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"You." She looked to Gil. "I'll help pack up next time. I'm going to fix up these gentlemen and make sure they get home safely. See you tomorrow night?"

  Gil sighed heavily. "You said that last time."

  She rested a hand on his caramel-colored, stubble-filled cheek and gently kissed the other.

  Carefully, he brushed a finger over her swollen eye. "Take care of that."

  She pressed their foreheads together, closed her eyes and smiled briefly.

  Wipes were bloodied, ointment was spread, but the Reed brothers wouldn't have anything to do with bandages anywhere except the knuckles of their punching hands. Duncan his right, Andy his left. Men and their battle wounds. Andy could have died. If Rose hadn't made that phone call, she might very well be sealing off a murder scene at that moment. They didn't act like men who had nearly been severely hurt or killed. But then again, she wouldn't have either.

  By the time they got on the road, it was well past 3 a.m. They agreed to have her drive and drop them both off at their homes that were so near to one another anyway. Since her car was crap and Andy didn't have his hard top for an overnight stay in a bar parking lot, she drove his jeep. They would figure out cars in the morning. It's not like the cars of drunken patrons weren't left at The Pub all the time, only they weren't generally left because of Driving Under the Influence of a Bloody Fight.

  She was surprised that although Andy was the one beaten and bloody, he was the one doing all the talking. He went on about replacing his briefcase and how they jumped him behind his jeep. "I had them right where I wanted them." He sounded like he was recovering from Novocain. "A lucky upper cut caught me off guard."

  Rose was waiting on the porch with a black lab sitting at her feet.

  "She's going to kick your ass, brother." Finally, Duncan spoke.

  She shook her head at Duncan. "Look at him. He was nearly beaten unconscious." Or dead.

  Together, the men responded in unison, "She's going to kick my/his ass."

  As Andy strolled to her, Nickie backed up and watched as Rose rounded on him, took his face in her hands, and kissed him long and carefully. See? Nearly beaten unconscious. Before she had a chance to finish the three-point turn, Rose had laced her hands through the sides of her hair, grabbed two fists full and cussed him out like a sailor.

  Nickie and Duncan drove in silence up the small hill to his home. She hadn't come this way the last time she was out to see them. No lights were on, but the bright white moon beamed through the void of trees over the house and gave her a picture. Three stories, wood burning chimneys on both sides. She never saw houses built with those anymore. Brick and stained wood siding and an enormous wraparound porch. Massive wooden pillars sat at the corners of the porch, guarding the entrance to the front door. Flagstone steps lined the way like a red carpet at the Emmy's. All were nestled deep in the thick woods of upstate New York.

  As she parked in front of the steps, she wondered, "I know you served in the armed forces, but how does an artist fight like that?"

  Duncan rubbed his cheek with the back of his hand. "I tend to get carried away. So, I generally avoid it." His voice turned deep. "Would you like to come in?"

  Wha? Was he serious? She was sure those words were written all over her face. Understandably, she was the only handy female around, but he didn't even add 'for a drink.'

  "Don't flatter yourself, detective. I don't move in on taken women. Coffee. It's the least I can do."

  Taken? She wasn't in the mood to peg him about the chauvinist comment.

  She turned off the jeep, put it in first gear and set the emergency brake. "I need to get home. I have an early morning."

  "Mmm. As do I."

  Resting both hands on the steering wheel, she turned her head to him. "So, where do you get the sophisticated, proper, grammar-articulate tone from? I don't hear it in any of your other family members."

  He responded with, "Dunno."

  She'd certainly never heard him crack a joke before. Watching it come from his freshly bruised and battered face caused her to bust out in laughter.

  He came back at her. "So, where do you get the ability to turn your sophisticated, proper, grammar-articulate tone on and off as it suits you? Do your parents still live in Maryland?"

  She deserved that one she supposed. "I haven't seen them since I was sixteen." Fortunately, he took the hint and didn't push further. Intuitive. For a man. Looking down at her hands, she smiled slightly at her chauvinistic thought.

