She hesitated.
“That they learned something from what happened to you today?” Kevin asked her drily. “Never mind—I meant it when I said I won’t make you say anything. You always keep my confidences, so I don’t expect you to break anyone else’s trust. But if you run into a problem again, keep me in the loop.”
“I swear,” she promised.
He nodded and smiled, then watched until she was safely inside her building.
Upstairs, she threw off her jacket and tossed down her bag, then headed into the bathroom to give her face a good scrubbing. When she saw herself in the mirror, she realized stronger action was called for, so she stripped and jumped into the shower.
It wasn’t that late when she dried off, feeling like a new woman, but she didn’t want to see more of herself on the news, and she was exhausted. She lay down to sleep, but her heart kept pounding. She couldn’t deny it. She was worried.
Hiding what she, Danny and Julie had been up to from Declan and Kevin had proved easier than she had thought it would.
But she was dreading the next day and her time with the FBI agent with the dark hair and deep smoky voice and those light eyes that seemed to look into her with the power of an X-ray machine.
* * *
Craig Frasier sat in the office in the near dark, alone except for the skeleton night staff. He’d made Mike go home, knowing that he was being obsessive and not wanting to drag his partner into the pit after him.
He simply didn’t believe that they had caught the thieves they most needed to catch: the ones who killed.
The thieves themselves denied it, and their guns had been fake.
But he understood the desire in law enforcement to believe a case was closed, and a lot of people simply didn’t want to accept the idea that there could be copycats out there—copycats whose MO was so perfect in every detail...except that the guns they carried were real. The prevailing belief was that there was only one set of thieves who, having established that they were willing to kill to get what they wanted, no longer felt the need to carry real guns and had switched to fakes in order to create confusion and make a case for a lighter sentence if they were caught.
The NYPD had made the arrest. The charges would be up to the district attorney’s office. Somewhere the powers that be, whose influence went far beyond his own, were arguing about that right now.
They wouldn’t ask his opinion.
But that didn’t matter. What did matter was whether there were still killers out there—and he was willing to bet cash money that there were.
He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. He thought about the way things might have ended—and how that too-attractive-for-his-own-good redhead had actually had the sense to do something other than scream and expect the world to save her.
She’d saved his ass—or would have, had the gun been real.
He drummed his fingers on the table, thinking about her. She hadn’t wanted any attention from the press; in fact, she had paled at the very mention of it. Strange. Most beautiful women—no, she wasn’t just beautiful; she was stunning—welcomed attention. As gorgeous as she was, she could have been hitting the stage or a runway somewhere, a tall, blue-eyed redhead with legs that stretched forever. But instead...
He reached into his pocket for the card she had given him. Fuller and Miro. He knew the names; they and their employees were often called in as consultants. The Behavioral Science Unit of the bureau was in Virginia, and they were called in on the most puzzling or unusual cases, especially when local police asked for help. Otherwise, the New York office often looked to local talent to untangle the psychology of a captured killer or profile one who was still at large.
Therapist. And bartender.
Quite an intriguing combination.
For someone who had such talents—and had saved both his ass and her own—she had acted very strangely.
Almost as if she were...guilty herself.
He mulled over the thought. Then, standing up, he stretched and walked to the coffee machine in the break room. He needed to go home and go to sleep, but he could use a cup to get that far. The coffee here was wretched; they kept a regular pot instead of investing in pods. But that was all right. Wretched coffee was still better than no coffee.
He lifted the cup to his lips and realized that in the midst of the fray, she’d reminded him of someone.
Of Caroline.
He smiled at the thought.
Caroline had been blessed with that same ability to think on the spot, to behave rationally and, most important, to know when to hold—and when to fight back like blue blazes.
He hadn’t really thought about her in years now. And truthfully, she had been nothing like Kieran Finnegan. Caroline had been a petite blonde with hazel eyes and a smile as big as the world.
He felt a dull ache and shook off the thought. He hadn’t allowed himself to get morose in years. It had all been so long ago. And yet he knew that when Caroline had died, something in him had died, too. He’d lost the ability to get close to a woman. No matter who he met, no matter how sure he was that he wanted to find something close to what they’d had somewhere along the line, he’d just never met anyone with her fire and humor, charm and...heart.
He drained the coffee, returned to his office and turned off the computer. It was time to go home.
And if he thought about it, he was intrigued.
He forced his mind back to the case. Maybe she could help by watching the video surveillance of the deadly robberies and spotting something one of the men she had encountered had done that was different from what was on the tapes.
And maybe he could find out just what she was hiding.
THE FIELD OFFICE was toward downtown on Broadway, not very far from Finnegan’s Pub, but, with traffic, Kieran knew it would be a thirty-minute trek from the Midtown offices of Doctors Fuller and Miro. She had barely gotten to work before a black sedan with a black-suited agent—wearing black-framed sunglasses—arrived to pick her up.
She had only just slipped into her own office—a small room not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but at least it had a window—when Dr. Allison Miro came to her door. She was generally a stern-looking woman with her slim, perfectly compact body and short, crisp, iron-gray hair, but that morning she gazed at Kieran with concern and compassion.
“Kieran, dear girl, thank the good Lord that you’re all right. When we saw the news...well, we were quite concerned. Anyway, you’re a heroine, my dear. We’re so proud of you.”
Kieran was startled when Dr. Miro walked over to where she stood by her desk and hugged her. It was a slightly awkward hug. Kieran wasn’t expecting it, and Dr. Miro was a good half foot shorter than she was. The older woman didn’t seem to notice that Kieran rocked back slightly, startled, before hugging her back.
“I’m fine, really, and I’m not a hero, just a survivor,” Kieran said.
“Kieran!”
She recognized the deep, rich, masculine tone, and she looked up to see that Dr. Fuller had joined the party. Her employers were a living representation of “the long and short of it.” Dr. Bentley Fuller was six foot three, lean and fit, and he could have starred in a “male enhancement” advertisement. He was about fifty—a ruggedly handsome fifty. She knew he maintained his health and physique by religiously adhering to the strict tennis-playing schedule he’d set for himself.
He walked over to her, leaving Dr. Miro sandwiched between them in the