The Rookie's Assignment. Valerie Hansen

over and playfully attempted to ruffle her hair as she ducked out of reach. “She’s one tough cookie.”

       “You could have fooled me until I saw her in action,” Nick said, figuring it was better to join in the teasing than to behave too stiffly.

       To his surprise, the captain sobered as his gaze swept the messy room. “I don’t like this. See that you look after her well, Delfino.”

       “Spoken as her brother or a brother officer?”

       “Both,” Douglas assured him.

       One glance at Keira told Nick she was not happy with the direction their masculine discussion had taken. That was no surprise. Her academy records had already told him she was smart as well as being a crack shot.

       Although he understood her desire to serve in her hometown with other members of her family, she would have been able to pass muster in just about any department in the state. Given the way her brothers and father were trying to coddle her, perhaps that career choice would have been a better one.

       Nick began to smile as he made up his mind how to play this. “Okay, if you insist,” he drawled. “But only if she promises to keep saving my skin, too, like she did a few minutes ago.” He held out his hand to her. “Thanks, partner. I owe you one.”

       Keira grinned from ear to ear as they shook hands.

       It was not going to be a struggle to treat her as an equal, Nick decided. She’d worked hard to make it this far and she deserved the badge she wore so proudly.

       He just hoped the rest of her family was as upstanding and honest as he’d already judged her to be. If, as he suspected, the Fitzgeralds were the only ones who had known why he was in town—to a point, anyway—then the ransacking of his room led straight back to them.

       In that event, would it be foolish to rent an apartment from Douglas? No, he decided. Although Douglas probably thought he could keep an eye on Nick that way, there was a good possibility Nick could turn the tables and do a little snooping of his own.

       There was an old saying he often thought of in situations like this. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

       That motto had never failed him before. The hardest part of his Internal Affairs job was telling the difference between his friends and his enemies.

       After Nick had returned from a working lunch with the chief, Keira had spent the rest of the afternoon listening as Nick casually interviewed her brothers Ryan and Douglas, plus Hank Monroe, mainly because they happened to be the ones he encountered in the office.

       When Nick arrived at the station the following morning she jumped to her feet, more than ready to give him a promised tour of the town.

       “How about driving around a little to orient you?” she asked before he had a chance to even remove his jacket. “I know you’ll want to talk to some of the witnesses besides us.”

       It wasn’t exactly comforting when Nick arched a brow and asked, “Why the big hurry?”

       “It’s not that I’m trying to rush you off,” Keira said. “I just feel dumb sitting here like a barnacle on a pier piling and not accomplishing a thing. We’ve all been through this before. You’ve read the reports. Surely there’s somewhere you want to go or someone you want to question.”

       “As a matter of fact, I’ve already talked with the lady who owns the inn and café and her staff,” Nick said. “Last night, I had her move me into the same room Olivia Henry occupied when she first came to town.”

       “Why? I thought you were going to rent from my brother.”

       “I probably am. But I needed a handy place to sleep that wasn’t a shambles and I also wanted to have a chance to go over the victim’s former suite at my own pace. Didn’t your department do that?”

       Keira made a face. “I don’t think so. It had been months since Olivia had stayed at the Sugar Plum.”

       “Still, there’s always a chance she left something behind, either by accident or on purpose.”

       “Well?” Keira faced him, hands on her hips. “Did you find any clues?”

       “No. But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have looked just the same. You never know. She did leave that letter to her ‘Sweetheart’ with—who was it? Merry?”

       “Yes. I told you they were friends. That info is all in the file, too. Why do you keep acting as if we’re either foolhardy or hiding something?”

       “I don’t mean anything of the kind,” Nick insisted. He squared his cap on his head. “So, where shall we go first?”

       The car Keira chose for their official use was a black-and-white, four-wheel-drive, short-bodied utility vehicle. Other than her personal motorcycle, which she’d had to forgo riding due to the snow and ice, she liked this unit best.

       Right now, she figured it was important to acquaint Nick with her town, with the interesting if quirky residents, and get him used to patrolling these narrow, cobblestone streets. Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to be paying much attention to her spiel or to the passing points of interest she was mentioning.

       She frowned and quieted. All she could see was his profile. What was he studying so intently? And why did he keep peering into the side mirror that way?

       “Hey. What’s wrong?” she asked, surprised to see him twitch at the sound of her voice. Boy, when that guy concentrated, he really concentrated.

       “Nothing. Why?”

       “Because you keep looking behind us as if you think we’re being followed.”

       His head snapped around. “Did you notice something out of place?”

       “Of course not. Why are you so nervous? I wouldn’t think catching a prowler in your room would upset you so much. Is your head bothering you? Maybe you have a concussion. Do you need to see a doctor?”

       “My head’s fine. Let’s drop the subject of my fitness for duty, shall we?”

       “Sure. No problem,” she said, although what she really wanted to do was insist he tell her why he was acting so edgy. Everything looked normal to Keira. Then again, she did see one strange pickup truck traveling in their direction about half a block back.

       Disgusted, she shook off her misgivings. They crossed Oak Street, heading past the red-roofed old lighthouse keeper’s quarters where her brother Charles and the twins resided. Keeping an eye on the reflections in her mirror she watched the nondescript truck turn and disappear down an alley.

      See? There was nothing to it, Keira assured herself. So there were one or two vehicles around town that she couldn’t readily ID. So what? That didn’t mean there was any reason to jump at shadows the way her new partner seemed so prone to do.

       Maybe he had personal problems, she concluded. If so, he’d come to the right place for healing. Except for the one recent murder—the first they’d had there in over forty years—he’d have absolutely nothing to worry about. Fitzgerald Bay was probably the safest town in the whole state of Massachusetts.

       “I’ll swing by Douglas’s condo so you can see if it suits you,” Keira said. “It should feel more like a real home than the inn does.”

       He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Any port in a storm.”

       “Really? What kind of place do you have in Boston?”

       “The usual.”

       The last thing he wanted to do was discuss his private life, not that he had much to talk about beyond his job. His Boston apartment was little more than a convenient place to crash. And the few romances that had crossed his path had always faltered because of his dedication to duty. At least that’s what those women had each claimed when they’d broken up with him.

       Nick