LOVER UNDER COVER Page 9

  She lifted her head to look at him again, this time in nothing short of amazement. Was this the same man who had come here last night, intent on shattering what he thought were her foolish illusions about the kids who frequented the Zone? Was this gentle wisdom coming from the cop who had called her a sucker for believing in those kids?

  Perhaps this was not the cop, she thought, but the man.

  Perhaps this was the man who let his voice echo with unembarrassed pride in his own mother's courage. The man who had understood when his partner needed that woman's courage more than her own son did for a time. The man who had been so struck by some kind of mental image of Caitlin, hurt and bleeding, that he came back here late at night, on his own time, in an effort to warn her. There were, it seemed, many layers to Quisto Romero.

  "That was—" she hesitated, looking for the right words "—a most eloquent acceptance of my apology. Thank you."

  "You're welcome." He gave her that crooked grin that, despite her knowing it had probably been one of the main weapons in his arsenal of charm for years, still made her smile back. "But next time, if you please, warn me? So I can duck? You have a wicked right."

  "There won't be a next time," she promised fervently. "I feel badly enough about this one."

  "Thank you, querida. I feel safer now."

  His tone was light, teasing, and she laughed. But even as she did so, she became very much aware of the scant few inches between them on the couch. He seemed so close, much closer than he actually was, and she didn't understand why she was feeling so tense. Hastily she stood up, with an unsubtle look at the clock on the wall above her desk.

  "Nearly time to open," she said briskly.

  He rose, looking at her as if he'd sensed her haste—and the reason for it. "Do you get a bigger crowd on Fridays?"

  She nodded as she pulled open the center desk drawer. "Usually. Not as big as Saturday night, but bigger than during the week."

  "Rowdier?"

  "A little." She reached into the drawer, then paused, looking back at him. "But just weekend high spirits. They don't get nasty, if that's what you mean."

  "And the occasional stoned or drunk kid doesn't wander in off the street?"

  Caitlin sighed; he was back to thinking she was a fool. As soon as the exasperated sound escaped her, Quisto's hands came up in a gesture of denial.

  "That was not an … attack on your common sense. I'm truly curious. Maintaining such peace in what is, in some respects, a war zone is an amazing feat."

  Mollified, Caitlin answered him as she plucked the door keys out of the drawer. "Of course they wander in now and then. But the kids and I wander them right back out again."

  "And they just … let you?"

  "They know I'll call the police if I have to. And the other kids don't want the Neutral Zone shut down, which could happen if the police can show we're a nuisance, so they help keep things under control."

  "So you get them to act in their own best interests, is that it?"

  She smiled at him. "Exactly."

  He was silent, watching her, for a moment. Then he said slowly, "And you're hoping it will sink in that if they can keep this little corner of their world under control, they can do it elsewhere, as well?"

  Caitlin's breath caught. He understood. The tough, cynical Detective Quisto Romero understood.

  "Exactly," she repeated, her voice almost a whisper. "If I can just get them to realize they don't have to give in to the violence, the scare tactics, then they have a chance."

  "I wish you luck, Caitlin Murphy."

  He said it solemnly, almost like a benediction. There was no doubting his sincerity, and she felt a sudden tightness in her chest. Her fingers tightened around the keys. She had to turn away, afraid he might see the sudden sheen of moisture in her eyes. She didn't understand why or how this man's approval had become so important to her, but it had.

  She closed the drawer, saying, more as a distraction than anything else, "I'm hoping I get some of the older kids tonight, like I usually do on Fridays. I want to talk to a couple of them. I might be able to find something out."

  "Find something out?"

  His voice had changed somehow, but she couldn't quite pin down the difference. She walked out of the office, toward the front door, looking back over her shoulder to see that he was coming after her.

