Read an Excerpt
ONE
Head wounds were invariably bloody.
Detective Mackenzie Hoyle reminded himself of that basic fact a split second after he felt a stream of warm liquid trickle down his forehead. He wiped the back of his hand across his brow, then swore at the bright red blood smeared from his wrist to his knuckles.
“Cripes, what a way to start the day,” he muttered, taking two prudent steps back from the shattered schoolroom window before checking for further damage.
Miraculously, his shirt and tie had survived the incident unscathed, as had his black oxfords and charcoal-gray slacks. But the gray herringbone sport coat he’d bought just the week before hadn’t been so lucky, he noticed, more than a little ticked off by the splotch of blood on the cuff of the left sleeve. Damn. He’d worn the thing only twice.
“Excuse me, sir. Are you waiting for me?”
Hoyle turned his head in the direction of the voice, and winced at the sharp pain that shot through his neck and down his arm. A dull ache began to pound inside his head. He forced himself to ignore it, instead focusing his attention on the woman standing in the classroom doorway.
He took in the essential details in one glance: Blond hair, blue eyes, an inch or two over five feet, weighing no more than one hundred pounds. The phrase “cute as a button” sprang to mind.
Hoyle drew his brows together into a frown, immediately vowing that if this was Miss Rebekah de Bieren—the teacher he’d come to talk to about his latest murder case—he’d eat his billfold. And the inspector’s badge inside.
“Actually,” he began, “I was waiting for—”
“Uh-oh,” she said, her eyes widening as her gaze swept from the gaping hole in the classroom window, to the rock lying on the floor near his left foot, to the thin line of blood bisecting his forehead. “Looks like someone scored a bull’s-eye this time.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” he replied, and allowed himself a more leisurely inspection of the young woman. He was suddenly very curious to know who she was.
Definitely not a teacher, he decided. She looked too young, too hip, too sweet in a girl-next-door sort of way.
Her cheeks were smooth, wrinkle-free, no doubt soft to the touch. Her short hair was stick straight and cut in a jagged fashion that had been popular sometime in the sixties, uneven spikes feathering across her forehead and framing her face in a haphazard way. And her clothes—neon pink-and-yellow parachute pants with matching T-shirt, separated by an extrawide black belt that made her waist look small, real small—were about as unteacherish as they could get.
“You know, this never should have happened,” she said, shaking her head in obvious disgust as she dumped her armload of books and a red-and-black-plaid thermos on the teacher’s desk.
Teacher’s desk?
Hoyle muttered a disbelieving expletive and reached for his wallet. Then he remembered that no one had witnessed his impulsive vow to lunch on leather and let his hand fall to his side. Lucky break, he thought, more than a little relieved one of his buddies at the precinct hadn’t caught him jumping to conclusions. They’d never let him live it down.
“The taxpayers think they’re so clever,” she continued as she rummaged through her purse, “voting down education measures year after year. Okay, so they pay less in taxes, have a few more dollars to spend going out to the movies or to dinner at some fancy restaurant. But look who suffers—the poor children, that’s who.”
Suffering children? Hoyle thought. At the moment, be was the one suffering, all because one of those “poor” little buggers had heaved a rock through a school window and clobbered him on the head.
“Whoever threw that rock,” she went on, “should be the star pitcher on the school baseball team. But we don’t have a baseball team. And do you know why?” she asked, still digging through her handbag.
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Because we lost our funding for after-school activities a long time ago.” She shook her head. “It’s a crying shame to waste that kind of talent on mere vandalism, don’t you agree, Mr … ?”
“Hoyle. Detective Hoyle. Santa Ana Police Department.”
She jerked her head up and locked her gaze with his. Satisfied he’d finally managed to secure her undivided attention, he reached inside his coat pocket with his clean hand and retrieved his wallet. Using his thumb, he flipped it open and flashed his gold shield. “Homicide Division,” he added, taking perverse pleasure in the startled look on her face.
She blinked a couple of times, then drew herself up to her full height. “Homicide?” she repeated. “Your wound must be more serious than I thought.”
