26

PHIL KESSLER LOOKED like a skeleton. In all the time Byrne had known him, Kessler had been a hard drinker, a two-fisted glutton, at least twenty-five pounds overweight. Now his hands and face were gaunt and pallid, his body a brittle husk.

Despite the flowers and bright get-well cards scattered around the man’s hospital room, despite the brisk activity of the crisply clad staff, a team dedicated to preserving and prolonging life, the room smelled like sadness.

While a nurse took Kessler’s blood pressure, Byrne thought about Victoria. He didn’t know if this was the beginning of something real, if he and Victoria would ever be intimate again, but waking up in her apartment made him feel as if something had been reborn within him, as if something long dormant had poked through the soil of his heart.

It felt good.

Victoria had made him breakfast that morning. She had scrambled two eggs, made him rye toast, and served it to him in bed. She had put a carnation on his tray and a lipstick kiss on his folded napkin. Just the presence of that flower and that kiss told Byrne how much was missing from his life. Victoria had kissed him at the door and told him that she had a group meeting with the runaways she counseled later that evening. She said the group would be over by eight o’clock and that she would meet him at the Silk City Diner on Spring Garden at eight fifteen. She said she had a good feeling. Byrne shared it. She believed they would find Julian Matisse this night.

Now, sitting in a hospital room next to Phil Kessler, the good feeling was gone. Byrne and Kessler had gotten whatever pleasantries they had available to them out of the way, and had fallen into an uncomfortable silence. Both men knew why Byrne was there.

Byrne decided to get it over with. For any number of reasons he did not want to be in the same room with this man.

“Why, Phil?”

Kessler thought about his answer. Byrne didn’t know if the long lag time between question and answer was pain medication or conscience.

“Because it’s the right thing to do, Kevin.”

“Right thing for who?”

“Right thing for me.”

“But what about Jimmy? He can’t even defend himself.”

This seemed to reach Kessler. He may not have been much of a cop in his day, but he understood the process of due process. Every man had the right to face his accuser.

“The day we took Matisse down. You remember it?” Kessler asked.

Like yesterday, Byrne thought. There were so many cops on Jefferson Street that day, it looked like an FOP convention.

“I went into that building knowing that what I was doing was wrong,” Kessler said. “I’ve lived with it ever since. Now I can’t live with it anymore. I’m sure as hell not going to die with it.”

“You’re saying that Jimmy planted the evidence?”

Kessler nodded. “It was his idea.”

“I don’t fucking believe it.”

“Why? You think Jimmy Purify was some kind of saint?”

“Jimmy was a great cop, Phil. Jimmy was stand-up. He wouldn’t do it.”

Kessler stared at him for a few moments, his eyes seeming to focus on a middle distance. He reached for his water glass, struggling to get the plastic cup off the tray and up to his mouth. Byrne’s heart went out to the man at that moment. But he didn’t help. After a while, Kessler got the cup back onto the tray.

“Where did you get the gloves, Phil?”

Nothing. Kessler just stared at him with those cold, light-fading eyes. “How many years you got left, Kevin?”

“What?”

“Time,” he said. “How much time you got?”

“I have no idea.” Byrne knew where this was going. He let it play.

“No, you don’t. But I do, see? I got a month. Less, probably. I ain’t gonna see the first leaf fall this year. No snow. I ain’t gonna see the Phillies fuck up in the play-offs. By the time Labor Day rolls around I’m gonna be dealing with it.”

“Dealing with it?”

“My life,” Kessler said. “Defending my life.”

Byrne got up. This was going nowhere, and even if it was, he couldn’t bring himself to badger the man any longer. The bottom line was that Byrne could not believe it of Jimmy. Jimmy had been like his brother. He had never known a man to be more in tune with the right and wrong of a situation than Jimmy Purify. Jimmy was the cop who went back the next day and paid for the hoagies they got on the cuff. Jimmy Purify paid his fucking parking tickets.

“I was there, Kevin. I’m sorry. I know Jimmy was your partner. But this is the way it went down. I ain’t saying Matisse didn’t do it, but the way we got him was wrong.”

“You know Matisse is on the street, right?”

Kessler didn’t respond. He closed his eyes for a few moments. Byrne wasn’t sure if he had fallen asleep or not. Soon he opened his eyes. They were wet with tears. “We didn’t do right by that girl, Kevin.”

