Flashback. Justine Davis

know, and likely wouldn’t understand anyway. Nobody would who hadn’t been in that kind of situation where the bonding was deep and permanent.

      Whether it was that she knew Kayla, curiosity about Athena or something else, she didn’t know, but he came over to her side after that.

      “Look, your guys pretty much nudged me out of the whole investigation once they got here. Not that I blame them, really,” he added in a burst of refreshing candor. “I was pretty green.”

      “Sometimes I think I still am,” she commiserated, and earned another smile.

      “Naw. Definitely red,” he quipped, and to her surprise she didn’t mind the reference to her hair. Perhaps it was the boy-next-door thing that softened it from taunt to friendly tease.

      “Anyway,” he said quickly, as if he’d embarrassed himself, “most of the files of that era aren’t digital, so they’re in storage in Phoenix. I can send for them, but it’ll raise a flag.”

      She knew that was likely true; you didn’t dig out a murder case on a U.S. senator without drawing attention.

      “I could tell them it’s just been bugging me, and I want to look at it again,” he said.

      Something in the way he said it told her it wasn’t totally a ruse. “Does it? Bug you?”

      “Yeah,” he admitted with a half shrug. “It does. It was my first murder, and probably the biggest case I’ll ever be involved in.”

      She nodded in understanding. “Well, I’m not really trying to hide what I’m doing, just to keep it under the radar as long as I can. So if you think you can do it without sending up a flare…”

      “I think so,” he said, and she smiled at the change in his attitude. Oddly, he glanced away for a minute, much as she did when she thought she was going to blush.

      “Thank you.” She put every bit of sincerity she was feeling into her voice. “I really appreciate it.”

      As if inspired by the positive reception of his first offer, he said “I can dig out my own notes, if you think it would help. I kept all the old ones on paper, so it’s not a digital file.” He gave her a slightly sheepish smile. “And back then, I wrote down everything.”

      Definitely boy-next-door material, Alex thought.

      “So did I,” she said, grinning at him. “I think it would probably help a lot, then. Thanks, Eric.”

      He colored visibly then, and grinned back at the same time, a combination she thought awkwardly sweet.

      It seemed she had gained an ally.

      “Anything else, Agent Forsythe?” he asked.

      “Alex,” she said, granting him the familiarity she’d already taken. She started to answer his question in the negative, then thought again. “Could you have a license plate run for me?”

      He looked surprised, but nodded. “Sure.”

      She handed him the piece of paper she’d scribbled the number from the blue car on. He took it and sat down at the computer terminal on a table behind his desk. Less than a minute later he handed her a printout.

      The name and address meant nothing to her, but she hadn’t really expected it to. She tucked it away, just in case, while he dug into the bottom drawer of the big file cabinet that stood beside the desk. While it was in the back of the very full drawer, he had no trouble finding the file, and Alex guessed it was because he looked at it with some regularity. As did most cops with the cases they couldn’t forget.

      He straightened, glanced inside the dog-eared and marked-up manila folder and then held it out to her.

      She opened the cover, scanned the first page of neatly written, single-spaced notes. “Are you sure you don’t want to just make me a copy and keep the originals?”

      “I’d just as soon you had to bring them back,” he said.

      Her gaze snapped back to his face. Had she interpreted that right?

      He gave her a one-shouldered shrug. “You brighten up the decor around here,” he said.

      “Thank you,” she said, a little taken aback. But he didn’t press any further, and she was left not certain if he’d meant it as merely an aesthetic comment or an invitation.

      He walked with her back to the front of the department. As they neared the doors, Alex held back. “Would you do me a favor? Look out and see if you see a medium-blue sedan with very dark tinted windows parked anywhere within line of sight?”

      “The license plate?” he guessed.

      She nodded. Without further questions he walked over to the doors and stepped outside. After a couple minutes he came back inside. “Don’t see him. But if you want, I’ll open the back gate for you, and you can get out using our employee exit. Maybe a pile of marked units will make him think twice.”

      “Thanks,” she said, meaning it as much for the fact that he hadn’t asked her any questions as for the escape plan.

      As she pulled out of the rear parking lot, drawing some curious glances from uniformed personnel, she was relieved to see no sign of the blue car there, either. Perhaps it really had been a coincidence. But once again she had to admit, there were times when her distinctive curly red mane of hair was a definite drawback.

      In case it was not a coincidence—and she was inclined to go with her gut reaction that it was not—she headed back to the hotel by a different route than she’d come by. She had Eric’s personal notes in her satchel, and her plan for the afternoon was to settle into her room and go over them inch by inch. It would take a while; he hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he wrote everything down.

      But that could only help her in her quest for anything that would mesh with the new information she had from Marion’s letter. Hopefully, he would have the original case file by tomorrow, and she could plow through that, hot on the heels of the notes, and everything would mesh together.

      At her hotel room door she had to shuffle her load of satchel and the lunch she’d picked up on the way—a fast-food drive-through purchase that would have made her mother faint dead away—to insert her card key again. And again.

      Nothing. No blinking green light to signal the unlocking of the door.

      With a sigh she looked around, spotted the courtesy phone in the elevator lobby and headed that way. She called the desk and explained her problem.

      “I’m so sorry, Ms. Forsythe. Let me just check something here….”

      There was a pause that went on a moment too long, and Alex’s antenna for trouble snapped up.

      “Is there a problem?” she asked.

      “Well…I…we thought you had checked out,” the young male voice said, sounding nervous.

      “Checked out? I just got here, and my reservation is open ended.”

      “I know, but…let me check this note on the file…here it is, it says you had to return home unexpectedly. A family emergency.”

      Alex went cold, the chill weakening her joints and making her skin clammy.

      “Who gave you that information?”

      “Um…it doesn’t say.” The young voice sounded even younger, and very worried now. “But I’ll send someone up right away with a new key.”

      “To a new room. And send someone with a clue about how this happened, please.” She realized she had sounded very sharp, and tried to ameliorate it. “I realize this is not your fault, but I need to know how and why this happened for…other reasons.”

      “Very good, Ms. Forsythe.” The voice seemed calmer then, and Alex hoped that would result in answers to her questions sooner.

      But first she had a much