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“You going to be able to get yourself to the hospital?” I asked.

“I’m an officer of the law.”

“Of course. I forgot,” I said, but I couldn’t help noticing that he stumbled when he turned. Conscience kicked in. Something about my brother facedown in the peonies and my own stinging behind. “Where’s your car?” I asked.

He bobbed his head toward the street, and we found his vehicle a minute later—a dark Jeep with a detachable roof. “Get in,” he said. “I’ll give you a lift.”

I eyed him. He didn’t look up to breathing, much less driving.

“How ’bout I drive, you sit?”

He canted his head at me. “You trying to seduce me, McMullen?”

I considered running him over, but I just told him he was an ass and took his keys. He relinquished them without much argument, then rounded the bumper and eased into the passenger seat. Even in the darkness, he looked limp and exhausted. Oh, crap.

“Which hospital?” I asked.

“Just take me home.”

“Good idea. Then I can make an appointment right away to ID your dead body in the morning.”

“I didn’t think you cared, McMullen.”

“So astute. Which hospital?”

He exhaled carefully and touched a hand to his head. “I just need some sleep.”

“Glendale or Huntington Memorial?”

“Fourteen twenty-two Rosehaven. Want to carry me up to my bedroom? I hear you make house calls.”

“Bite me.”

“Not here,” he said. “It’s against the law. But anything goes in the privacy of my bedchamber.”

I considered opening his door and kicking him into the street, but in order to do that I’d have to reach across his lap, and that seemed tantamount to sniffing cookie dough while dieting. “You scared of doctors, Reeves?” I asked.

“I don’t like to undress in front of strangers.”

“Really.”

He nodded, but his head was listing against the Jeep’s gray cushion. “Mother Superior taught me better than to show off.”

I gave him a look, but it was wasted. His eyes had fallen closed.

“What part of Rosehaven?” I asked.

“Simi.”

I lifted a brow at him. Simi was a posh part of town. “On the take, Lieutenant?”

“Ha,” he said, and I wondered silently about his father, the affluent bastard senator.

“That what you’re interested in, McMullen?” he asked. “Money?”

I started up the Jeep and eased into the street. There wasn’t another moving vehicle as far as the eye could see. “Isn’t everyone?”

“No,” he said and left it like that.

I looked at him. “Just out to get your man?”

“Or woman.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree.”

He touched his head again. “Feels like I fell out of the damned tree. What the hell were you doing in Bomstad’s yard?”

“I told you—”

“The diary’s police property now.”

My heart rate bumped up as I jerked toward him. “You found it?”

He opened his eyes to slits, but didn’t bother to lift his head. “The Bomber led an interesting life.”

My mind buzzed. “Then you know I had nothing to do with his death.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Because you were only interested in him professionally.”

See, there was the sticky part. But my own private fantasies had no basis in reality. Never had, if truth be told.

“Seems he was more interested in the nonprofessional side of
you,
though,” he said.

I stared at him. He was just baiting me. Wasn’t he? I mean, the Bomb had been found with a hard-on the size of the Getty Center. Any half-wit could deduce he wasn’t much interested in my diploma.

“Ever heard of Stephanie Meyers, McMullen?”

My breath caught in my throat, but my mind was flipping out. Was he trying to trap me? Trying to tie the starlet’s death to Bomstad and Bomstad’s to me?

“Isn’t she an actress?” I said, keeping my tone oh so casual.

I could feel his gaze strike me through the darkness. “Was. She died a few months ago.”

I focused my serious expression on the street. “The entertainment field is fraught with emotional pitfalls.”

For a moment the car was silent, and then he laughed. “Fraught with emotional pitfalls? Is that how you talk to your patients?”

“Forgive me if I prefer to maintain a professional image,” I said.

The sound he made defied description. “Well, it worked for the Bomb, huh? Blasted his rocket.”

I tried to think of something scalding to say, but he was already continuing. “He and Stephanie had a thing for a while.”

“Stephanie Meyers?” I didn’t even try to keep the surprise out of my tone. Rivera and I had something of a history and he had yet to call me by my first name. But his relationship with the late starlet seemed rather personal.

He had turned to gaze out the window. “She was just a kid.”

“You knew her?”

“Our paths crossed from time to time.”

