BRICK BAUER PARKED his old black pickup outside the main gates to the Schmidt farm, then hurried up the long gravel walkway that led through the dark to the house. It was already after eight, and he hoped the chief’s retirement party would be in full swing by now—the bigger the crowd, the less conspicuous his token appearance was likely to be. A half hour or so ought to do it, just long enough to say hello to everybody who’d be sure to notice if he lacked the courage to show up here tonight. All week he’d felt like a bug in a specimen jar, and he had no intention of spending the next week the same way.
Since last Monday, Brick’s name had been on the lips of every housewife who had her hair done at Tisha Olsen’s Hair Affair, every cop who hung out at Marge’s Diner and every old codger who was living out his sunset years at Worthington House. Nobody had dared to spread rumors at the Kelsey Boardinghouse, but Brick figured that was because his Aunt Anna had threatened to take a spatula to the backside of any of his fellow boarders who so much as mentioned that he’d been passed over for promotion, let alone that a woman from the other end of Sugar Creek County was going to take the helm instead of him.
The worst of it was that Brick still wasn’t sure how it had happened. He’d been Chief Paul Schmidt’s right-hand man at the Tyler Police Department for the past six years, and back in college he’d been engaged to Paul’s daughter, who was supposed to be making one of her rare pilgrimages home for the party tonight. Granted, Brick and Shelley had parted painfully, but nobody could blame him for that. It wasn’t his fault that Shelley had decided being a big-city microbiologist suited her better than marriage to a hometown cop. She still hadn’t married; she claimed she never would.
Brick was single, too, but it wasn’t because he didn’t want a family. He just hadn’t found his lifetime mate yet. He’d actually grown a bit weary of searching, but his Aunt Anna still spent a good deal of her time trying to find him the perfect wife. Her latest candidate was the new boarder who was moving in tonight.
Aunt Anna and Uncle Johnny had zipped off to Milwaukee at the last minute to put their daughter Kathleen on a plane for Switzerland, conveniently leaving Brick as the resident family member to greet the newcomer anytime after nine. He wasn’t holding out any hopes that he’d want to get particularly chummy with the new boarder, but he was pleased that he had such a good excuse to leave the party early.
As he pocketed his key and marched up the gravel walkway, Brick spotted a pair of long, magnificent female legs moving at a good clip in front of him. At once he found himself checking out some impressive curves that not even the stylish wool coat could conceal. Brick knew every woman in the retiring police chief’s life—there weren’t many—but for a moment he had trouble placing this one. The confidence of that saucy walk made him question his own memory; besides, there was something different about the hair. Shelley always wore her hair long and loose, the way he liked it. Tonight it was wrapped in a classy chignon but it was still dark and thick and tempting. In fact, in the moonlight, it looked even more silky than Brick remembered it. Shelley looked more silky than he remembered her! Womanhood had been good to her. Not only did she move with more compelling grace than she used to, but she’d put on a little weight, too...in all the right places.
As Shelley approached the porch where they’d exchanged fervent kisses so many times, Brick felt an odd sense of déjà vu. Was it possible that he still had deep feelings for her? Was that why he’d never really found another woman to take her place? Was that why she looked so good to him—better than ever—after all this time?
As December’s first tiny snowflakes began to fall, Brick remembered how Shelley had looked the first time he’d kissed her snow-sprinkled nose, when she was nineteen. She’d giggled ever after when he’d called her Snowflake. Oh, it was all over and done, but he had special memories of those days. He imagined that Shelley might, too.
Suddenly Brick realized that he didn’t want to greet her for the first time in years under the gossip-mongering eyes of every busybody in Tyler. Whatever they had to say to each other should be said alone outside.
He jogged the last few yards between them, reaching Shelley just as she pushed open the chain-link gate at the edge of the porch. Because she seemed to be rushing, Brick reached out with a friendly arm to encircle her waist, about to say, “Hey, Snowflake, you never used to be in such a big hurry to go inside when I took you home.”
He got as far as “Hey, Snowflake” when the most amazing thing happened. Shelley grabbed his elbow, jammed her hip into his leg and flipped him straight up and over the gate. Twisting sideways as he struggled to find his feet, Brick came down hard on the protruding edge of the chain link. Raw steel ends clawed his jaw and shoulder, shredded his best suitcoat and bloodied a fair amount of skin before he hit the ground on his side. Gasping for breath, he rolled flat on his back before he caught a good look at his assailant’s face.
She wasn’t Shelley! In a dizzying rush Brick realized that this classy brunette was a total stranger. She was beautiful; she was curved in all the right places; she was pulling out a .38 Smith & Wesson from underneath the left side of her coat.
“Don’t move a millimeter,” she threatened in a dry tone that rivaled Dirty Harry’s. “Touch me again and you’re going to lose a vital portion of your anatomy.”
“Lady, I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole!” Brick grumbled, realizing even in his confusion that fear, not malice, was the reason she’d reacted so violently to such a simple touch. This stunning female had clearly been trained in self-defense. She’d also lived with the threat of urban crime or else watched too many cop shows. He wouldn’t be surprised if she tried to make a citizen’s arrest for...well, for whatever it was she thought he’d tried to do to her.
“I’m a police officer and I thought you were an old friend,” Brick explained, too woozy to sort everything out. His voice sounded odd and hollow. “Sorry if I frightened you. Now may I get off the ground?”
To his surprise, the woman did not immediately accept his explanation. She didn’t even look embarrassed. In fact, on closer examination, he decided that her beautiful gray eyes looked more fierce than frightened. Sternly she ordered, “Show me your police ID. Slowly.”
Brick was too angry to be scared, but he didn’t like the way she kept that gun trained on him. “Good God, you could shoot somebody with that thing, lady.” He dug out his ID and pushed it a few inches toward her. “Do you have a permit for that piece?” He didn’t ask her if she knew how to use it; it was obvious she knew all too well.
She barely glanced at his identification, unreadable in the darkness, before she barked, “What’s your badge number?”
Not his name, his badge number. A curiously eerie feeling, worse than the pain now coursing through his back, began to steal over Brick. How many women were so well versed in self-defense, handled a side arm like a pro and instinctively asked a question like that? Now that he was getting a grip on his equilibrium, he realized what all the signs pointed to.
His assailant was a cop.
She was also a rare beauty; she bore no resemblance to the woman who’d gotten his former partner killed. This lady wasn’t a tiny thing, but she wasn’t a husky bruiser, either. She looked to be five foot nine or ten, sturdy but slender, with high, sculpted cheekbones and infuriatingly well-curved lips. Even in his current situation, Brick found her femininity hard to ignore. He didn’t want to think about the effect she’d have on him if she ever traded in that scowl for a dazzling smile. Brick told her his number, then added darkly, “Lieutenant Donald Bauer, Tyler Police Department. Go ask my chief. He’s inside.”
“Lieutenant Bauer,” the husky voice countered, “Chief Paul Schmidt is now retired and the Tyler Police Department he ran for seventeen years no longer exists. You now represent the Sugar Creek County Sheriff’s Department. Archibald Harmon is your regional commander and Captain Karen Keppler is taking charge of the Tyler substation.” She sheathed the gun in a shoulder holster he hadn’t noticed