  She opened the door and walked around to the front of the vehicle.

  Duncan followed. "Are you going to walk me to my door, detective?"

  She smiled but did her best to ignore him.

  "I feel like I should fumble with my house keys," he said, "to signal I'd like a kiss goodnight."

  They climbed the glazed steps to his front door. Their breath misted the air in front of them. "Speaking of." She turned to him and held out his keys and the other things of his she'd picked up after the tussle.

  He reached for them, but she didn't let go. "There is no Gil and I. Not that way," she said, then released.

  Why had she said that? She silently kicked herself as she turned for a quick retreat. His strong hand ringed her forearm and gently pulled her back to face him. Inches away, she could see specks of dark gold around his irises. Looking further, she realized one of the few places on his face that wasn't injured was his lips. It wouldn't be like she was throwing her panties at him if she just brushed against his lips. He ran his cold hands up her arms, over her shoulders and rested them on her exposed neck. She shivered and had no idea if it was from the chill of his hands... or the chill from his hands.

  He looked from one of her eyes to the other as he rubbed circles along her collarbone. Oh shit. He slid his hands around the sides of her neck and placed his thumbs under her jaw, tilting her head to him.

  His lips weren't urgent like they were when they responded to her in Brusco's apartment. They were slow, gently deliberate and intensely sensual. She felt a symphony of music as it erupted from her toes, traveled through her body to the top of her head, and settled deep in her core. Don't ask me in again. Don't ask me in again.

  Duncan watched as her lids dropped and felt the pulse in her neck rise beneath his thumbs. Pressing upward with one of them, he tilted her head a bit more and dove in. Her lips, her tongue. They were natural, honest and sexy as hell. The taste of her was real. Female. They stood at his door step in the cold, bruised and battered, as he found it difficult to remember how he got that way.

  He took a side of the honey wheat and pulled it around to the back of her shoulder. Dipping his lips to her cheek, along the line of her jaw, across her soft neck near the string of beads to just under her ear. There, he found a void and settled before hearing a soft purr echo in her throat. He nearly took her there on his porch. Touching his lips to her ear, he whispered, "Come in, detective. Let me... make you breakfast in the morning."

  He felt her shiver beneath his hands and felt smug that it wasn't from the cold. But she pulled away and smiled wide. "Don't flatter yourself, Reed. You simply don't turn me on."

  Watching her walk down his stone steps was more excruciating than his raw knuckles, but he deserved it. As he leaned against the side of his empty home, she started at Andy's jeep. Her smile turned slight. It was sly and it was a smile he would soon draw and not from memory.

  Unlocking his front door, he walked down the short, hardwood hallway to his coat closet. He hung up his jacket before he took his phone from the inner pocket. Looking at it, he considered and then sent a text.

  Nickie turned on the back road that led south to town. She'd barely made it to the edge of the first group of houses before her phone buzzed, so she pulled to the shoulder.

  'Detective, how about lunch, then?'

  She felt her insides warm and her face widen with a smile. His scent of male shampoo and barely there cologne still filled her senses. Those damned eyes, deep and dark. They made his sharp features loo
k all the more devastating. It had taken everything she had to walk away from him, and realized it was something he'd probably never experienced before. She was a novelty to him. And she would have to remember that. We want what we can't have. She supposed it went both ways.

  They had nothing in common. She shook her head as she typed out a response. 'I have 2 work. A search on a Henderson who is traveling w/ the girls.'

  She waited before pulling out. It was a good thing since he responded. 'Don't text & drive. How about dinner? U really must eat.' His text sarcasm made her smile.

  'I pulled over. I have dinner plans, but u could join me I suppose.' She tried to picture how Duncan Reed would fit into her dinner plans and decided it might be just the ticket to snuffing out this attraction he seemed to think he had for her.

  'When shall I pick u up? And Henderson is the name of a town just outside of Vegas.'

  Her mouth dropped open as she stared at her phone. Without answering, she changed routes and drove Andy's jeep to the station.

