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“Her,” Raintree responded without glancing up to his neighbors. “My new partner is a girl.”
He’d said “girl” just to rile her, Hope knew, so she did her best not to react to the gibe.
“Oh.” Honey sighed. “Well, you can bring her. I guess.” She sounded decidedly less enthusiastic, all of a sudden.
“Thanks, but we’ll pass. We have work to discuss. Isn’t that right, Detective Malory?”
Busted. Hope took a few steps so that she was caught in the soft light cast from both decks. It was apparently too late to hide. Was Raintree dangerous? Maybe he was. He looked dangerous enough. Then again, she was armed and knew how to defend herself, if it came to that. Somehow, she didn’t think it would.
“That’s right,” she said, as she walked through sand and tall sea grass to the boardwalk.
“How long have you been down there?” Honey asked.
“Just a few minutes.”
“You sure were quiet.”
“I was just admiring the view.”
The brunette sighed. “We certainly do understand that.”
Hope felt herself blush. She’d meant the beach, of course, but from the tone of the bimbo’s voice they thought she meant…Oh, no. She did not want Raintree thinking she enjoyed looking at him. Even if she did. “I love the water.”
“Me, too,” Gideon said.
Hope bounded easily over the railing to join him.
“Come on inside,” he said, turning his back on her and leading the way. “I guess you’re here to talk about the Bishop case.”
“Yeah,” she said brightly. “I hope you don’t mind me dropping by this way.”
He glanced over his shoulder and smiled, wickedly amused. “Not at all, Detective Malory. Not at all.”
She was up to something. Pretty Detective Hope Malory was so wound up, so filled with an electricity of her own kind, that if he laid his hands on her, they would probably both explode. Not necessarily a bad idea.
“I’m going to change.” Gideon gestured toward the kitchen. “Help yourself to something to drink and I’ll be right back.”
Echo had slept here for a few hours and then driven to Charlotte. He’d talked to her on the phone, before heading out for a quick swim. She was still upset, but the panic had faded somewhat. Whether he liked it or not, Dewey was actually helping with the difficult situation.
It didn’t take Gideon five minutes to put on dry clothes and towel dry his hair, and the entire time he kept asking himself, Why is Malory here? What does she want? If there were early results from the crime scene techs’ study of the murder scene, they would call him, not her. If she had a theory—and that was all she could possibly have at this point—it could have been communicated by telephone. The owner of the club where Echo’s band often played hadn’t been any help at all. So why was Malory here?
He found out pretty quickly, right after stepping into the living room to find his new partner sitting in a leather chair with a glass of cold soda in one hand. “Nice place, Raintree,” she said as her eyes scanned the walls almost casually. “How do you manage this on a cop’s salary?”
So that was it. She thought he was dirty, and she was here to find out how dirty. Did she want to join him in profitable corruption or toss his ass in jail? He would guess she was the ass-tossing sort, but he’d been wrong about women before. “My family has money.” He headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to make myself something to drink.”
She nodded to the opposite side of the room, where a glass of soda much like hers sat on a coaster. “I already fixed you a drink.”
“How do you know what I want? Psychic?”
Again that fleeting but brilliant smile. “Your fridge was full of the stuff. I took a shot.”
Gideon lowered himself into a chair. Was it coincidence that she had placed his glass as far away from her chair as possible? No. Not a coincidence at all. Malory liked to look tough, but now and then he saw a hint of the skittish beneath her skin. When she’d talked about her mother falling and how she might need her daughter, when he’d looked her in the eye…he’d seen the vulnerability in her.
She had certainly done her best to look tough tonight, in her black jeans and black T-shirt and pistol. “Family money,” she said, prompting him to continue.
“Yeah.”
“What kind of family money?”
