the doorway behind the detective. A silent appeal went out to Declan.
Declan inclined his head as if to say, “Humor her.” The hope was that she would be easier to deal with if she was humored.
With a sigh, the taller of the two paramedics took out the defibrillator again, set it up to three hundred and held the flat surfaces out so that his partner could apply gel to the paddles. The first paramedic waited for thirty seconds, then cried out, “Clear!” just before applying the paddles to Matt’s chest.
The officer’s lifeless body jolted macabrely, rising an inch or so from the sofa, then fell back again, as devoid of any spark of life now as he had been the first time the paddles had been applied.
Still holding the paddles, the paramedic looked at her. “See?” he asked.
“Satisfied?” the other paramedic asked, more than ready to wrap things up and be on his way.
Charley closed her eyes, struggling to keep the hot tears back. She wasn’t going to cry over Matt until she was alone, away from any prying eyes. She owed her brother that much, to conduct herself with dignity in public. Matt hated scenes.
“No,” she said in what amounted to a strangled whisper. She wasn’t satisfied at all. “But you can go.”
The voice finally registered, setting off a chain reaction in Declan’s head. He knew who she was now.
“Charlotte?” Declan asked, coming around to look at the detective’s face. “Charlotte Randolph?” he asked for good measure, although he was fairly certain that he’d guessed correctly, identifying the powerhouse of a detective as the rookie he’d met while attending the academy. She’d been a go-getter back then, too—and married as he recalled. She was the one unattainable goddess all the male rookies fantasized about.
Charley looked up, climbing out of the temporary mental haze she’d descended into as the two paramedics made their way out of her brother’s house, pushing the empty gurney before them. It took her a second to clear the fog from her brain.
Once she did, she immediately recognized the man who’d said her name. Declan Cavelli. Tall, gorgeous, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped Declan Cavelli. Best-looking would-be rookie cop at the academy. She vividly remembered wondering what it would have felt like, slipping her fingers through his thick, midnight-black hair, touching the silky straight strands. There probably wasn’t a woman who crossed his path who didn’t have fantasies about the man. And she was no exception.
Because routine was all she had now, she nodded her acknowledgment of his presence. “Cavelli.”
Declan grinned. Thanks to his father, Sean, Declan and his siblings had discovered that due to a mix-up at the hospital where his father was born, they were actually Cavanaughs and not Cavellis as they had previously thought. It took some getting used to, but he was fine with it now. They all were.
“It’s Cavanaugh now.”
“You get married?” she deadpanned, doing her best to divorce herself from the very real body that was still on the sofa, waiting for proper documentation before the final fateful pickup conducted by the coroner’s office.
“Long story,” Declan quipped. “I’ll tell you sometime—over drinks,” he added. “Unless that jealous husband of yours still objects.”
Even as he said it, he looked down at Charley’s left hand. He was surprised to discover that it was as devoid of any jewelry as her right.
Did that mean she was divorced, or just trying to preserve her wedding ring?
Charley saw where the detective was looking and knew what he had to be wondering. “Long story,” she said, echoing his words back to him.
Except that her story wasn’t long. It was nonexistent.
She’d never been married to begin with, but the class of rookies she had attended the academy with were a particularly aggressive group with testosterone all but swirling to overflowing—and Declan had been the biggest offender, as she recalled. It was a great deal easier just saying she was married than coming up with excuses and perpetually fending off the class of would-be Romeos. She attended the academy to learn everything there was about police work. Going out with any one of a number of the rookies—especially Declan—would have only served to blur her focus.
So she opted to pretend she was already off the market and married. Only a handful had tried to change her mind about remaining faithful to her vows and they soon gave up when she showed no signs of coming around to their way of thinking.
“I like long stories,” he told her. “We’ll trade them.” Then, turning his attention to the reason he’d been called out to begin with, he nodded at the dead man. He would have had to have been deaf and blind to miss the distress in her voice and on her face and he was neither. “He a friend of yours?”
“We knew each other,” Charley answered, keeping her reply deliberately vague. If she admitted to Declan that Matt was her half brother, she knew that there wouldn’t be a chance in hell she would be allowed to work on his murder. And right now that was the most important thing in the world to her.
Declan took her answer in stride. “How did you happen to be here?” he asked.
Charley looked up sharply, recognizing the tone Declan was using. It was deliberately laid-back, conversational—and moving in for the kill because, as the person who called in the murder, she was suspect number one.
She told him the truth—as far as she was willing to take it.
“I heard Holt hadn’t shown up for his shift in the last couple of days and his lieutenant said he hadn’t called in, either. That wasn’t like Holt. I knew he was having a hard time because of a breakup he was going through, so I decided to stop by to check on him. It was on my way.” It hadn’t been, but Cavelli—or Cavanaugh—didn’t need to know that part, Charley thought.
“A breakup?” Declan echoed, looking at her thoughtfully. “With you?”
The question was so unexpected, it made her laugh. The laugh was devoid of any humor.
“Hardly. Her name was Melissa. They didn’t quite have the same goals and expectations. When Holt looked at her, he heard wedding bells ringing. When she looked at him, she heard the sound of a cash register going off.”
“Not a match made in heaven,” Declan agreed. He looked down at the man thoughtfully. “You think he killed himself?”
“He wasn’t the type.” He wouldn’t have done that to her, no matter how badly he’d been hurting. He wouldn’t have taken himself out of her life like that.
“Then you knew him pretty well,” Declan concluded.
She didn’t want Declan to go veering onto that path, but rather than deny it, she gave him another answer. “There was a note,” she began.
Declan eyed her, his interest escalated. “A suicide note?”
“No,” Charley snapped, the edge of her temper growing frayed at an increasingly faster pace. She knew she wasn’t being fair to Declan. It wasn’t his fault that Matt was dead.
It bothered her greatly that there were