  Chapter 11

  Sitting on Duncan's aunt and uncle's furniture made the guilt from Andy's condition not as easy to ignore. He and his brother were a distraction, but it couldn't be helped. They sat together in the center of the couch in the mission style front room. Their wounds had sealed over. Andy's face and Duncan's eye had quit swelling, but he knew Andy looked especially terrible. Both had removed the bandages from their hands, leaving each knuckle circled with a bright red ring.

  Rose sat with Hannah on the sage green loveseat and the twins on Nathan's custom-made bay window box. Nathan and Brie stood and Duncan thought it felt all just a bit juvenile. His aunt and uncle had asked that they all meet that morning. Smart, Duncan judged. They should all be on the same page in this mess.

  His uncle looked tired and Duncan decided that was understandable. He couldn't imagine how hard it must be to have had closure for so many years only to have Melbourne leave her signature on his deck. Brie was dressed comfortably in casual, cotton slacks and a matching dark peach blouse. Her bare toes were painted a bright pink. Still, he thought she looked more than tired, more than pale.

  "Did you get checked out by a doctor?" she asked them.

  They both shook their heads.

  "Nothing cut deep enough or broken," Andy answered.

  "Did one of you start it?" she continued sincerely. Always a mother.

  "A trio of young thugs was harassing Rose." Duncan stuck up for his brother. "Andy defended her... verbally. They waited in the parking lot until it was three-on-one." He stretched his legs and folded them at the ankles. "I found them and did my brotherly duty."

  Andy elbowed him on a bruised rib.

  Conceding, Duncan added, "I did my brotherly duty with the help of Nickie and her... friend."

  "Nickie?" Nathan asked.

  "Detective Savage."

  Brie folded her hands in front of her and paused. "The police were called?"

  "Nickie..." He shook his head twice. "Detective Savage part-times in a two-man band at The Pub. She was there and put two and two together." He wondered at that moment how she did that. "It looks worse than it is, Mother. Andy always was a bleeder."

  Hmm. Nathan generally had a quick comment when he and Andy got themselves into a predicament. "Did you get in some good hits first, son?" or "Who came out with more points?" Duncan sat quietly waiting for their reactions.

  "I have cancer," Brie said almost too quickly for him to understand.

  The room began to grow to twice the size and then shrink to a space big enough for only him. A wave of dizzying fatigue made it look like a mirage.

  James stood and walked to her. "When? What kind? What do the doctors say?"

  She set her hand on his cheek.

  Hannah and Jonathon's shoulders began to shiver and then shake.

  Duncan looked around to each and saw nothing.

  "It's breast cancer, honey. Millions of women and even some men have it. It hasn't traveled to any other part of my body." She turned now. Her loyal, patient, persistent, dedicated eyes scanned each of them. "I'm healthy. I exercise. I've always eaten well. It's time that paid off. Your dad has some connections..." She turned to Nathan and smiled, but not without Duncan noticing the gloss of tears covering her eyes. "This. Will. Not. Break me," she said, practically through her teeth.

  Taking Nathan's hand, Brie took a deep breath and put on the face she shouldn't have to. "There will be some surgery, some radiation, some chemo... just like the millions of others. I'll be back to 100 percent in no time, but for now you can help me by getting on with your lives. I'm thinking of going bleach blond," she said, pretending to adjust a bodacious hairstyle, he assumed. He wasn't sure. Coherent had left him when she said the word cancer.

  Brie looked to him as she smiled at her own joke. For the first time since he was eight-years-old, Duncan felt a tear fall down his face.

  "Oh, Duncan, no. Please, you just can't." She covered her mouth and nose with both hands as floods of tears spilled over her lids and onto her beautiful cheeks. The room spun. It was like clicking off shots with a camera that would live in his memory from then on. The confusing silence that turned into his cousins' sobs. Click. Andy and Rose standing arm in arm in... shock? Click, click. And Nathan. His uncle looked torn. Torn between acting as griever and as support. Click. Then, Duncan went blank.

  He was numb. In an empty room with despair his only friend.

