there was a time when the noise of constant chatter hadn’t bothered him. But that had been before life had taken the drastic, horrible turn that it had, changing all the ground rules on him.
Forever changing his life.
These days he preferred work and quiet, but for now, it looked like one of those ingredients would be seriously missing from the equation.
Moreover, he had the distinct feeling that if he mentioned to Carlyle that she was talking too much, she’d only get worse despite any so-called “efforts” to rein herself in. So, for now, he fell back on a plausible, albeit vague, excuse.
“I don’t like serial killers,” he said between clenched teeth.
That wasn’t it and she knew it. Her guess was that O’Bannon didn’t like being saddled with her, but he was just going to have to make the best of it. She intended to make him glad she was on his team rather than viewing it as some sort of cross he had to bear.
“I don’t think anyone does,” she said conversationally. “Anyone normal, anyway,” she added just before she flashed him another thousand-watt smile. “Lucky thing for you, you’re in the business of getting rid of them.”
He spared her a look that defied reading, so she put her best guess to it. He was probably labeling her a Pollyanna in his mind, but there was really more to her philosophy than that.
“You have to always find the upside to everything, no matter how bad it might seem to you at the time,” she told him. “That’s something my dad once told me.” And then she dropped the bombshell, thinking it was best if he found this little piece of information out sooner than later. “I think he picked it up from your mom.”
For a second Ronan didn’t think he’d heard her correctly. But he had keen hearing and he had heard everything the loquacious detective he’d been forced to add to his team had said since Carver had called her over to his desk, so he reasoned he hadn’t misheard. That raised an immediate question.
“You know my mother?” he asked incredulously.
“Yes, I do.” Then, before he could ask, she volunteered just how her father knew his mother. “The ambulance company she runs is attached to the firehouse my dad oversees.” Which was just another example of what a small world this really was.
Granted he didn’t know anything about her background, but then he didn’t know any more than he had to about either Martinez or Choi. It was what they brought to the table as detectives that had always mattered to him.
Ronan glanced at her for half a second before looking back on the road. “Your dad’s a fireman?” he asked in disbelief.
It was an old, standing joke that firemen and policemen were natural rivals. How did she square being in the police department with her family?
Sierra seemed completely comfortable with her admission. “He is. So are my three brothers. Everyone at the fire station thinks your mother’s a great lady—and a hell of an ambulance driver in her day, too,” she added.
She wasn’t certain if that praise would somehow annoy O’Bannon—or make him proud. She didn’t know him well enough yet to make that kind of a call. But she had told him the truth and she didn’t see any reason not to say as much. She knew that she always liked hearing good things about her family from other people.
“Yeah, I know,” Ronan responded, his voice so low it almost sounded as if he was talking to himself rather than answering her.
Low voice or not, it was a start. Maybe, in time, she’d wear him down and actually draw O’Bannon into a normal conversation that didn’t require pulling teeth.
Focused on getting O’Bannon to talk to her, she hadn’t really been paying attention to the area they were driving through. But when he brought his vehicle to a stop a few minutes later, Sierra looked around for the first time.
They definitely weren’t in Aurora anymore.
The buildings on both sides of the streets all had a worn, run-down feel to them. Poverty, desperation and fear almost seemed to waft through the air. This was the kind of area people with any sort of ambition typically strove to leave behind, not come home to night after night.
And yet, for many, there was no other choice.
Eventually the streets won and the area beat people down, stripping them of all their hopes and dreams, as well as their dignity, leaving them with nothing to hold on to.
Ronan glanced at her. “You wanted to come along,” he said gruffly.
It was as if he could intuit what was going through her head, Sierra thought, doing her best to banish her reflections.
“I’m not complaining,” she told him, getting out on her side.
“Maybe I am,” Ronan murmured, hardly audible enough for her to hear.
The address on Walker’s license coincided with a five-story brown building that had gone up in the early seventies. Situated in the middle of a block, there was a bakery right next door to a shoe repair shop. A boarded-up dry cleaner’s was on the other side.
The building where Walker had lived had a front stoop. Several men, ranging from the ages of around seventeen to their midtwenties, were either sitting or standing in the stoop’s general vicinity. There were five of them, just enough so that, immobile, they all but barred access to the entrance.
“Mind getting out of the way?” Ronan asked evenly. His no-nonsense tone told the loiterers that they had no choice in the matter.
Mumbling, the five men moved only enough to create a small, accessible space to the door. Ronan went first, creating the path.
When Sierra started to follow him, one of the men on the stoop shifted just enough to keep her from entering the building.
Ronan never even turned around. “I heard one of you shifting. That had better be to give her more space, not less,” he warned.
The immediate shuffling noise that followed told him that the offender had moved out of the detective’s way.
“That’s a neat trick,” Sierra told him, falling into place beside Ronan once she’d crossed the threshold and had gotten inside the building. “Do you have eyes in the back of your head, too?”
“Don’t test me,” he told her. He expected that to be the end of it.
“Don’t tempt me,” she countered.
Since it didn’t appear as if there was an elevator, Ronan walked to the base of the staircase. “You always have to have the last word?” he asked.
“Not always,” she answered. Her cheerful response told him more than her words. “Lead the way, Fearless Leader.”
He looked back at her and frowned. “Don’t call me that.”
“Choi did,” she reminded him, using that as her excuse.
“That doesn’t make it right.”
“Want me to tell him to stop?” she offered, still searching
