Cassidy and the Princess. Patricia Potter

doesn’t have a brain in her head. And I’ll wager you my boat her mama will whisk her out of town faster than I can say boo.”

      “No one wants your boat,” Manny said dryly. “And a boo from you would be enough to send anyone scurrying for a plane. Try to be charming for a change.”

      “I don’t do charming,” Cassidy said, turning briefly to glare at his partner.

      “Only because your heart isn’t in it since…”

      “Don’t go there, Manny,” Cassidy warned.

      Manny sighed. “All right. Back to Miss Merrick.”

      “Miss…? Oh hell, you’re already besotted.”

      Manny shrugged. “She must be something special. She got away. That puts her way ahead of the others.”

      “Let’s just pray she knows something that can help us,” Cassidy said. He didn’t often depend on prayer, but he was ready to try anything. He couldn’t erase the thought that were he a little smarter, a little quicker, a little more intuitive, four women would still be alive.

      He stepped on the gas pedal, and Manny crossed himself again as he beat a yellow light. Cassidy did not miss that, either.

      They arrived at the hospital, and he parked illegally though he was careful not to block the emergency entrance. This, he thought, was an emergency. He wasn’t going to lose the only possible witness he might have.

      He knew where to go, and in minutes he had the information he needed. Room number and condition, which was “satisfactory.” Poor Manny was practically running to keep up with him as he took the elevator to the neurology floor, checked the room numbers and rapped several times on the second door to the left.

      “Come in.” The voice did not sound like that of a princess. It was obviously annoyed. And it belonged to a man.

      Cassidy already had his badge out, and he flashed it to the three people in the room. A young man leaned against a wall, an older one sat half-sprawled on a window seat and a well-dressed woman in her forties sat on a chair. The bed was empty.

      “Miss Merrick?”

      “They are conducting tests,” said the young man who regarded him as if he were some strange creature. Cassidy returned the stare. “You are…”

      “Paul Richards, Miss Merrick’s pairs partner and fiancé,” he said. “Tell me you’ve found the man who did this.”

      Despite what Cassidy said to Manny, he knew enough about ice-skating to realize there must be more to Richards than was immediately visible. Still, he was singularly unimpressed, perhaps because of the contemptuous dismissal that flickered in the man’s eyes.

      But then, after nearly thirteen years with the Atlanta Police Department, damn little impressed him.

      Richards did not offer his hand, and neither did Cassidy. Instead of answering a question he thought rather stupid, he turned his attention to the blond woman huddled in the chair. She had scarcely moved since he and Manny entered. He went to her side. “Mrs. Merrick?”

      She looked up at him, a glaze of tears hovering in her eyes. “How could something like this happen?”

      “She was out alone,” he said matter-of-factly. “That can be dangerous anywhere.” He wanted to ask why her mother had not taught this small fact of life to her, but resisted. “When did you arrive at…the scene of the attack?” The preliminary report said she’d been present when the police arrived.

      “Almost immediately,” the woman said. “Paul had finished changing clothes, and we were looking for the security guard to call a cab. We couldn’t find Marise or the security guard. Then we heard the sirens and I…I knew it was her. We followed an ambulance around the corner and saw her. She was so…still. Her blood…”

      “Did she say anything? Anything at all?”

      She shook her head, then seemed to remember her manners. She held out her hand graciously. “I am Marise’s mother, Cara Merrick.” Tears filled her eyes. “I’m sorry, but the doctors said she suffered a concussion. She hasn’t awakened yet. The doctor thought she would be conscious by now. He told us…”

      Cassidy’s heart sank. He’d hoped that she would be conscious by now. He knew that traumatic head wounds often caused at least temporary amnesia of events that occurred just before the injury. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Merrick,” he said.

      “I plan to take her to Seattle as soon as the doctors say she can leave,” she said. “I have been looking into charter flights…”

      “She’s a witness,” he said. “We think her attacker has killed at least four other women. We need her here.”

      The woman stood and drew herself up tall. And as she did, he immediately knew his first instincts had been wrong. This was not a weak woman. She wanted people to think she was, but she wasn’t. “No, Detective,” she said simply.

      Cassidy looked at his partner. Manny mouthed something like “charm.”

      “And you?” Cassidy turned to the man sitting on the window ledge.

      “David South, their coach.” The man straightened, and Cassidy recognized the loose grace of an athlete. “The doctors say they don’t know when she will wake. Or if she will have permanent damage when she does. The bastard cracked her skull against the pavement. We had to withdraw from the Challenge today. But we have the Sectional in three weeks. She shouldn’t miss it. Hell, she can’t miss it and stay in competition.”

      Cassidy exchanged looks with Manny. They had been together so long now, they needed nothing more than a blink of an eye, a shrug of a shoulder, a tightening of the mouth to communicate.

      Cassidy was beginning to feel very sorry for the princess. Everyone seemed to care more about getting her back to competition than about her well-being.

      “We’ll wait here,” he said, leaning against a wall. Manny took up a position on the windowsill next to Mrs. Merrick.

      “I tell you, she is unconscious,” the younger man insisted. “And as soon as the doctor says she can be moved, we will leave this…city.”

      Not if Cassidy had any say in it.

      “Why did she go out alone?” he asked the mother. “Was there a…quarrel of some kind?” The attack had occurred at ten o’clock. What had made a young woman wander by herself in a less-than-safe area? Not, he thought wryly, that there seemed to be any safe ones these days.

      “There was no quarrel,” Cara Merrick said. “We were almost ready to leave after practicing all evening. It was very odd for her to just…disappear without telling anyone.”

      Not really. Cassidy somehow knew that.

      “Had anyone approached her? Stalked her, perhaps?”

      Cara Merrick shook her head.

      “And the security guard who found her didn’t see anything?”

      “You will have to talk to him.”

      “I will,” he said. “But I want to know if you heard or saw anything, either before or after the attack. If you have any idea why she went off alone, whether she intended to meet anyone…”

      “Absolutely not,” the mother said. “We didn’t know anyone in this city. There had been no threats. No one with an unusual interest in her.”

      “But still,” he persisted, “why would she be wandering alone?” He turned to her partner, who looked distinctly uncomfortable at the questions. “Would you know, Mr.… Richards, is it?”

      “It is, and I have no idea,” Richards said. “She probably just wanted a breath of air. We’d been practicing for hours.”

      Cassidy studied him carefully, then turned back to the older