who happens to be blond

ILENCE THRUMMED AROUND US, and suddenly it felt as if everyone else in the world had been sucked into oblivion. Rivera took a step toward me, and I, like a fly drawn to sticky paper, took a step toward him.

Feelings bubbled like boiling tar through me. Memories buzzed along my t.i.ttering nerve endings. And each of them featured Rivera. In some of them he was wearing clothes. In all of them he was touching me, burning me with his hands, branding me with his eyes.

"Jack," someone said, but the voice seemed to come from a long way away. "Jack," she said again, louder now and whinier. He halted on a teetering step.

I stopped.

"Jack honey." We turned our heads in unison. The woman who tugged at his sleeve was blond, pet.i.te, and cute enough to be in a pet-store window.

"Our tables ready." She had a voice vaguely reminiscent of a certain cartoon mouse. "We have to go."

The world stood frozen, waiting, and then Officer Tavis spoke. "You must be Lieutenant Rivera."

We stared at my undate in unbreathing tandem.

He was smiling tentatively and extending his broad hand. Rivera did neither. Instead, he turned back toward me, eyes as sharp as a cobras. But the searing pa.s.sion was gone, replaced by a thousand watts of frustration and contempt and another dozen emotions I could neither read nor catalog. "Making up for lost time, McMullen?" he rumbled.

My heart was pounding like a runaway broomtail. "Rivera," I breathed. My voice sounded funny, like something from a crackly old movie, too melodramatic to be taken seriously.

Still, he almost moved toward me. I could sense it in the tightness of his jaw, in the snap of his eyes, but finally he fisted a hand and exhaled.

"Feeding him first to keep up his strength?" he asked. His eyes were flat now, his tone the same.

Minnie Mouse had linked her arm through his. She looked proprietary and c.o.c.ky and bleached to the bone. Inexplicable anger coursed through me like lava in a lamp. "Rent A Blonde still open?" I asked.

He scoured Tavis's long form. "Least I didn't have to pay by the inch."

"Officer Tavis happens to be a respected-"

"Officer!" he snorted, and threw back his head and laughed.

I'm not sure what happened next. One moment I was standing there like a relatively sane human being and then I was torpedoing forward without any kind of lucid plan in my head. But in that instant Tavis grabbed me around the waist and snagged me back to his side.

I think I heard him swear.

"Let me go." My voice sounded a little rabid.

Tavis's sounded like he was speaking to something that slavered. "Not 'til you calm down." His lips were very close to my ear.

Rivera stared at me for another heart-pounding second, then turned and walked away, Minnie on his arm.

"Chrissy?"

"I'm calm," I rasped.

"And I'm the king of Albania. Come on," Tavis ordered, and prodded me toward the door. For a couple of seconds I'm afraid I might have actually tried to break away-kind of like a pit bull on a short leash. But eventually we were outside. Past the ogling diners. Past the stunned hostess. The air felt cool against my hot cheeks. Tavis tucked me into his car, touching the top of my head like they do on Cops when the perp is safely handcuffed and subsequently packed into the backseat for safekeeping. At least I was up front like one of the big kids who can be trusted with a radio and sharp objects.

We sat in silence for a long time. I could feel him staring at me. In fact, I was pretty sure I could hear him thinking, What the h.e.l.l...

"What the h.e.l.l?" he said finally, tone amazed and, maybe, if he had a sick-a.s.s sense of humor, a little amused.

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the hideously fresh memories. They were like a broken reel, running circles in my head. "Tell me, Officer Tavis," I said, voice blessedly calm, "do you happen to own a handgun?"

"I am a cop," he said.

I nodded, seeing the logic. "Would you mind shooting me?"

He chuckled, sat for a while longer, and finally started up the car.

We pulled smoothly out of the parking lot onto the cross street. Traffic buzzed past. I watched the cars, maybe fascinated by their progress, maybe too embarra.s.sed to face another human being for as long as I lived.

"Sorry about touching you," he said.

I didn't respond.

"But I was afraid you were going to kill him." He paused, reflecting on that. "Or... something."

I wished a little dimly that I had a gun, although, if the truth be told, I wasn't really sure what I would do with it. I have a pretty strong sense of self-preservation. If I owned a handgun I was more likely to shoot Rivera than myself, and, if I remember correctly, there's a fairly stiff penalty for killing an officer of the law.

