brushed her hair into its usual severe, workday chignon, and carefully applied enough makeup to disguise some of the puffiness and blotches. Two more painkillers, teeth brushed and she’d done everything she could short of donning a mask.
Back in the kitchen she belatedly discovered a note from Kim carelessly tossed on the counter. It read, “Mom, Colin’s taking me to the spit. Call his cell phone if you won’t be home for dinner. I can eat with him. Bye.”
Nell crumpled the note. Great. Wonderful. Her just-turned-sixteen-year-old daughter was spending the day in the wilds with her entirely too ardent boyfriend. And what in hell could she, the single mother, do about it? Forbid a sixteen-year-old from dating? Hardly. Sign her up for summer camp? Uh-huh.
“What I wouldn’t give for year-round school,” Nell told the kitchen, and went out the door.
She was one of the last in the crowded briefing room at the station, for which she was grateful. She was able to stand in the back, unnoticed.
This wasn’t the usual beginning of her shift. She and McLean had been assigned, along with ten of the others present yesterday, to work this case. Four detectives from Major Crimes stood behind the captain. One, she was interested to note, was John McLean, Hugh’s older brother. He must have spent the night at the Joplin Building, because tiredness wore lines in his face that she knew weren’t always there, and his expression was bleak.
Nobody would mistake the relationship between the two men, although subtle differences in facial structure made Hugh handsome and his brother plain in a blunt, masculine way. Hugh’s bone structure was more defined, his nose thinner, his cheekbones more pronounced. Both shared imposing height and powerful shoulders and arms.
“The dead guy right outside the elevator on the fifth floor is our shooter,” the captain was saying.
While she was deciding which brother was sexier. Feeling a flush creeping up her face, Nell made a determined effort to block out awareness of Hugh McLean, sitting in the front row.
“A dozen witnesses have positively identified him.” Tiredness showed in the deepened lines on Captain Fisher’s face, but hadn’t succeeded in relaxing his military carriage or the iron in his voice. “He died of a self-inflicted shot to the head. As you all know, he’d been shedding his arsenal as he went. It appears right now that he used up his automatic rounds on the lower floors. He started down the hall, shot one more victim, then headed back to the elevator. He might have heard sirens and realized he couldn’t walk out. Hell, maybe he intended all along to end it that way.
“His name is Jack Gann. He was not a former or current employee of Greater Northwest. We don’t know yet what the association was. We’re guessing he was pissed about a denied claim, but, hell, it could be something else. One of the victims may be an ex-wife, the boyfriend of his ex…. It’ll be your job to find out.
“At this point, we believe he was acting alone. We can’t yet be certain of that, either. His car is in the lot, but so are ones belonging to a lot of other people who won’t be driving them home, either.
“The coroner has wrapped things up at the Joplin Building. You know the drill. We need accurate floor plans, drawings, notes.” Captain Fisher paused, his penetrating gaze traveling from one of his officers to the next. “You will be acting under the direction of the detectives. When you’re done, I want to know every step the son of a bitch took. How did he get to the third floor that heavily armed without being noticed? Who did he shoot first? Second? Third? Why those victims? Were they the ones who didn’t hide fast enough, or were they chosen?” His voice became softer, colder. “I don’t just want to know what he did, I want to know what he was thinking.”
Nods all around. “Sir.”
“These are your assignments.” Like a school-teacher, he stepped from behind the podium and passed out papers. When he’d reached the back of the room and Nell, he added his usual roll-call closer. “Do your jobs and do them carefully.”
Nell was praying she and McLean had been assigned to hunt background on the shooter. Her stomach roiled at the idea of going back into the Joplin Building, of seeing again where the bodies had fallen.
No such luck. She and her new partner—her temporary partner—would be part of the team securing, searching and recording the crime scene.
She waited in the hall for him. He was one of the last out the door of the briefing room, presumably having stopped to talk to his brother. He’d hidden this morning’s excesses better than she had, Nell thought in disgruntlement, watching him approach. With his dark hair, vivid blue eyes and well-defined cheekbones, he was as rakishly handsome as ever. Right now his mouth was set in a hard line, but his jaw was clean-shaven, his eyes clear and his hair slicked back from his face. His crisp uniform fit his tall, muscular body the way it was designed to, a fact that she resented.
She tried very hard not to let pictures of the body beneath the uniform flash in her mind.
His expression was unrevealing when he reached her. “Ready?”
“Naturally,” she snapped. Did she look that bad?
“Do you want to drive today?”
Big of him, she thought uncharitably. They had to go—what?—ten blocks to the Joplin Building. No chance she’d screw up a chase or even a trivial traffic stop.
“You did fine yesterday,” she said waspishly, then was annoyed at herself for being weak enough to display sulkiness. Why give him a weapon?
He lifted a brow. “Fine.”
As they followed the rest of the officers down the hall, she wondered miserably what he was trying not to remember when he looked at her. Or, worse yet, what he was letting himself remember with secret pleasure.
Her cheeks heated in humiliation. Was he instead wondering how many beers he’d had to make him pull down his zipper for her? Flagpole tall women with no figure and hair of undetermined color had never heated his blood before.
She gave a stiff nod when he held open a door for her. Walking into the shadowy parking garage, she hated her awareness of his gaze on her back as he followed.
Damn it, she didn’t want to excite Hugh McLean, Nell thought fiercely. She didn’t like him. Last night—this morning…It was nothing. The stupid behavior induced by inebriation. The true embarrassment was discovering her behavioral control—her common sense!—could be so easily subverted.
Not until they were in their unit and pulling out of the garage did either speak again.
“Feel okay?” Hugh asked.
She felt like hell. “I’m all right.” After a too discernible pause, she added, “You?”
He shrugged. She looked away.
“Oh, hell,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
He hit the flashers and took a sharp left. “Idiot ran the red light.”
The driver of the low-slung Buick ahead had apparently not yet noticed the flashing lights. Nell radioed in the location and license tag number to dispatch.
“Violation?” dispatch asked.
She continued