“Not that serious,” he replied, silently commending the way she’d recovered her composure so quickly. Still, he didn’t laugh at her joke. As far as he was concerned, assault on a police officer—though unintentional—was no laughing matter.
“Well, I’d better take a look.” She dug deeper into her purse, came up with a wad of tissues, then rushed over to him. Stretching her arm up, she wiped away some of the blood. “Tip your head down a little, will you?”
Without waiting for him to comply, she pressed on his chin until his eyes were aimed at a pair of white sneakers with neon-yellow laces. She stood on her tiptoes, first brushing his hair away from his forehead, then dabbing at the cut.
Her fingers were warm, her touch soft as a lover’s caress. Cupping his face in her hands, she tipped his head to one side, then the other, making hmmmmlike noises as she inspected the damage.
“Typical head wound,” she finally stated, sounding somewhat exasperated by her discovery. “Plenty of blood, but when you get right down to it, minimal damage.”
He listened to her pronouncement, noticing with interest that one of her hands was now resting on his shoulder. “Are you suggesting I’m hardheaded?” he asked, his mood suddenly lighter than it had been in weeks.
She laughed. “That remains to be seen.” Taking hold of his hand, she pulled him toward the door. “Come on, we’d better get you cleaned up.”
His attention captured by the slender curve of her hips as she led him briskly down the hall, he followed without protest. One part of his mind took note of the fact that she needed two short steps to every one of his, while the other pondered her strange reaction to the start of her school day.
She’d taken it all in stride—having a rock thrown through her window, the glass littering the floor, his being hurt. He couldn’t help wondering if she’d witnessed so many violent situations, she’d gotten used to them. The way he had.
He rejected that notion immediately. In spite of the nothing-rattles-me routine, she had a freshness about her, a sparkling innocence in her clear blue eyes that led him to believe she wasn’t as tough as she sounded.
She couldn’t possibly be, he told himself, refusing for some reason to even consider that her tough-guy act was no act at all.
“Here we are,” she said, pausing in front of a door marked First Aid Room. She pulled a ring of keys out of the pocket of her pants and unlocked the door. Flipping on the light with one hand, she pointed to a bench with the other. “Sit.”
Any doubts he’d been clinging to about her being a teacher—or her ability to control a classroom full of kids—vanished. Only teachers gave orders with that kind of authority and expected them to be followed without argument.
Teachers and cops, he amended as he removed his jacket and sat down.
She walked over to the telephone on the wall by the door and dialed a two-digit number. While she waited for someone to pick up on the other end, she paced in the opposite direction as far as the spiral cord would allow.
“Helen,” she said a half minute later. “This is Becky. Someone tried to air-condition my civics classroom again this morning.… Yes, third time this month. Um-hmm, I know.” She glanced at him briefly over her shoulder, her gaze flicking to the cut on his head. “Darned dangerous. Do you think Abe will be able to get the window boarded before school starts?” She looked down at her watch, then ran her hand through her hair. The straight blond strands floated up briefly before drifting back in place around her face. “Thanks. I appreciate it.” She hung up the phone, then strode over to the cabinet above the sink.
Hoyle watched her bustle about, gathering speed as she went along like a hurricane in its prime. She opened cupboard doors and drawers, and in no time she had a full complement of first-aid supplies set out to the right of the sink in a line as straight as a row at roll call in the police academy. Her scrub routine—aided by the use of a soft-bristled brush and steaming hot water—was equally impressive.
Under normal circumstances, he would have felt foolish letting her make such a fuss over what she’d already declared to be nothing more than a simple flesh wound. But thus far, normal was the last word he would use to describe anything that had happened since the moment he’d stepped into her classroom.
Besides, he was starting to think that in spite of a brand-new sport coat that was history and a headache that was worthy of the record books, getting beaned in the noggin wasn’t so bad after all. Especially since all this quality attention seemed to be included in the deal.
After filling it with water, she set a small stainless steel bowl on the edge of the counter closest to him, then came over to where he sat. He spread his knees wide, and she stepped between his legs, all her concentration focused on the cut on his forehead.