"Want to tell me about it?" he asked, and glanced across the plush seat covering toward me.

"I'd rather shove a hot fork up my-" I took a careful breath, found a little bit of sanity. "I'd rather not. Thank you."

I could sense him grinning but didn't feel quite prepared to look at him. Anger and I don't get on well, and I was pretty sure that my rage could, fairly easily, be transferred from one cop to another.

"Shall I a.s.sume it's not over between you two?" he asked.

"Oh..." I felt extremely tired suddenly. "It's over."

"So you don't care about him anymore?"

I think I shook my head.

"I see. Do you always make that sound when you see someone you don't care about?"

I still didn't bother to look at him. "I didn't make a sound."

"Uh-huh... It was kind of like a wild animal in pain." He thought for a minute. "Or maybe a dog in-"

I snapped my gaze to his.

He cleared his throat and faced forward. "Well, you're not a dull date, Christina McMullen. I'll give you that."

I let my eyes fall closed and took a fortifying breath. "I'm sorry," I said, and he laughed.

"It's all right. Things were getting a little slow at the station."

I sighed. "Glad to lend you grist for the gossip mill."

He pulled up to my curb, turned the car off, and faced me. "I don't not kiss and tell, Chrissy."

I stared at him. He was really good-looking, and he seemed like a nice guy. Though, truth to tell, I generally don't have the capacity to differentiate a nice guy from a serial killer. It's something of a character flaw in a licensed psychologist. And in a woman who hopes for continued survival.

"So what's going on with you two?" he asked.

I tried to stay silent, but he had the kind of eyes you talk to. "We just...We're like hairspray and a pack of Camels. Everything's going along fine. You're feeling good, made-up, coiffed, having yourself a smoke, then suddenly-poof, your beehives gone up in flame."

"You ever..." He paused, perhaps searching for terms that wouldn't make me rip out his throat. "Have you been intimate with him?"

"Intimate!" I think I guffawed. I might have chortled. And I may have hacked up a hairball. "No one's intimate with Rivera."

He nodded. "Okay. You screw him?"

I took a deep breath. Glanced out my window and shook my head. "Never quite got around to that, either."

"Maybe you should."

I snapped my attention back to his. He shrugged.

"Get it out of your system," he said.

I shook my head slowly.

"Or..." he suggested. "For the right incentive I might be willing to sacrifice myself and play replacement. You know, for the well-being of your obviously deranged psyche."

This didn't seem like a likely time to laugh, and yet I did. The tension went out of my body. My shoulders slumped. I dropped my head back on the rest behind me. "What the h.e.l.l is wrong with me?"

"Well..." He let out a breath, sounding as if he'd been holding it for a while. "I've got two guesses. Want to hear them?"

I didn't look at him. "No."

"You're either h.o.r.n.y..."

I rolled my face toward him, eyes deadly flat.

He grinned. "Or you're in love."

I blinked. "I was planning to be insulted by the h.o.r.n.y comment, but now I'm torn."

"You still saying you have no feelings for him?"

"Would you believe it if I really threw myself into selling it?"

"Well..." He glanced forward, tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. "You two looked kind of Animal Planet. The lion and the wildebeest."

"Am I the lion or the wildebeest?"

"Could go either way."

I closed my eyes. "Have I apologized yet?"

"Yeah, but if you're really sorry, you could make it up to me by-"

"I'm not going to sleep with you."

He chuckled, then sighed. "Is that why you're doing this?"

"Doing what?"

"Scratching at the Baltimore case. Is it to impress him?"

I thought about that for a second. "Actually, that's why he's not speaking to me."

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "He wants you to stay out of it. Police business and all that."

"We have history."

"Any of it good?"

"Not much."

"But he's under your skin."

"Did you guess that intuitively?"

He laughed, tapped the steering wheel again, then went sober. "I got a call from the governor."

I turned toward him, mind shifting gears. "About Baltimore?"

He held my gaze. "About meth houses."

I shook my head.

"He said we've got to concentrate all our efforts on cracking down on the meth labs. That he made a promise to his const.i.tuents."

My mind was churning. "Do you think he wants to make sure you don't look into Baltimore's death?"

He didn't respond, but his expression said that I'd guessed right for once. "Meth's a big problem in the rural areas."

"You don't think her death was an accident."