  "A couple of them knew Eddie," she explained. "He was kind of at that in-between stage, you know? Too old to be with the young ones, but not old enough for the older group." She reached the door, slid the key into the lock and turned it. "But he was always trying to hang out with the older kids, so some of them might know something—"

  "Caitlin—"

  "And I know at least one of them has been making noises about knowing somebody in the Pack. If I—"

  "Caitlin, stop!"

  She gave him a startled look as he gently but firmly grasped her shoulders, turning her away from the door. Then he reached over and turned the key in the opposite direction, locking the door again.

  "What's wrong?"

  "What's wrong?" He stared at her. "You're talking about poking around in a murder, probably committed by a group that accepts only the toughest of the street-gang survivors, and you're asking what's wrong?"

  "I'm just going to ask some questions."

  "And how long do you think it would take before the Pack got word you were poking that cute little nose of yours into their business?"

  She felt heat rise in her cheeks, and told herself it was due to anger at his arrogant interference, not the reference to her looks.

  "I wasn't going to come right out and ask them about the Pack," she said. "I'm not stupid."

  "I never said you were. But this isn't helping a kid with his homework."

  Her hands went to her hips, and she glared at him, indignation rolling off her in almost palpable waves. "So the little lady should stick to her schoolwork, is that it?"

  To her amazement, he grinned. "You're not going to have any luck proving me a sexist, Caitlin. Not with my mother. She thumped that out of us boys very early in life."

  She didn't know which took the wind so thoroughly out of her sails—that blasted grin, or the easy amusement and pride in his words.

  "Oh. What did you mean, then?"

  "I just meant," he said, "you should leave the investigating to the police. Just like we leave the teaching to you."

  "I'd be happy to leave the investigating to the police. If I had any idea who to leave it to. If I had any faith at all that anybody was really doing anything."

  "Somebody will be working on it."

  "Somebody? A fourteen-year-old boy is dead, and that's the best you can do—somebody will be working on it?"

  Quisto expelled a long breath. "I think it only fair to warn you, querida, you are in danger of proving an old, tired cliché true."

  "What cliché?" she asked, eyeing him warily.

  "That red hair signifies a temper to match."

  "My temper has nothing to do with it," she said sharply, although she could feel her grip on it falter. When she went on, the words came in a rush. "Eddie's dead, no one would believe he'd been murdered, and now that they do, his poor mother can't even bury the child. You and Gage both tell me you don't know a thing, can't find out a thing and don't even know who's assigned to the case, and no one seems to give a damn. I have a right to be angry!"

  She turned her back on him and unlocked the door. She pulled it open and saw a small group of kids clustered outside on the sidewalk. Regulars, some of the youngest, waiting for her to open.

  "Caitlin," Quisto said as the kids—three boys and two girls—headed toward the door, "I mean it. Stay out of this. It's far too dangerous."

  She stubbornly didn't answer him. Nor did she look at him, for fear that he would see the determination in her eyes.

  "Caitlin…" he said warningly.

  "I heard you," she muttered, acknowledging him but promising nothing. Then she raised her voice to a normal tone, ca
lling out to the kids cheerfully, "Hi, Matt! Sandra, you look great, I like your hair that way. Ah, Carlito, ven aquí. Mr. Cordero sent over a box of those cookies you like."

  She sensed, rather than saw, Quisto moving away. More kids arrived on the heels of the first, then more still, and when she finally had time to look around, he was gone.

  When the boy she'd been waiting for finally arrived, a couple of hours later, Quisto's warning played back in her mind. She hesitated, but she couldn't just let it go. Quisto's hands had been tied, and no one at Trinity West seemed to be pushing for any answers. Eddie's mother was shattered, beyond even asking the police what was being done about her son's murder, even if she'd been the sort to do so in the first place. No one else seemed to care except her.

  But she would be careful, she thought. She didn't want another lecture from Quisto; she'd already had quite enough of his opinions on her life and the way she ran it. Although, she had to admit, it gave her a warm feeling that he had bothered, that he had seemed genuinely worried about her. He'd even left her his card, with his home number scrawled on the back, and a pager number in case that didn't work. He'd been the very picture of honest concern. Her mouth twisted wryly; it was no doubt part of his reportedly legendary polished charm, giving women that feeling.