Did those paths traipse through his bedroom? I could imagine them together—him, dark and protective; her, bright and dynamic.

“She was seeing a psychiatrist,” he said.

I almost winced. “I didn’t cause her death,” I said. “Neither did her therapist.”

“He didn’t prevent it, either,” he said, and there was something in his voice, a raw frustration that made me think he believed
he
should have prevented it.

“I’m sorry.” It was a poor substitute for anything constructive, but it seemed to deflate his rigid anger.

“What’d you see in him?” he asked. “In Bomstad.”

“As I told you before—”

“Fuck that,” he said but there was no aggression in his voice now, just tired resignation. “What would she have seen in him?”

“Meyers?”

“Yeah.”

Had Rivera been in love with her? Was he still? “I think you know the answer to that,” I said.

“Humor me.”

I passed the only car on the highway. L.A. felt strangely deserted at three in the morning.

“I’m considering the possibility that he was schizophrenic,” I said.

“Split personality?”

“That’s a bit simplistic. But yes. He seemed to be so gentle and . . . He was very convincing,” I said.

“Convincing how?”

“He seemed genuinely kind, interested in others. Sensitive, even.”

“And you didn’t look into his background?”

“I had no reason to believe he was anything other than the image he chose to project.”

He gazed into the night, a dark man with dark thoughts. “What image do I project?”

The image of a man who’s been wounded by life,
I thought, but shoved the idea behind me. It was not my place to try to fix him. It probably couldn’t even be done. “When was the last time you slept?” I asked.

He turned wearily toward me, “You think I’m delirious, McMullen?”

“Fatigue has been known to change a person’s personality.”

“What’s my personality now?”

Tired. And disturbingly vulnerable, like a battle-weary soldier, but I watched the road and refused to be drawn into his private war. I had gotten over my weakness for vulnerability a long time ago. Now I just wanted someone who used a single toothbrush each morning and didn’t fantasize about the same guys I did. “I don’t think now would be the proper time to analyze you, Rivera.”

He snorted. “I am what you see.”

“That’s what I thought about Bomstad.”

He nodded slowly. “Was he capable of murder?”

“What?”

“In your opinion,” he said. “Did he have the temperament to take another person’s life?”

“It’s difficult to . . .” I began, but his meaning kicked in suddenly. “You think he killed Meyers?”

He looked at me, then scrubbed his hand over his face. “I wish to hell I knew. I keep thinking about it. Thinking—” He paused.

“Maybe you need to quit thinking for a while,” I said. “Get some sleep.”

He nodded. “Sleep. Nice idea.”

“You’re an insomniac?”

“You shrinks have big words for everything?”

“It makes us feel superior. The one with the biggest word wins.”

“Like guns in my line of work.”

Our eyes met in the darkness. His looked tired and sad and honest, and there is nothing more dangerous than honesty to a woman who hasn’t had sex in over a . . . while. “You got a big gun, Lieutenant?”

“Want to come in and find out?”

More than anything. “I’m not that interested in artillery.”

“You never know, you might like it if you try it.”

“I was speaking metaphorically.”

“Me, too.”

I couldn’t help but smile. It was entirely possible that I’d never smiled at him before, but then he’d usually been accusing me of a capital offense. It tends to put a strain on a relationship. “I have one hard, fast stipulation, Rivera: I don’t sleep with men who have accused me of murder.”

“That rule out many guys?”

“You’re the first.”

“Bad luck for me. Would it help if I told you I have an M-fifty-seven?”

“Is that a gun or a disease?”

“I’m disease-free. It’s documented.”

“Girl can hardly ask for more than that.”

“Well . . .” He shrugged. “And the—”

“M-fifty-seven,” I finished for him.

“You always read people’s minds?” he asked.

“I’m a trained professional,” I said, “and men’s minds are pretty one-track.”

He didn’t try to deny it. “But it’s not a bad track.”

No, I thought, and wondered a bit dizzily how big an M57 really was.

“Come in,” he said. “Find out.”

I shot a glance toward him, terrified I’d spoken out loud.

“I’m a trained professional,” he said. “And a year is a long time.”

“I didn’t say it had been a year.”

“How long, then?”