“What girl? Gracie?”

Kessler shook his head. “No.” He held up a thin, bony hand, offering it up like evidence. “My penance,” he said. “How are you going to pay?”

Kessler turned his head, looked out the window again. The sunlight revealed the skull beneath the skin. Beneath that, the soul of a dying man.

As Byrne stood in the doorway he knew, the way he had known so many things over the years, that there was something else to this, something other than a man’s reparation in the last moments of his life. Phil Kessler was hiding something.

We didn’t do right by that girl.

         

BYRNE TOOK HIS hunch to the next level. On the promise of discretion, he called an old friend in the homicide division of the DA’s office. He had trained Linda Kelly, and since that time she had risen steadily through the ranks. Discretion was certainly in her purview.

Linda ran Phil Kessler’s financials, and one red flag flew high. Two weeks ago—the day Julian Matisse was released from prison—Kessler had made a ten-thousand-dollar deposit in a new account in an out-of-state bank.

27

THE BAR IS straight out of Fat City, a North Philly dive with a broken air conditioner, a grimy tin ceiling, and a graveyard of dead plants in the window. It reeks of disinfectant and old pork fat. There are two of us at the bar, four more scattered at tables. The jukebox plays Waylon Jennings.

I glance at the guy on my right. He is one of those Blake Edwards drunks, an extra in Days of Wine and Roses. He looks like he could use another. I get the guy’s attention.

“How’s it going?” I ask.

It doesn’t take long for him to summarize. “Been better.”

“Who hasn’t?” I reply. I point to his nearly empty glass. “One more?”

He looks at me a little more closely, perhaps searching for motive. He’ll never find it. His eyes are glassy, veined with drink and fatigue. There is something beneath the exhaustion, though. Something that speaks of fear. “Why not?”

I motion to the bartender, swirl my finger over our empties. The bartender pours, grabs my check, retreats to the register.

“Tough day?” I ask.

He nods. “Tough day.”

“Like the great George Bernard Shaw once said: ‘Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.’ ”

“I’ll drink to that,” he says on the tail of a sad smile.

“There was a movie once,” I say. “I think it was with Ray Milland.” Of course, I know it was with Ray Milland. “He played an alcoholic.”

The guy nods. “Lost Weekend.”

“That’s the one. There’s one scene where he talks about the effect that alcohol has on him. It’s a classic. An ode to the bottle.” I stand straighter, square my shoulders. I do my best Don Birnam, quoting from the movie: “It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly I’m above the ordinary. I’m competent. I’m walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I’m one of the great ones.’ ” I put my glass back down. “Or something like that.”

The guy stares at me for a few moments, trying to focus his eyes. “That’s pretty fucking good, man,” he finally says. “You’ve got a great memory.”

He is slurring his words.

I hoist my glass. “Better days.”

“Couldn’t be worse than this one.”

Of course it could.

He downs his shot, drains his beer. I follow suit. He begins to fish around in his pocket for his keys.

“One more for the road?” I ask.

“No thanks,” he says. “I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I gotta get up early tomorrow.” He slides off his stool, heads for the rear of the bar. “Thanks anyway.”

I drop a twenty on the bar, glance around. Four dead drunks at the rickety tables. Myopic barkeep. We don’t exist. We are background. I’m wearing a Flyers cap and tinted shades. Twenty extra foam pounds around my waist.

I follow him to the back door. We step into the wet kiln of the late afternoon, emerging into the small parking lot behind the bar. There are three cars.

“Hey, thanks for the drink,” he says.

“You are more than welcome,” I reply. “You okay to drive?”

He holds up a single key attached to a leather fob. A door key. “Walking home.”

“Smart man.” We are standing behind my car. I open the trunk. It is lined with clear plastic. He glances inside.

“Wow, that is one clean car you’ve got,” he says.

“I have to keep it spotless for work.”

He nods. “What do you do?”

“I’m an actor.”

It takes a moment for the absurdity to register. He scans my face again. Soon recognition dawns. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He waits for me to say more. I do not offer more. The moment drags out. He shrugs. “Well, okay, good seeing you again. I’m gonna get going.”

I put my hand on his forearm. In my other hand is a straight razor. Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill. I flick open the razor. The keened steel blade shimmers in the marmalade-colored sunlight.