  * * *

  "Henderson," Nickie chided herself. She was smarter than this, dammit. Bent over with her head between her legs, she gave herself a pep talk. "Think outside the box. You slipped up, sure, but—"

  "Is there anyone in particular you're talkin' to down there?"

  She threw her head up, knocking the back of it on her desk on the way. "No, sir. I was just coming to find you." Brushing back her hair, she picked up her neat stack of files and took the second one from the top.

  "It's late. Would you like to wait until Monday?" Dave asked.

  Trying her best at a do-you-know-me-or-not look, she turned her nose down and squinted her eyes.

  "Right then." He sat down in one of her rickety guest chairs. She winced, worried as always whether or not it would hold his frame.

  Reassuringly, he continued, "We've got eyes on Melbourne. We know what she's capable of. She's keeping herself off the radar for now. It's been three weeks. No other incidents have happened at the Reed home or to Brie Reed." Dave sat back and stuck his hands in his pockets.

  "I'd like clearance for three to five days in Nevada," she spoke, unwavering. "Henderson, Nevada, and Vegas."

  His brows rose high now.

  "I have a lead on the Lacey Newcomer case. I think they're keeping eight girls just outside of Vegas to funnel into private parties in the city. The girl who escaped at the Seneca Casino gave a tip. A new girl went missing forty miles from there this week."

  "I thought Henderson was the name of the perp."

  She sighed and closed her eyes. "I did, too. I assumed and I was wrong."

  "That must have burned to say out loud." He stood and stretched. "We can schedule an appointment with the captain to request the trip first thing Monday morning."

  She looked at him long and hard.

  "What?" he asked.

  "I realize it's late, but time is of the essence. Do I need to recite the statistics of the likelihood of finding a missing girl after three weeks have passed? I'd like to make a conference call."

  She watched as Dave checked his watch, then looked at the clock on her wall as if it might be different. She felt a smile come over her face as he sighed heavily.

  "Mr. and Mrs. Newcomer thank you."

  * * *

  Picking up a blouse from a chair, Nickie walked with the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she smelled to see if the shirt was clean.

  "What do you mean he's not coming?" Gloria asked her from the other end of the phone.

  She shrugged at the smell-test and slipped on the shir
t, pulling her cell away from her so she could maneuver it while she dressed. "I mean he's not coming. He backed out." She stopped and looked in the bathroom mirror of her one bedroom townhouse. Her morning makeup was starting to smudge, her hair frizzing.

  "Why isn't he coming?"

  "I don't know, he just canceled."

  "I set a place setting. Did you ask him why?"

  She wanted to scream. Either at the shirt, the makeup, the hair, or the questions, she wasn't sure. The one thing she did know was not to be late. "No, I didn't."

  "So, call him and ask him. Better yet, go over there."

  She gave up on the idea of a toothbrush. This conversation wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. She took a bit of paste and rubbed it around her mouth as she slipped on her boots and juggled the phone. "It's rather obvious, isn't it?"

  "Esplain." She always loved how Gloria's accent became pronounced when she was excited.

  "He sort of does that. Dates, breaks up, dates some more. And they are always much prettier than I am. He found something better, I'm sure."

  "Honey, he can't break up with you. You haven't dated. Go over there. And put on a clean shirt."

  Ugh. How does she know these things? "All right, but now I'll be late."

  Silence. See? More silence.

  "Take your time, dear."

  Really? she thought sarcastically.

  Compromise. She would call him, she decided. Then, go eat the meal of her dreams and watch something paranormal on Gloria's TV.

  Shit. Did she have his number? Where was a photographic memory when you needed it? Her heart sank. He didn't want to see her tonight. He was Duncan Reed and she was an idiot.

  He had those damned layers. Works and plays with Hollywood. Hides his gift when it would surely make him all the more famous. Never had a serious relationship with a woman as far as she could dig up. Viciously loves his family. Speaks like an English poet. Had callused hands of steel.

  She'd always been a good judge of character and didn't like it when people didn't fit into the pigeon holes she'd pegged for them.

  The texts. She looked up one of his texts and used it to call him.