Fourteen months, five days, and about six hours. I hadn’t been sleeping much lately, either. I’d had a lot of time to figure it out. “You need to have someone examine your head,” I said.

“You could do that . . . after.”

He was staring at me. If I weren’t so grounded I would say his eyes were bottomless and enigmatic. Since I was grounded, I’d have to call them so fucking sexy it made my mouth go dry. “I’m not a doctor, Rivera.”

“We could pretend,” he said and reached across the car to touch my cheek.

I managed to keep the Jeep on the road and continue to breathe. What a woman.

“I’m not going to play doctor with you,” I said.

He pressed my hair back. I suppressed a shiver like Xena, Warrior Princess.

“What if I pass out on the way up to my bedroom? Hit my head on the newel post. Never come to. That’d be the second death you’d be associated with.”

“Are you trying to threaten me?”

“Actually, I’m trying to seduce you.”

Hot damn!

“I hate it when women confuse the two,” he added.

“Don’t you have some kind of rules against fraternizing with suspects?”

“We could call it interrogation. Or therapy.”

For him or me? “I don’t think so.”

He leaned closer. He smelled like jazz music and wood smoke. His lips were warm and firm when they touched my neck. I shivered down to my socks, and I may have moaned a little. I’ve got a lot of pride, but my hormones are sluts down to the core.

“Christ, you’re making me crazy,” he said, and slipped a hand under my sweater.

My nipples went stiff. I told myself it didn’t mean anything, but suddenly the Jeep was bumping up against the nearest curb, and my fingers were wrapping themselves in his shirt. He growled like a pit bull when he kissed me, like an animal on the edge of control. Suddenly his buttons were gone. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t my fault, but they sprayed around the car like fireworks gone mad.

His hands were on my skin, hot and handy and ready. I squirmed beneath him, my mind fuzzy, my hormones buzzing.

He was already on top of me. I was stretched out on the seat, trying not to pant.

Then someone rapped on the window.

Rivera’s head jerked up, and with that motion, a ton of temporarily misplaced sanity came pounding back to me.

Mortified, I squirmed out of his grip. He sat up and blinked at the lights that beamed above Glendale Health Center.

He was already cursing as I slid out the door and onto the pavement. There was an ambulance driver standing only inches away. I grabbed his hand and pressed Rivera’s keys into it.

“Concussion,” I said, panting like a broken-down racehorse. “He needs immediate attention.”

21

Generally, men are superior in the area of heavy lifting, where they’re surpassed only by pachyderms and building cranes. Beyond that, I believe any right-thinking person will see that women have the indisputable advantage.

—Regina Stromburg, Ph.D.,
Coordinator of Women’s Studies

I
TOOK A CAB HOME from the hospital, but the rest of the night was worthless. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think. Even ice cream failed to work its usual magic. Lying down made me as jittery as butter on a skillet and pacing was nothing but a waste of hard-earned fat molecules.

I paced anyway. I’d done the right thing, I told myself. I hadn’t dragged Rivera into the backseat of his Jeep and ripped off his clothes. Okay, I’d kind of ripped off his clothes, but I had refrained from sabotaging my life. I’d kept my head. I’d even delivered him to the hospital, just like a real adult. Not that he’d seemed very appreciative. In fact, he’d acted mad enough to eat nails. Or me. I paced again, my mouth going dry at the thought.

I’d done the right thing, I reiterated. I was a professional now. A psychologist. I didn’t make out in the parking lot with some guy who made me crazy. But damned if I hadn’t wanted to. I couldn’t forget how he had looked, how he had felt, how he had smelled—

My thoughts screeched to a halt as scents filled my memory. Rivera had smelled good, like musky midnight, but I had smelled something else when we’d been beneath Bomstad’s window. It was . . . perfume. Holy crap! Reality burst in my mind like a tencent firecracker.

The man who’d jumped Rivera hadn’t been a man at all. He was a woman!

I
only had four appointments the next day. So I spent my lunch hour at the mall, testing scents and trying to recall every detail of the previous night. By two o’clock I was as horny as a teenage tuba player, remembering some parts of the evening better than others, but finally I narrowed the scent down to three finalists . . . maybe. It was impossible to be sure, of course, but since I had nothing else to go on, it seemed to be my best bet.