He looks at the razor, then back up into my eyes. It is clear that he now recalls where we met. I knew he eventually would. He remembers me from the video store, standing at the rack of classic films. Fear blossoms on his face.

“I … I have to go,” he says, suddenly sober.

I tighten my grip on his arm and say: “I’m afraid I can’t allow that, Adam.”

28

THE LAUREL HILL Cemetery was nearly deserted at this hour. Situated on seventy-four acres overlooking Kelly Drive and the Schuylkill River, it was home to Civil War generals as well as victims of the Titanic. Its once magnificent arboretum setting was rapidly deteriorating into a scar of overturned headstones, weed-choked fields, and crumbling mausoleums.

Byrne stood in the cool shade of a huge maple for a while, resting. Lavender, he thought. Gracie Devlin’s favorite color was lavender.

When he regained his strength, he walked over to Gracie’s grave site. He was surprised that he found the plot so quickly. It was a small, inexpensive marker, the kind for which you settle when the high-pressure sales tactics fail and the salesman needs to move on. He looked down at the stone.

Marygrace Devlin.

ETERNAL GRACE read the inscription above the carving.

Byrne did a little landscaping around the stone, pulling the overgrown grass and weeds, brushing the dirt from the face.

Had it really been two years since he stood here with Melanie and Garrett Devlin? Had it really been two years since they gathered in the cold winter rain, black-clad silhouettes against the deep violet horizon? He had lived with his own family then, the coming sadness of his divorce not even on his radar. He had driven the Devlins home that day, helped at the reception in their small row house. He had stood in Gracie’s room that afternoon. He remembered the smell of lilacs and floral perfume and moth cakes. He remembered the collection of ceramic figures from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on Gracie’s bookshelf. Melanie had told him that the only figurine her daughter needed was Snow White to complete the set. She told him that Gracie intended to buy the final piece the day she was killed. Three times Byrne had returned to the theater where Gracie was murdered, looking for the figurine. He never found it.

Snow White.

Since that night, every time Byrne heard the name Snow White his heart ached a little more.

He eased himself to the ground. The relentless heat was warming on his back. After a few moments he reached out, touched the headstone and—

—the images slam into his mind with a brutal and untamed fury … Gracie on the rotted floorboards of the stage … Gracie’s clear blue eyes clouded with terror … the eyes of menace in the darkness above her … the eyes of Julian Matisse … Gracie’s screams blotting out all sound, all thought, all prayer—

Byrne was flung backward, gut-shot, his hand exploding off the cool granite. His heart raced to burst. The well of tears in his eyes brimmed.

So real. My God, so real.

He looked around the cemetery, soul-shaken, his pulse thrumming in his ears. There was no one near him, no one watching. He found a small measure of calm within him, gripped it, held on tight.

For a few unworldly moments he found it hard to reconcile the fury of his vision with the peace of the graveyard. He was soaked with sweat. He glanced at the headstone. It looked perfectly ordinary. It was perfectly ordinary. The brutal power was within him.

There was no doubt. The visions were back.

         

BYRNE SPENT THE early evening in physical therapy. As much as he hated to admit it, the therapy was helping. A little. He seemed to have a little more mobility in his legs, a little more flexibility in his lower back. Still, he would never concede this to the Wicked Witch of West Philadelphia.

A friend of his ran a gym in Northern Liberties. Instead of driving back to his apartment, Byrne grabbed a shower at the gym, then a light dinner at a neighborhood diner.

At about eight o’clock he pulled into the parking lot next to the Silk City Diner to wait for Victoria. He cut the engine, waited. He was early. He thought about the case. Adam Kaslov was no stone killer. Still, there was no such thing as coincidence, not in his experience. He thought about the young woman in the trunk of the car. He had never gotten used to the level of savagery available to the human heart.

He replaced the image of the young woman in the trunk of the car with the images of making love to Victoria. It had been such a long time since he had felt the swell of romantic love in his chest.

He recalled the first time, the only other time in his life he had felt that way. The time he met his wife. He recalled that summer day with a precious clarity, smoking pot next to the 7-Eleven with some of the Two-Street boys—Des Murtaugh, Tug Parnell, Timmy Hogan—listening to Thin Lizzy on Timmy’s shitty boom box. It wasn’t that anyone liked Thin Lizzy all that much, but they were Irish, damnit, and that meant something. “The Boys Are Back in Town,” “Jailbreak,” “Fighting My Way Back.” Those were the days. The girls with their big hair and glitter makeup. The guys with the skinny ties, gradient shades, and sleeves pushed up.

