Raphael watched the phenomenon.
Then, finally, for the first time, he noticed the way she was dressed. She wore khaki slacks, socks and neatly laced sneakers. This was topped by a white turtleneck, albeit a sleeveless one. Except for her arms, every inch of skin from her chin on down was covered, laced, pressed, creased. She looked as though she had been up for hours already.
Raphael glanced at his watch. It was only twenty after six.
He scrubbed his face with his hands. He needed a shower and a shave. Of course, he had nothing with him to shave with, and she definitely didn’t seem the type to keep an extra razor on hand for unexpected male guests. Let her call Plattsmier, he thought. The department was full of by-the-book rookies who would put her milk carton away after they drank from it, and they’d both be a hell of a lot happier if one of them was assigned to her. But Raphael doubted if any of them had ticked off the commissioner just lately, or if they knew a blessed thing about Philadelphia’s organized crime netherworld.
Nope, he thought, he was stuck with her.
“Call in to your diner,” he said. “Tell them you won’t be in. I’m going to take a shower.”
“No.”
He’d already turned away from her. Now he looked back. She was holding the milk carton in front of her in both hands, as though it were a smoking gun.
“We talked about this last night,” she said, drawing herself up again. “I have responsibilities. I intend to meet them.”
Raphael felt his blood pressure creeping upward again and it wasn’t even yet six-thirty in the morning. Then he realized that there was always more than one way to skin a cat.
He thought of her labeled food containers. Of her scheduling diary with the times of calls noted down. “Yeah? Counting the one to your commonwealth?”
Kate frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re one of two prime witnesses in a murder investigation. Seems to me you have a certain responsibility to the good people of Pennsylvania, too.” Unless he badly missed his guess, this was one woman who had never missed a chance to vote. Hell, she probably wrote her comments in the margins of the ballot.
“I fail to see—”
“You’re bait.”
“I’m what?”
“Bait. You’re alive. You might have seen something. In all likelihood, someone is going to come after you in an effort to remedy that problem. When it happens, I’m going to nail his—”
“Spare me the profanity,” she said quickly.
“Backside to the wall.”
“I take it self-confidence is not a problem for you.”
“No. Not when it comes to my work.”
That quelled her. A new flatness had come to his tone. It was unapologetic and brooked no argument. Kate felt like she was somehow losing this discussion. “What does that have to do with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania?”
“The long and short of it is that by cooperating with me, you’ll be helping to take a criminal off the streets.”
She cocked her brows. It irritated the hell out of him. But Raphael was winning here, and he knew it.
“Let me get this straight,” she said. “A killer comes after me, and you’re there beside me so you can nail his—”
“—backside.”
“—to the wall.”
“Right.”
“And no other officer could do this quite so well.”
“I’m not an officer. I’m a detective. Big difference.”
“I beg your pardon.”
Raphael smiled graciously. “Bottom line, honey, you’re stuck with me if you want to see justice served.”
Kate nodded thoughtfully.
She should have been fighting it a bit more, he thought. This victory was feeling a little too easy.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Go take your shower. I’ll make us some breakfast. Then I’ll let you come to the diner with me so you can play watchdog.”
“Damn it—”
“Stop swearing.”
“Get used to it.”
“I will not.”
“You’re not getting it here! I need to look for this guy! I can’t do that from a diner!”
“You just said he was going to come to me.”
“He will. He’ll try. I want to nail him first! I can’t do that if I’m baby-sitting you!”
“That’s your job!”
“It’s my assignment. I can do it my own damned way. And my way is to keep an eye on you while I try to unravel this mess.”
“Not without my consent.”
He was going to kill her, Raphael thought. End of problem.
He’s going to kill me, Kate thought. She saw his hands clench at his sides, and he did have that gun tucked behind him somewhere. She took a judicious step backward until her spine came in contact with the refrigerator.
She did not want to die. She most definitely did want someone good watching her back until this was over. But that only made it doubly important that they set some ground rules here.
“Look,” they said simultaneously.
Kate waved a hand. “Go ahead. You first. You will anyway.”
“We need a plan here,” Raphael replied.
This time her brows positively arched. “A plan? You want to make a plan?”
“Right.”
“Such as?”
“If I had one, we wouldn’t need one.”
“Unless, of course, it was diametrically opposed to my own.” His eyes went to slits. Kate held a hand up, palm out. “Okay, okay. Go ahead. You were saying?”
“Call in to the diner for one morning until we can figure out how we’re going to do this.”
She hated, positively hated to admit it, but it made sense.
“They’ll understand!” he argued at her silence. “A man dropped dead into your dinner plate last night!”
“Actually, it was a salad plate.”