  But there hadn't seemed anything polished about his tense description of the grim, bloody image that had driven him back to the Neutral Zone last night. And little of conscious charm, and everything of warmth and honesty, in the way he'd held her afterward.

  When she finally talked to the boy, Quisto's concern and her own intentions seemed wasted; he merely stared at her with wide eyes, seemingly stunned that Eddie's death had been a murder. Perhaps all his talk about the Pack had been just that, she thought, talk.

  She tried a couple of the other older boys, but got the same reaction. The rumor that Eddie had overdosed had apparently been easily acceptable to these kids, who lived with that kind of occurrence on a daily basis.

  She was wondering what to do next when she was approached by Sandra, one of the quieter and more reserved of the older girls, who came in only occasionally.

  "You're crazy, asking questions like that," Sandra said, looking over her shoulder nervously, as if looking for anyone who might overhear them.

  "That seems to be the consensus," Caitlin muttered under her breath.

  Sandra pushed her sandy-blond hair back behind her right ear. "Alarico, he doesn't like anybody asking questions about the Pack," she warned.

  Caitlin froze, then tried to cover the reaction by reaching for the girl's empty glass. She hadn't said a word about the Pack, she'd only asked if anyone knew what had really happened to Eddie.

  "I'm sure he doesn't," she said after a moment, when she had her expression schooled to neutrality. "And he's a big man on the streets, isn't he? Head of the Pack now?"

  "You'd better be careful, Caitlin." Sandra leaned forward, whispering now, fear echoing in her voice. "My boyfriend, he … sort of hangs out with the Pack. He says there's one of them, a big Indian guy, he said, who's very scary. He takes care of things for Alarico, you know?"

  "Things?" Caitlin asked. Like maybe a kid who talked to the police?

  Sandra nodded vehemently. "He's nobody you want to mess with."

  "All I want to know is if anybody knows anything about what really happened to Eddie."

  "Let it go," Sandra urged her.

  "I can't," Caitlin said. "Somebody has to care."

  "Hey, we all liked Eddie. But you can't help him now. And he liked you a lot, Caitlin. He wouldn't want something to happen to you on account of him."

  "What's going to happen to me?"

  "Who knows, if you keep asking questions like this and it gets back to Alarico? And it will. He knows everything that goes on."

  "How?"

  Sandra glanced around again, the fear in her eyes growing. "He just does. He may hang out over on Steele Street

  , but he's got people everywhere, not just on the east side, you know?"

  Steele Street

  . The east side. Where they'd found Eddie, propped against a Dumpster, like so much garbage.

  "I gotta go," Sandra said, her fear finally winning out. "You just stop, okay?" The girl was nearly running by the time she reached the door.

  Everyone, it seemed, was determined to scare her off. First Quisto, now the kids. And all she'd done was ask a couple of simple questions. She hadn't even mentioned the Pack. But it was obvious that Sandra, at least, assumed that the Pack was behind Eddie's death. Had the girl already known it was murder? Had she heard something from her boyfriend? And what was his connection with that band of adult thugs, who could teach even the most vicious youth gangs lessons in savagery?

  She thought about it for the rest of the evening, and she was still thinking about it when at last she locked up and headed home. She knew she was right; even Quisto had admitted it was probably the Pack. But one girl's scared warning hardly constituted proof. And that was what she needed—proof. Something concrete, something she could take to the Marina Heights police station on Trinity West and wave in their face, something that would force them to get serious about this. Maybe Eddie had only been a kid, and maybe he hadn't meant much to anyone except his mother and her, but he deserved better than to have his death swept under the carpet like a dustball.