But there was never a Two-Street girl with more attitude than Donna Sullivan. Donna had on a white pin-dot sundress that day, the kind with the thin straps on the shoulders, the kind that swayed with every step. She was tall and noble and confident in her bearing; her strawberry-blond hair was back in a ponytail, luminous like summer sunshine on Jersey sand. She was walking her dog, a little Yorkie she called Brando.

When Donna got up to the store, Tug was already down on all fours, panting like a dog, asking to be walked on a chain. That was Tug. Donna rolled her eyes, but she smiled. It was a girlish smile, a playful grin that said she could go along with the clowns of the world. Tug rolled onto his back, working the gag for all it was worth.

When Donna looked at Byrne, she gave him a different smile, a woman’s smile, one that offered everything and revealed nothing, one that found its way deep into Kevin Byrne’s tough-guy chest. A smile that said: If you are the man in this group of boys, you will be with me.

Gimme the puzzle, God, Byrne had thought at that moment, looking at that beautiful face, those aquamarine eyes that seemed to bore right through him. Gimme the puzzle to this girl, God, and I’ll solve it.

Tug noticed that Donna had noticed the big guy. Like always. He got up and, if it had been anyone but Tug Parnell, would’ve felt foolish. “This side of beef is Kevin Byrne. Kevin Byrne, Donna Sullivan.”

“You’re the one they call Riff Raff, right?” she asked.

Byrne reddened in a flash, embarrassed at the handle for the very first time. The nickname had always given Byrne a certain sense of ethnic bad-boy pride, but coming from Donna Sullivan’s lips that day, it sounded, well, stupid. “Uh, yeah,” he said, feeling even dumber.

“Want to walk with me awhile?” she asked.

It was like asking him if he had any interest in breathing. “Sure,” he said.

And thus she had him.

They walked down to the river, their hands brushing, never quite reaching out, fully sensing each other’s nearness. When they returned to the neighborhood at just after dusk, Donna Sullivan kissed him on the cheek.

“You’re not so tough, you know,” Donna said.

“I’m not?”

“No. I think you may even be sweet.”

Byrne grabbed his heart in mock cardiac arrest. “Sweet?”

Donna laughed. “Don’t worry,” she said. She lowered her voice to a honey whisper. “Your secret is safe with me.”

He watched her walk up to the house. She turned, silhouetted in the doorway, and blew him another kiss.

He fell in love that day, and he thought it would never end.

The cancer got Tug in ’99. Timmy was running a plumbing crew in Camden. Six kids, last he heard. Des was killed by a drunk driver in ’02. Himself.

And now Kevin Francis Byrne again felt that rush of romantic love, for only the second time in his life. He had been adrift for so long. Victoria had the power to change all that.

He decided to call off this crusade to find Julian Matisse. Let the system run its game. He was too old and too tired. When Victoria showed, he would tell her, they would have a few cocktails, call it a night.

The one good thing that came out of all this was that he had found her again.

He looked at his watch. Nine ten.

He got out of his car, walked into the diner, thinking he had missed Victoria, thinking maybe she had not seen his car and had gone inside. She was not inside. He took out his cell phone, called her number, got her voice mail. He called the runaway shelter where she counseled, and was told that she had left awhile ago.

When Byrne got back to the car, he had to look twice to make sure it was his car. For some reason, his car now had a hood ornament. He glanced around the lot, a little disoriented. He looked back. It was his car.

As he got closer, he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck, and the skin begin to dimple on his arms.

It wasn’t a hood ornament. Someone had put something on the hood of his car while he was inside the diner, a small ceramic figure sitting on an oaken keg. A figurine from a Disney movie.

It was Snow White.

29

“NAME FIVE HISTORICAL roles played by Gary Oldman,” Seth said.

Ian’s face lit up. He had been reading the first of a short stack of scripts. No one read or absorbed a screenplay faster than Ian Whitestone.

But even a mind as quick and encyclopedic as Ian’s should have taken more than a few seconds on this one. Not a chance. Seth had barely mouthed the question before Ian was spitting out the answer.

“Sid Vicious, Pontius Pilate, Joe Orton, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Albert Milo.”

