as she paused in front of his desk.
He shifted, the artificial hand resting on the desk looking so real that sometimes it was hard to remember that he was an amputee. Simon was big, dark-haired, pale-eyed and formidable. His gorgeous redheaded wife, Tira, and his two dark-haired young sons smiled out from a jumble of framed photographs on a polished table behind him. There was one of him with his four brothers just after he’d been elected attorney general. His brothers were giving him apprehensive glances. She smiled. Disabled or not, Simon was a force to behold when he lost his temper.
“That was the assistant district attorney in San Antonio,” he said, indicating the phone. “They’ve got what looks like a mob-related hit in an alley just a few steps from Jake Marsh’s nightclub.” He glanced at her. “A local mob figure,” he added. “Ever heard of him?”
“The name rings a bell, but I can’t place it. That case won’t concern us, will it?” she asked.
He was tracing a pattern on his desk. “As a matter of fact, it might. It depends on whether or not we can tie Marsh to the murder. I don’t have to tell you how hard the district attorney in San Antonio has been trying to shut him down. The D.A. phoned the deputy chief of police and cleared it to have the Texas Rangers send an officer over there to assist in the investigation. If the case can be tied to Marsh, we’ll be looking at multiple jurisdictions and we’ll end up in a high-profile case. In a senate election year here,” he added solemnly, “crime will be a campaign issue. I don’t want Texas in the spotlight again. Neither does the D.A. in Bexar County, so she’s making sure every step is documented and backed up.”
He was holding something back. She could see it in the way he looked at her.
“You know you can’t hide things from me,” she said abruptly. “What is it you don’t want to tell me?”
He shook his head and laughed. “I forgot that uncanny ability of yours to sense what people are feeling. Okay. They’re sending Marc Brannon to look into it,” he told her finally. He held up a hand when she froze and started to speak. “I know there’s bad blood between you, but Marsh is notorious. I want him as much as the D.A. does, so I’m going to send you over there to run liaison for my office during the investigation. I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”
She wasn’t listening. She had a bad feeling about it, too. Her heart was racing. Two years. Two years. “You’ll have a worse feeling if you send me there. Can you see me and Brannon, working together? It will only be possible if they confiscate all his bullets and make me leave my stun gun here in Austin.”
He chuckled. Despite her tragic life, she was strong and independent and dryly funny. He’d hired her two years ago when nobody else would, largely thanks to Brannon, and he was glad. She had a degree in criminal justice. Her choice of jobs was to be an investigator in a district attorney’s office. Fate had landed her here, working on the Prosecutor Assistance and Special Investigation Unit for Simon. She could be loaned out to a requesting district attorney, along with other investigative personnel and even prosecutors, providing resources for criminal investigation.
It was a harrowing job from time to time, but she loved it. She had access to the respected Texas Crime Information Center. It boasted a statewide database on wanted persons and provided real-time on-line information to law enforcement agencies. Josette counted it as one of her biggest blessings during investigations, particularly those involving cybercrime.
“It’s nothing definite yet,” Simon added. “They’re still at the scene. The murder may not even be connected with Marsh, although I hope to God it is. But I thought I’d prepare you, just in case you have to go out there.”
“Okay. Thanks, Simon.”
“We’re family. Sort of.” He frowned. “Was it your third cousin who was related to my stepgrand-mother…?”
“Don’t,” she groaned. “It would take a genealogist to figure it out, it’s so distant.”
“Whatever. They can’t accuse me of nepotism for hiring you, but we’re distant cousins anyway. Family,” he added, with a warm smile. “Sort of. Like the staff.”
“I’m glad you think of them like that, because ‘Cousin’ Phil wants you to know that he likes his job and he’s sorry he messed up your e-mail,” she told him, tongue-in-cheek. “And he hopes you won’t take away his job with the Internet Bureau.”
His light eyes flashed. “You can tell Cousin Phil to kiss my…!”
“Don’t you say it,” she warned, “or I’ll call Tira and tell on you.”
He ground his teeth together. “Oh, all right.” He frowned. “That reminds me. What do you want in here, anyway?”
“A raise,” she began, counting on one hand. “A computer that doesn’t crash every time I load a program. A new scanner, because mine’s sluggish. A new filing cabinet, mine’s full. And how about one of those cute little robotic dogs? I could teach it to fetch files…”
“Sit down!”
She sat, but she was still grinning. She crossed her legs in the chair across the desk and went over the question she’d been faxed from a rural district attorney, who’d asked for a legal opinion. For Simon’s sake, she acted unconcerned that fate might fling her in the path of Marc Brannon for a third time.
But when Josette left Simon’s office, she was almost shaking. It had to be an easily solvable murder, she told herself firmly. She couldn’t be thrown into Brannon’s company again not when she was just beginning to get over him. She went through the rest of the day in a daze. There was a nagging apprehension in the back of her mind, as if she knew somehow that the murder in San Antonio was going to affect her life.
Her grandmother, Erin O’Brien, had been Irish, a special woman with an uncanny ability to know things before they happened. The elderly lady would cook extra food and get the guest rooms ready on days when the Langley family dropped in on “surprise” visits. She could anticipate tragedies, like the sudden death of her brother. When Josette’s father had stopped by her small home to tell her the bad news, she was wearing a black dress and her Sunday hat, waiting to be driven to the funeral home. It was useless to try to watch murder mysteries with her, because she always knew who the culprit was by the end of the first scene. Erin was Josette’s favorite person when she was a child. They shared all sorts of secrets. It had been Erin who told her she would meet a tall man wearing a badge, and her life would be forever entangled with his. When Marc Brannon had rescued her, at the age of fifteen, from a wild party and near-rape, Erin had been waiting at her parents’ home when Brannon drove her there in the Jacobsville police car, with her arms open. Marc had been fascinated by the old woman, even that long ago. Erin’s death before the family moved to San Antonio had devastated Josette. But, then, so had losing Marc two years ago. Her life had been an endurance test.
That evening, she went home to her tomcat Barnes in her small efficiency apartment and deliberately got out her photo album. She hadn’t opened it in two painful years, but now she was hungry for the sight of that tall, elegant, formidable man in her past.
She’d loved Marc Brannon more than her life. They’d come as close to being lovers as any two people ever had without going all the way, but he’d discovered a secret about her that had shattered him. He’d dragged himself out of her arms, cursed her roundly and walked out the door. He’d never looked back. Scant days later, Josette had gone to a party with an acquaintance named Dale Jennings and a wealthy San Antonio man had died there. Josette