  She slept little that night. By morning, she was tired, angry and frustrated, wondering if there was any fairness at all in this world. It was no mood in which to be calling Eddie's bereaved mother, but she'd promised. Rosa was still heart-sore, and Caitlin listened to her wail, her Spanish failing her at some of the more intense moments. She had hoped that when Rosa learned her boy had been murdered, not died in that awful way, she would become angry enough to overcome her grief, but obviously the woman had not yet reached that point.

  That's okay, Caitlin thought. Soothing words of comfort were all she could offer for the moment as she said goodbye and hung up, thinking, I'm furious enough for both of us.

  And she was. Furious enough that when she left her small apartment—small because it was all she could afford, with the expenses of keeping the Neutral Zone open—instead of heading for the club, she turned her battered little blue compact toward the east side. And Steele Street

  .

  * * *

  He was going to stay away, Quisto told himself. And he was going to stop sitting here in his darkened apartment overlooking the marina, thinking about Caitlin Murphy. She was far too unsettling, and he didn't like being unsettled. He didn't know why or how she managed to do it, but she did. And, he admitted rather grimly, time and distance didn't seem to be helping much.

  He hadn't seen her since yesterday afternoon, when he'd walked out of the Neutral Zone, shaking his head in exasperation over the woman who couldn't see that she was swimming in shark-filled waters. He couldn't tell her that he wasn't giving up, especially when he was working not only without authorization, but actually against a direct order. He'd had to pretend he was doing nothing, and she'd come up with this half-baked plan of hers.

  He'd called Gage and asked him to have the uniforms go by the club a little more often than usual. He himself, on the other hand, would be keeping his distance.

  "Something wrong?" Gage had asked, concern in his voice.

  "Just a lady who can't take orders."

  There had been a pause before Gage said, "I know a cop or two like that."

  Quisto knew what the man was asking, and guessed from Gage's guarded language that he was being monitored somehow. "You pick up some … fleas or something?"

  "One-sided ones," Gage said, indicating that he didn't think his phone was tapped, only that he was being listened to on his end.

  "Great," Quisto muttered. "Just have Patrol keep an eye on the place, will you? I know they can't sit there, but I'm afraid she's going to be drawing some attention to herself with some questions she'd be better off not asking."

  Gage let out a low whistle. "
Damn."

  "Exactly. I told her not to, but I get the idea the lady's not much for orders."

  "No, she's not." There was a pause before Gage added, "You seem to be … spending a lot of time with her. There something going on there, Quisto?"

  "She's just driving me crazy," Quisto said wryly.

  "You want to define that for me?"

  Something in Gage's voice made Quisto remember his statement that he didn't know Caitlin as well as he'd like to. "Got her staked out already?"

  "No." Gage's tone was surprisingly flat. "I don't have … any room for that in my life right now."

  Quisto sensed there was a great deal behind those words, in the same way he'd once sensed that behind Chance Buckner's unflappable exterior was a haunted man. And he also sensed that Gage Butler was about as likely to talk about it as Chance had been.

  "But that doesn't mean I want to see her get hurt," Gage added.

  "Was that a warning?" Quisto asked, mildly curious.

  "Let's just say I've heard some stories recently about a certain Marina del Mar cop's success with the ladies."

  "My reputation precedeth me, is that it?"

  "Something like that."

  "Well, don't worry about it. There hasn't been much room for that in my life lately, either."

  He had hung up then, feeling more than a little embarrassed by the reputation he'd once been amused by, and perhaps even the tiniest bit proud of. He'd always told himself he wasn't hurting anyone, that he never kept it a secret that he played the field, never made any promises of exclusivity to any of the many women he saw on a casual or sometimes more serious basis. He'd been open and generous to them all, and he'd heard little in the way of complaints.

  Except, of course, from those who wanted more than he was willing to give.

  And if there had seemed something lacking in those effortless relationships of late, it was simply that he'd been preoccupied, busy, involved in some complex cases. It wasn't that his outlook had changed. It wasn't that his partner was a living, breathing example that something more existed, that it was possible to be absolutely crazy in love with somebody and have it returned.