Gotcha, Seth thought. Le Bec-Fin here we come. “Albert Milo was fictional.”

“Yes, but everyone knows he was really supposed to be Julian Schnabel in Basquiat.”

Seth glared at Ian for a moment. Ian knew the rules. No fictionalization of real-life characters. They were sitting in Little Pete’s Restaurant on Seventeenth Street, across from the Radisson hotel. As wealthy as Ian Whitestone was, he lived on diner food. “Okay, then,” Ian said. “Ludwig van Beethoven.”

Shit, Seth thought. He really thought he’d had him this time.

Seth finished his coffee, wondering if he’d ever stump the man. He looked out the window, saw the first flashbulb pop across the street, saw the crowd swell toward the entrance to the hotel, watched the adoring fans gather around Will Parrish. He then glanced back at Ian Whitestone, his nose once more stuck in a script, the food still untouched on his plate.

What a paradox, Seth thought. Although it was a paradox suffused with a strange sort of logic.

Granted, Will Parrish was a bankable movie star. He had been responsible for well over a billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales over the past two decades, and was one of only half a dozen or so American actors over the age of thirty-five who could “open” a movie. On the other hand, Ian Whitestone could pick up the phone and get any of the five major studio heads on the line within minutes. These were the only people in the world who could green-light a film budgeted at nine figures. And they were all on Ian’s speed dial. Even Will Parrish couldn’t say that.

In the film trade, at least at the creative level, the real power was with men like Ian Whitestone, not Will Parrish. If he was so inclined—and he quite often was—Ian Whitestone could pluck that heart-stoppingly beautiful yet thoroughly untalented nineteen-year-old girl from the crowd and drop her right into the middle of her wildest dreams. With a brief layover in his bed, of course. All without lifting a finger. All without causing a stir.

Yet in just about any city other than Hollywood, it was Ian Whitestone, not Will Parrish, who could sit unmolested and virtually unobserved in a diner and eat his meal in peace. No one would know that the creative force behind Dimensions liked to put tartar sauce on his hamburgers. No one would know that the man once referred to as the second coming of Luis Buñuel liked to put a tablespoon of sugar into his Diet Coke.

But Seth Goldman knew.

He knew these things and so much more. Ian Whitestone was a man with appetites. If no one knew about his culinary peculiarities, only one other man knew that, when the sun dropped below the lowest roofline, when people dressed in their nighttime masks, Ian Whitestone saw the city as his own twisted and dangerous buffet.

Seth looked across the street, spotted a young, stately redhead at the back of the crowd. She had not gotten anywhere near the movie star before he had been whisked away in his stretch limo. She looked crestfallen. Seth glanced around. No one was watching.

He rose from the booth, exited the restaurant, spritzed his breath, crossed the street. When he reached the other curb he thought about what he and Ian Whitestone were about to do. He thought about how his connection to the Oscar-nominated director ran much deeper than that of the average executive assistant, about how the tissue that bound them snaked through a darker place, a place that sunshine never graced, a place where the screams of the innocent were never heard.

30

THE CROWD AT Finnigan’s Wake was starting to thicken. The raucous, multilevel Irish pub on Spring Garden Street was a venerated cop hangout that drew its clientele from all of Philly’s police districts. Everyone from the top brass to the rookie patrolman stopped here from time to time. The food was decent, the beer was cold, and the atmosphere was pure Philly blue.

But you had to count your drinks at Finnigan’s. You could literally bump into the commissioner here.

Above the bar was a banner proclaiming: BEST WISHES SERGEANT O’BRIEN! Jessica stopped upstairs, got her pleasantries out of the way. She came back down to the first floor. It was noisier down there, but right now she wanted the quiet anonymity of a boisterous cop bar. She had just turned the corner into the main room when her cell phone rang. It was Terry Cahill. Although it was hard to hear, she did pick up that he was taking a rain check on their drink. He said he had tailed Adam Kaslov to a bar in North Philly, and had then gotten a call from his ASAC. There was a bank robbery in Lower Merion, and they needed him at the scene. He had to shut down the surveillance.

Stood up by a fed, Jessica thought.

She needed new perfume.

Jessica made her way to the bar. The place was wall-to-wall blue. Officer Mark Underwood was sitting at the front bar with two young guys, early twenties, both of whom had the buzz cuts and bad-boy posture that fairly screamed rookie cop. Probies even sat tough. You could smell the testosterone.

