He was tired tonight, almost indescribably weary, though he couldn’t say why exactly. Was it the approaching anniversary that was still bothering him?
Eight years was a long time. Was he still in love with Ashley’s memory, or was it the guilt that still haunted him this time of year? The knowledge that, if not for him, she might still be alive?
He closed his eyes, letting the breeze drift over him. Sometimes he had a hard time remembering what Ashley had looked like alive, but he’d never forgotten what she’d looked like in death. Her face pale. Her eyes open and staring. Her beautiful body covered in blood.
He used to see her face in almost every murder victim he saw, but not so much anymore. Not since he’d seen little Julie Betts lying in that Dumpster. Her murder had affected him in a way so profound he couldn’t begin to explain it, and after that case, he’d started working alone. He found he couldn’t deal with a partner after seeing something like that. He couldn’t handle the camaraderie and sometimes sick cop humor that others used to deal with the nightmares. For Tony it wasn’t that easy. He couldn’t forget any of them. Ashley. Julie. They all haunted his sleep, because he hadn’t been able to save them.
“Tony?”
He opened his eyes and saw Eve standing before him.
“You okay?” she asked anxiously.
He drew in a breath. “Just needed to get some fresh air.”
She nodded. “I understand. It was pretty stuffy in there.”
“Not used to bars?” he asked her.
She smiled ironically. “How could you tell?”
“Just a wild guess.” He straightened from the car and stared down at her. Somehow she seemed smaller out here in the darkness. More vulnerable, although he’d seen the way she handled Vic. “Why did you tell Clare I went out on a call this afternoon?”
“Because I didn’t know where you’d gone,” Eve said. “I had to tell her something. She was looking for you.”
“So you covered for me.”
She shrugged.
“Why?” he asked softly. “Why would you do that for me?” After the conversation they’d had earlier, why would she put herself on the line for him like that?
She looked up at him, her gaze earnest. “It’s like you said inside there. What are partners for?”
He ran his hand through his dark, spiky hair. “Look, I appreciate what you did. But I still don’t—”
“You don’t want a partner. I know.”
“I work best alone, that’s all.”
“Maybe you just never had the right partner before. Did you ever think of that?” Her gaze looked faintly challenging.
He stared down at her for a moment, thinking in spite of himself that she just might be right. She might be the one partner, the one woman, who could stick it out with him, but he didn’t think it was a chance he was willing to take. The stakes were too damned high, and he’d gambled and lost too many times in the past. Better just to go it alone.
“I’m not your enemy, Tony,” she said softly.
“I never thought you were.”
“Then why not give me a chance?”
How could he not have remembered her? Tony thought suddenly. She looked so pretty, standing there in the light from the bar. Like a woman who could make him forget—at least for a while. But then, the morning after always came sooner or later. That was the hell of it. “Give me one good reason why I should,” he said almost gruffly.
“Because there may come a time when you’re going to need someone to cover your back,” she told him. “And because I’d like to be that someone, if you’d let me. You can trust me, Tony, whether you believe it or not.”
Maybe he could trust her, Tony thought, his gaze riveted on her face. But maybe he shouldn’t. For both their sakes.
IT WAS ALMOST TEN O’CLOCK when Eve got home that night. Early by most people’s standards, but she was usually in bed by this time, reading a book or watching TV until she got sleepy.
She was turning into something of a recluse at the tender age of twenty-nine. If she wasn’t careful, she’d wind up talking to herself.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” she muttered, picking up the remote control.
Flipping through the channels, she located a news broadcast, then lay back against the pillows, listening but not watching until she heard Tony’s name mentioned. She already knew what had happened at the review board earlier that day, but she shot up in bed anyway.
He’d been caught on camera coming out of Police Headquarters with Fiona and David MacKenzie on either side of him. In a voice-over, the reporter summarized the events that had led to the hearing and Tony’s exoneration.
“In spite of the outcome of today’s hearing, Franco Mancini’s mother still holds Detective Tony Gallagher and the Chicago Police Department responsible for her son’s death. When interviewed later in the day, Maria Mancini, accompanied by her attorney, did not rule out the possibility of a lawsuit.”
The scene switched to a dark-haired woman standing in front of a microphone, flanked on one side by a man in a suit—her attorney, no doubt—and on the other side by a group of angry-looking family members. Maria’s own eyes reflected more than just anger. There was something disturbing simmering in those dark depths. Rage. Hatred. Maybe even a glimmer of madness.
Eve suppressed a shiver as she watched the woman speak. “If we do bring suit, it won’t be for the money,” Maria insisted tearfully. “I want justice for my boy.”
The news flashed to another story, and Eve clicked off the TV, a dark premonition sweeping over her. Maria Mancini was trouble. Eve had no doubt about that. Being named in a lawsuit against the police department was the last thing Tony needed. He was already in hot water with the brass. Hotter than he knew.
His file lay on her nightstand, and Eve picked it up, thumbing through the reports and complaints, although she’d already studied them at length. But even before this assignment, she’d known that he’d been hit with an assault charge four years ago, just after he’d made detective. He’d struck a suspect, but to Eve’s mind, the circumstances had been extenuating.
If Eve had been the cop who had found the evidence underneath Robert Betts’s bed, she wasn’t sure how she would have reacted. But she certainly didn’t blame Tony for losing control. He’d been the one who had found the little girl’s body, and before that, he’d scoured the streets and neighborhoods night and day, searching for the missing child, hoping and praying he wouldn’t be too late, but knowing all the while that he was.
The Betts case had come early in Tony’s career. Twenty-seven was young to have made detective, let alone to be working homicide, but his phenomenal instincts—not to mention the Gallagher name—had catapulted him to prominence. He’d soon developed into one of the division’s hottest and most watched detectives, but even so, Eve doubted he would have been assigned to work such a high-profile investigation if it hadn’t been for his partner. Clare Foxx had been a well-known and respected detective at the time, but it had been Tony who had finally broken the case.
Eve had still been working vice at that time, but she and the rest of the department, along with the entire city, had followed the investigation, hoping and praying just like the cops who searched for the child that little Julie Betts would somehow turn up alive. The team of detectives had spent hundreds of hours on the case, combing every square inch around the victim’s home and school, following up on one flimsy lead after another. Tony had taken it upon himself to widen the search, using his off-duty time to scour gutters