumble after I leave Alice.”
“Fat chance. In more ways than one.” Clay paused. “Why don’t you call up and send your wife flowers?”
Kyle laughed. Flowers were usually to apologize for something. “That’ll throw her.” And then he grinned. “Maybe I will.”
Captain Reynolds leaned into the cubicle, his gray eyes sweeping over both the men. “Cavanaugh, Santini, the chief just called. He wants the two of you to protect a witness. Apparently this is a big deal. The D.A. doesn’t want anything to happen to her.”
Clay rolled his eyes. He’d never been much for baby-sitting detail. One of the desk jockeys could do just as well. “I’ve got a desk full of work.”
The gray-haired man looked at him, his manner friendly but brooking no nonsense. Reynolds liked to stay on top of things at all times, which meant exercising control, but never holding the leash too tight. Taut leashes had a way of snapping.
“Which’ll still be there whether or not you pull this detail. Consider it a vacation with pay.” About to withdraw, Reynolds stopped again. “Either of you boys got any stock in Simplicity Computers, I suggest you cash it in right now. Seems one of the internal auditors found some dirty business going on.”
Clay sighed. Terrific. A whistle-blower. “This have something to do with the person we’re supposed to be guarding?”
Reynolds nodded. “It does.”
“This person have a name?”
“Yeah.” Reynolds paused to think a moment. “Ilene O’Hara.”
Feeling like someone who had just slipped into the Twilight Zone without so much as a warning flash of light, Clay stared at the captain.
The smile had vanished from Clay’s lips.
Chapter 2
All during the ride to the D.A.’s office Clay had been silently steeling himself for the ordeal ahead.
Beside him, in the driver’s seat, Santini sat expounding on whatever topic floated through his dark head. Occasionally coming up for air, his partner’s nonstop flow of words only managed to bounce off Clay’s ears, hardly penetrating as he thought about the woman he was going to be seeing after all this time.
Ilene O’Hara.
It had been six years. Six years and three months, but who was counting, he thought with a self-deprecating smile. He and Ilene had broken up in August and now they were looking down the calendar at November. Technically, she had broken up with him, but he’d driven her to it. On purpose.
Ilene O’Hara.
He’d thought she’d left Aurora. When had she gotten back? Clay glanced out the window, barely seeing the scenery go by as Santini took the streets a little quicker than they were meant to be taken.
Clay didn’t know how he felt about seeing her again. He was trying not to feel anything at all, but that wasn’t working out too well. Emotions insisted on rumbling through him. He was like a channel surfer who’d accidentally come across an episode of a program he’d once enjoyed. There was a sense of familiarity washing over him, perhaps even a vague sense of nostalgia, but nothing more.
He couldn’t let there be anything more.
“Where the hell are you today?” Santini’s voice finally elbowed its way into his thoughts, demanding his attention. Demanding a response.
Turning, Clay looked at him. “What?”
“You,” Santini repeated impatiently, turning a corner and going down the street that would eventually lead them to the D.A.’s office. “Where are you?”
Clay stopped himself from bracing his hand against the dashboard. “Here, next to you, risking my life as you take turns too fast and give all detectives a bad name.”
Santini snorted. “Don’t give me that. First you come in looking as if you’d been peeled off the top of the morning, now you look like the used gum that you peel off the bottom of someone’s heel.” Santini spared him a penetrating glance before looking back on the road. “After riding around with you for two years, I know that you’re not one of those sensitive guys, so this isn’t a mood swing. What gives?”
Santini was his partner, and he shared as much with him as he shared with any man or any member of his family. At times even more. But right now he didn’t feel like talking about it. He didn’t even want to let his thoughts stray in that direction. He just wanted the assignment to be magically over instead of just beginning.
“Just drive.”
Santini mumbled something unintelligible under his breath, but Clay managed to pick up enough of it to know that the man was casting aspersions on closed-mouth black Irishmen. For the first time since he’d heard Ilene’s name this morning, Clay smiled.
She looked better than he’d expected.
Six years had taken the promise of beauty and had lovingly polished it until it shone. She’d changed, he realized. She didn’t look innocent anymore. Just knowledgeable, as if she now knew that the world wasn’t some huge playground with all the safety features built into it.
He supposed that was partially his fault. If he hadn’t pushed her toward it, maybe they wouldn’t have broken up.
Maybe…
The land of maybe was mist-filled territory with long, winding, intersecting roads that led nowhere, and Clay wasn’t about to go there. Today was what it was and so was he, there was no point in speculating otherwise. Ultimately he knew he wouldn’t have been any good for her. A woman like Ilene needed stability, and stability scared the hell out of him.
Stability and stagnation both began with the same letter.
As he walked into the room, Clay glanced down at her left hand. She was wearing a ring on the appropriate finger, but it wasn’t a wedding ring. It was sporting a blue stone in its center.
Her birthstone was blue. Sapphire, he thought, not aquamarine. Funny the things you remembered even after all this time.
Her
