* * *

“You fainted?”

I sighed into the phone and waited for Cookie to get over her surprise. Why anything should surprise her at this point was beyond me. “Did you get a hit on Reyes’s high school transcripts?”

“Not yet. You passed out? Kissing him?”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Well, I’ve scoured these flash drives. They’re all Mr. Barber’s. There’s nothing on them but his case files.”

“Damn. I’ll have to talk to Barber about that.” Where were my lawyers, anyway? “And I’ll have to get those flash drives back before the secretary finds out they’re missing.”

Before we hung up, I asked Cookie to find out if the lawyers’ secretary, Nora, went into the office that day. Hopefully not. She wouldn’t have missed the flash drives if she hadn’t been there.

Just as I pulled Misery into the parking lot of the Causeway, aka home sweet home, Beethoven’s Fifth rang out on my cell. Uncle Bob told me they had an ID and an address on our shooter. Or the guy they believed was our shooter. I just wished at least one of the lawyers had seen the assailant so we could be sure we had the right guy. Apparently he worked for Noni Bachicha, a local body shop owner. I knew Noni personally, and he’d never be involved in something like this, so there had to be another angle. But we wouldn’t know anything until we brought in the alleged shooter. Uncle Bob was on his way to do that very thing. With half the force acting as backup.

Naturally, I couldn’t miss out on all the fun. I would be able to tell if the guy was guilty or not in a heartbeat. Part of my being a grim reaper, I figured. The problem came when whomever I was assessing was guilty of a myriad of other crimes. Guilt was guilt. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between two crimes. Still, I had to try.

I got the address, pulled a U-ey, and flew to an apartment complex in the middle of the Southern War Zone, where one Mr. Julio Ontiveros resided.

The teams were still a block away, prepping for the extraction. Apparently they had fairly solid intel that Julio was asleep inside his apartment. He must have had a late night. I pulled in between Uncle Bob’s SUV and a patrol car, put my phone on silent—because there’s nothing worse than a cell phone going off in the middle of an extraction; everyone glares at you really mean—then went in search of Ubie.

Ninety-nine percent of the time I don’t carry a sidearm—hence the motivation to perfect my death stare. But today all the cool kids were packing. I felt like the girl who showed up at a formal dinner party in jeans and a Pink Floyd T-shirt. Probably ’cause I did that once.

Spotting Ubie beside another patrol car also brought me within screaming distance of Garrett Swopes. I tamped down the angry hornetlike sting of jealousy when I realized Ubie must have called him first. I’d been solving cases for the man since I was five, and he calls Swopes first? Aggravation coursed through me, ruffled my feathers, got my hackles up, whatever hackles were. Was a little appreciation too much to ask? A little nepotistic favoritism?

Uncle Bob was on the phone as usual when Garrett looked up at me from behind the patrol car’s open trunk, concern flashing in his eyes. With a curse, I realized the ache in my ribs and hip had me limping. I gritted my teeth, straightened my spine, and walked as normally as possible. Then I had to force myself to relax a little, fearing my walk resembled the robot dance from the eighties.

“I can’t believe you don’t have twenty-seven broken ribs,” Garrett said as I robot-walked forward.

“I don’t have twenty-seven ribs.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, eyeing my rib cage. “Maybe I should count them.”

Ridiculously ticklish, I wrapped my arms protectively around my stomach in reflex. “Only if you want to lose a hand,” I warned, though he did look rather hot in jeans and a white T-shirt with a dark blue bulletproof vest strapped around his torso. Very machismo. “But don’t worry,” I continued. “Surely that whole learning-to-count thing will pay off someday.”

He grinned, unscathed, as he checked his clip. “Surely.”

“ ’Kay, I’m going around back.”

“Why?”

“ ’Cause I can. And you’re not there.”

“Oh. Don’t get shot.”

I snorted—as if—and hobbled away.

“And don’t fall off anything,” he half whispered, half yelled.

He was funny.

I had scarcely taken up a position behind the complex with a cute cop named Rupert when we heard what sounded like a gunshot coming from inside. Rupert sprang into action. He scaled six feet of chain-link and rushed toward the back entrance, crashing to a halt against the redbrick building with gun at the ready. Rupert was young.

Being older and wiser, I chose to enter through the opening where a gate once stood several feet back. Taking Garrett’s warning about not getting shot to heart … considering … I scrunched down and eased inside the yard. Twelve seconds later, I lay sprawled in the dirt, gasping for air. Apparently, the suspect had spotted the opening in the fence as well. And for some reason, when surrounded by cops with nickel-slick badges and chambered rounds, the path of least resistance is most often through the unarmed chick, despite her attitude. I had just enough time to check out Rupert’s nicely shaped ass before a large hoodie-clad gangbanger determined to make a hole in the universe tore through me.

We hit the ground hard, and the pain in my ribs had me seeing white-hot stars … and fear. His fear. And his innocence. He didn’t shoot anyone. Damn.