He leaned to the side and looked over my shoulder. Satisfied, he looked back at me, his hair already dripping wet. When he raised a hand to my face, I flinched, but only ’cause I thought he was going to break my neck or something. Stuff like that tended to happen to me. Instead, he ran his fingers over my brows, pushing my dripping wet bangs out of my eyes. Then he bowed slightly and headed back to the driver’s side.

“She’s alive,” he told Smith, and I realized he was talking about Mimi.

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me who you work for?” I asked him.

“You might say we work for the big guy.”

“God?”

He fought a grin. “Come down a step, as in commander in chief.”

“Then this does have something to do with the seat in the Senate.”

“Something, yes.”

“Damn, they don’t mess around. Wait, so, Kyle Kirsch did this after all?”

He squinted his eyes and shrugged. “Look farther north.”

“Oh, come on. That’s all you’re giving me?”

“We did just save your life,” he said, brows raised.

I snorted. “Please, I totally had that.”

Smith chuckled and shook his head. “I have to say, this was the most interesting assignment I’ve ever been on.” He leveled a regret-filled gaze on me. “I’ll miss you. And your boxer shorts.” He looked past me into the shadows. “Get that woman to the police. She has quite a story to tell.”

After one more solid pounding, Ulrich strode past me with a nod and climbed in the backseat. I had a sneaking suspicion I would never see them again. As they drove off, Cookie and Mimi tackled me from behind, and I was soon ensconced in the most suffocating group hug I’d ever been ensconced in.

* * *

Blue and red lights undulated over the buildings as a plethora of police and emergency vehicles cordoned off the alley. Two EMTs loaded a handcuffed Evil Murtaugh into the back of an ambulance while another EMT was seeing to a concussed Hulk. He moaned a lot. I knew how he felt. I stepped over to watch them load Evil just as two men in crisp suits walked up to me. There seemed to be a lot of crisp suits around lately. Dillard’s must have had a sale.

“Ms. Davidson?” one of them asked.

I nodded. Now that all the excitement was over, my back was stinging. Evil Murtaugh had ruined a perfectly good jacket and left a bit of a fissure across my spine. I squirmed in my jacket, trying to ease the discomfort.

“I’m Agent Foster with the FBI.” He held up his ID. “And this is Special Agent Powers.”

“Yeah, right,” I said with a snort. “I’ve heard that before.”

Agent Foster’s expression didn’t change. “So we were told. That’s why we’d like to talk to you before we question this man.”

I looked into the ambulance at Evil. “Sucks when the real deal shows up.”

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute,” Uncle Bob said as he strode toward me.

“I think I’m probably off to the station,” I told the agents.

“We’ll meet you there.”

“Are you injured? How’s your head?” Uncle Bob asked. He was such a softy.

“Better than yours. Have you considered electroshock therapy?”

He blew out a long breath. “You’re still mad at me.”

“Ya think?”

* * *

As it turned out, Evil Murtaugh and Evil Riggs were related. Cousins or something. Big surprise. They both hailed from Minnesota and had been in and out of trouble their whole lives. But nothing like murder. At least, not that we knew of.

The station was like a melting potty of old and new cases by the time we arrived. Morning was burning its way across the horizon as Cookie sat with Mimi in an interview room for support while Mimi gave her statement. They’d both been wrapped in blankets and given hot chocolate. All things considered, they looked pretty comfy. Mimi’s parents had shown up and were in there with her as well. Her father couldn’t let go of her and kept her in his embrace, which made it difficult for her to drink her cocoa, but I doubted she minded. One was never too old to revel in the embrace of your dad. From what I could tell, a lot of old baggage was being unpacked, dirty underwear and all.

Uncle Bob was working on getting Warren’s charges dropped, and he’d called in Kyle Kirsch, who was due any moment.

“I don’t think they were paid enough,” Ubie said as he walked up, a pile of papers in his hands. I was pouring creamer into a cup of coffee while trying to keep a blanket around my shoulders, mostly to hide the slice across my back. I didn’t think I could stand another round of superglue. “The Cox cousins’ bank accounts show cash deposits of fifty thousand each.”

“So, who are the Cox cousins again?”

He sighed. It was funny. “The men who kidnapped you? One of them just tried to kill you in a dark alley? Art and William Cox? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Of course. I just wanted to make you say Cox again. And as determined as they were,” I said, taking a sip, “they were probably promised a lot more once the job was done.”

“I’m sure. But we can’t trace the deposits. And the dead gunman from the motel was a jailhouse chum of theirs. We’re still looking into his financial records, too.”

I looked over as Kyle Kirsch hurried into the station, two bodyguards on his trail. I recognized him from his campaign posters. He stopped to ask the desk sergeant a question, and Mimi came barreling out of the interview room toward him. She ran into his arms.