Underwood waved her over. “Hey, you made it.” He gestured to the two guys next to him. “Two of my charges. Officers Dave Nihiser and Jacob Martinez.”

Jessica let it sink in. A cop she had helped train was already training new officers. Where had the time gone? She shook hands with the two young men. When they found out she was in Homicide, they looked at her with a great deal of respect.

“Tell ’em who your partner is,” Underwood said to Jessica.

“Kevin Byrne,” she replied.

Now the young men looked at her with awe. Byrne’s street rep was that big.

“I secured a crime scene for him and his partner in South Philly a couple of years ago,” Underwood said with a chest full of pride.

The two probies mugged and nodded, as if Underwood had said he once caught for Steve Carlton.

The bartender brought Underwood’s drink. He and Jessica clinked glasses, sipped, settled in. It was a different surrounding for the two of them, far from the days when she was his mentor on the streets of South Philly. The big-screen TV in the front of the bar was showing a Phillies game. Somebody got a hit. The bar roared. Finnigan’s was nothing if it wasn’t loud.

“You know, I grew up not too far from here,” he said. “My grandparents had a candy store.”

“A candy store?”

Underwood smiled. “Yeah. You know the phrase ‘like a kid in a candy store’? I was that kid.”

“That must have been fun.”

Underwood sipped his drink, shook his head. “It was until I OD’d on circus peanuts. Remember circus peanuts?”

“Oh yeah,” Jessica said, recalling well the spongy, sickeningly sweet, peanut-shaped candies.

“I got sent to my room once, right?”

“You were a bad boy?”

“Believe it or not. So just to get back at my grandmother I stole a huge bag of banana-flavored circus peanuts—and by huge I mean wholesale huge. Maybe twenty pounds. We used to put them in the glass canisters up front and sell them individually.”

“Don’t tell me you ate the whole thing.”

Underwood nodded. “Just about. Ended up getting my stomach pumped. I haven’t been able to look at a circus peanut since. Or a banana for that matter.”

Jessica glanced across the bar. A pair of pretty college girls in halter tops were eyeing Mark, whispering, giggling. He was a good-looking young man. “So how come you’re not married, Mark?” Jessica vaguely remembered a moon-faced girl hanging around back in the day.

“Got close once,” he said.

“What happened?”

He shrugged, sipped his drink, hesitated. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. “Life happened,” he finally said. “The job happened.”

Jessica knew what he meant. She’d had a few semi-serious relationships before becoming a cop. All of them fell by the wayside when she entered the academy. Afterward, she found that the only people who understood what she did every day were other cops.

Officer Nihiser tapped his watch, drained his drink, stood.

“We’ve got to run,” Mark said. “We’re on last out and we’ve got to get some food in us.”

“And this was just getting good,” Jessica said.

Underwood stood, took out his wallet, pulled out a few bills, handed them to the barmaid. He put his wallet down on the bar. It fell open. Jessica glanced at his ID.

VANDEMARK E. UNDERWOOD.

He caught her looking, scooped up his wallet. But it was too late.

“Vandemark?” Jessica asked.

Underwood looked around quickly. He pocketed his billfold in a flash. “Name your price,” he said.

Jessica laughed. She watched Mark Underwood leave. He held the door for an older couple on his way out.

As she toyed with the ice cubes in her glass, she observed the ebb and flow of the pub. She watched cops stroll in, stroll out. She waved to Angelo Turco from the Third. Angelo had a beautiful tenor voice, sang at all the police benefit functions, many of the officers’ weddings. With a little training he could have been Philadelphia’s answer to Andrea Bocelli. He even opened a Phillies game once.

She saw Cass James, a secretary and all-around sister confessor from Central. Jessica could only imagine how many secrets Cass James held, and what kind of Christmas presents she must get. Jessica had never seen Cass actually pay for a drink.

Cops.

Her father was right. All her friends were on the force. So what was she supposed to do about it? Join the Y? Take a macramé class? Learn to ski?

She finished her drink and was just about to gather her things to leave when she sensed someone sitting down next to her, on the very next stool to her right. Seeing as there were three stools open on either side of her, it could only mean one thing. She felt herself tense up. But why? She knew why. She’d been out of the dating pool for so long, the mere thought of fielding an advance, fueled by a few scotches, scared the hell out of her, as much for what she might not do as for what she might. She’d gotten married for many reasons, and this was one of them. The bar scene, and all its attendant games, never appealed to her much. And now that she was thirty—and the possibility of divorce loomed on the horizon—it terrified her more than it ever had before.

