“Why do you think that isn’t what happened?”

She said, “I’ve known you only a short time and one thing I see very clearly is that you’re not nasty. You’re an honest man, Harry. You say you’ll do something and you do it. You don’t make excuses when things don’t go right, and you don’t expect to hear any. That’s clearheaded, and it’s tough, but it’s not nasty.

“Well, maybe when I first met you I wanted to punch your lights out because you were posturing like a rooster. I think you enjoyed getting my reaction, you liked rubbing my nose in it, liked reminding me I was only the protection detail, not a member of the investigation team.” She ate another chip, never looking away from his face. “Not that I really mind posturing for the fun of it, mind you. You know one of the things I like best about you? You’re funny, you make me laugh. You have a good outlook, Harry.”

“I was shot three years ago in an aborted bank robbery.”

“Where?”

“At the Bank of America on Chestnut.”

She threw a Frito at him. “No, on your body? Where were you shot?”

He gave her a faint smile, stood up, and pulled out his shirt. She looked at a four-inch scar on his left side over his lower ribs. It had to really hurt, she thought. She’d never been shot, only punched a couple of times. She kept looking at him, couldn’t seem to drag her eyes away from that hard disciplined body.

He said as he quickly tucked his shirt back in and sat back down, “She freaked, and couldn’t get past it no matter what I said. Our three-year marriage went downhill fast when I refused to resign from the Bureau. Bottom line, it was her ultimatum.”

He picked the Frito she’d thrown at him off his sleeve. Then he looked at it in his hand and carefully laid it down on the tray. “I’d always heard it’s nearly impossible for cops to stay married—but I’d never thought about it, since my parents have been married forever. I mean, we were both good people, weren’t we? I was in love, and so was she. Before I asked her to marry me we talked about the high divorce rate among cops. I gave her all the stats, quoted a couple of articles. She scoffed at the idea that she—who had just passed the bar—could possibly be swayed by any of that. I told her my hours could be crazy and she said her hours wouldn’t always be her own, either, but she was nothing if not levelheaded, she’d have no problem dealing with the chance of violence bumping into our lives.

“To be honest, the entire time we dated, it was more or less nine-to-five for me. I went out of town only a couple of times to do some undercover, but it didn’t impinge much on our time together. But the threat, the reality of violence, it was always there, always lurking, and I knew it. I simply ignored it.

“I’ll tell you, Eve, it sucks to be a cliché.”

She wouldn’t want to be a cliché, either. He was right, what had happened to them was all too common, and maybe why she hadn’t ever set herself up in the marriage market again. “You want a beer now?”

“Sure.” He got up with her to go to the kitchen. “Sorry to unload my sorry history on you. I didn’t mean to. Actually, I have no idea why it popped out.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll turn twenty-nine on the twenty-sixth of January.”

“You ever get close to getting married?”

“Yeah, I was married, right out of college. It wasn’t long before I realized I wasn’t going to be the last notch on the moron’s belt. Truth is, after the moron, I don’t think any guy could make it past my dad and my brothers. They’d make hash of him.” She rolled her eyes. “They told me after my little misadventure—that’s what my brothers called my brief marriage—if any guy did me wrong again they’d bury him deep, never to be found.”

She got a couple of beers out of the refrigerator, handed him one. They clicked bottles and drank.

Eve said, “You ready to kiss my owie now and make it well?”

“Yes,” he said, putting his beer on the counter, “I think I am.”

Judge Sherlock’s home

Pacific Heights

Early Thursday morning

Thanksgiving Day

Sherlock opened her eyes to see Dillon standing over her.

A big smile bloomed because, quite simply, how could it not? Sherlock yawned and stretched. “What time is it?”

“A bit after six a.m. How are you feeling?”

Sherlock queried her head. The wound itself throbbed a bit, but there weren’t any voices inside her head screaming punk rock, and that was good.