The figure next to her lurked closer, closer. She could feel warm breath on her face. The nearness demanded her attention.

“Can I buy you a drink?” the shadow asked.

She looked over. Caramel eyes, dark wavy hair, a two-day scruff. He had broad shoulders, a small cleft in his chin, long eyelashes. He wore a tight black T-shirt and faded Levi’s. Just to make matters worse, he was wearing Acqua di Gio by Armani.

Shit.

Just her type.

“I was just about to leave,” she said. “Thanks anyway.”

“One drink. I promise.”

She almost laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because with guys like you it’s never one drink.”

He feigned heartbreak. It made him even cuter. “Guys like me?”

Now she did laugh. “Oh, and now you’re going to tell me I’ve never met anyone quite like you, right?”

He didn’t answer her right away. Instead, he looked from her eyes, down to her lips, back to her eyes.

Stop it.

“Oh, I’ll bet you’ve met a lot of guys like me,” he said with a sly grin. It was the kind of smile that said he was in complete control.

“Why do you say that?”

He sipped his drink, paused, played the moment out. “Well, for one thing, you’re a very beautiful woman.”

Here we go, Jessica thought. Bartender, get me a long-handled shovel. “And two?”

“Well, two should be obvious.”

“Not to me.”

“Two is that you are clearly out of my league.”

Ah, Jessica thought. The humility pitch. Self-deprecating, handsome, polite. Bedroom eyes. She was absolutely certain that this combo had gotten scads of women into the sack. “And yet you still came over and sat next to me.”

“Life is short,” he said with a shrug. He crossed his arms, flexing his muscular forearms. Not that Jessica was looking or anything. “When that guy left, I figured it was now or never. I figured that, if I didn’t at least try, I would never be able to live with myself.”

“How do you know he’s not my boyfriend?”

He shook his head. “Not your type.”

Cocky bastard. “And I’ll bet you know exactly what my type is, right?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Have a drink with me. I’ll explain it to you.”

Jessica cruised his shoulders, his broad chest. The gold crucifix on the chain around his neck winked in the bar lights.

Go home, Jess.

“Maybe some other time.”

“There is no time like now,” he said. The sincerity in his voice dripped. “Life is so unpredictable. Anything could happen.”

“For instance,” she said, wondering why she was prolonging this, deep in denial about the fact that she already knew why.

“Well, for instance, you could walk out of here and a stranger with far more nefarious intentions could do you terrible bodily harm.”

“I see.”

“Or you might step into the middle of an armed robbery in progress and be taken hostage.”

Jessica wanted to take out her Glock, lay it on the bar, and tell him she could probably deal with that scenario. Instead, she just said: “Uh-huh.”

“Or a bus might jump the curb, or a grand piano might fall from the sky, or you might—”

“—get buried under an avalanche of bullshit?”

He smiled. “Exactly.”

He was cute. She had to give him that. “Look, I’m really flattered, but I’m a married woman.”

He drained his drink, spread his hands in surrender. “He’s a very lucky man.”

Jessica smiled, dropped a twenty on the bar. “I’ll tell him.”

She slid off her stool, walked to the door, using all the determination in her arsenal not to turn around and look. Her undercover training paid off sometimes. But that didn’t mean she didn’t work her walk for all it was worth.

She pushed open the heavy front door. The city was a blast furnace. She walked out of Finnigan’s, around the corner, down Third Street, keys in hand. The temperature hadn’t dropped more than a degree or two in the last few hours. Her blouse stuck to her back like a damp washcloth.

By the time she reached her car she heard the footsteps behind her and knew who it was. She turned. She was right. His swagger was as brash as his routine.

Nefarious stranger, indeed.

She stood, her back to her car, waiting for the next clever line, the next macho come-on designed to knock down her walls.

Instead, he did not say a word. Before she knew it he had her pinned against the car, his tongue in her mouth. His body was hard; his hands strong. She dropped her purse, her keys, her defenses. She kissed him back as he lifted her into the air. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips. He made her weak. He took her will.

She let him.

It was one of the reasons she married him in the first place.