Falling For Him

“Claudia, we’re both tired. Why don’t we call it a day? Get some sleep. We can box this stuff up, take it in, and look at it when we’re more awake. Less on edge.”

She nodded silently, her gaze fixed out the window.

Gavin tossed the two date books into the box, along with several other files he’d set aside, and folded the top closed. Claudia was still staring out the window when he came to her side and handed her her jacket.

“Thanks.” Even her voice sounded weary as she slipped her jacket on and tugged the bottom over her holster. “And I’m sorry for snapping. I need sleep.”

“No apology necessary.” He liked the smile that struggled to her lips, giving her mouth a wry but sensual curve. It was only a smile, Gavin reasoned; yet he felt himself respond—a low, warm tug deep in his gut—when he imagined what those lips might feel like against his.

But imagining was all he’d be doing when it came to Claudia, Gavin resolved as he turned from her to the box on Silver’s desk. Suspicions or no suspicions, she was definitely off-limits. He was hardly going to jeopardize his case, his entire career, for the sake of a woman. He’d never done it in the past, and he certainly wasn’t about to start now, no matter how alluring Detective Claudia Parrish was.

AFTER SHE AND GAVIN HAD closed up Silver’s office, Claudia drove them back to headquarters. Gavin’s car had been parked in a lot along the way, and she’d dropped him off before hauling the box of Silver’s files to Evidence Control. She hadn’t bothered to go back to the office after that, but went directly to the garage to get her own vehicle. It was noon by the time she steered her weather-beaten Volvo onto Shakespeare Street.

She parked halfway up the block, outside a yellow-brick three-story Victorian row house. Shouldering her briefcase, she took the marble steps to the massive oak doors and shoved one open.

From the first-floor apartment, she could hear Mrs. Cuchetta playing the baby grand piano she used for lessons, but as Claudia staggered up the stairs, exhausted, the thick walls of the old, converted row home swallowed the classical melody. And when Claudia finally closed her door behind her and threw the dead bolt, there was nothing but silence. Gratifying silence.

She dropped her keys onto the front hall table and stepped into the small but cozy apartment she’d called home for the past three years.

Shedding her jacket and holster and kicking off her shoes, she put some water on for tea.

On the corner of the kitchen bar, next to a mounting stack of bills, the answering machine blinked. She tossed a tea towel over it, covering the demanding red light. It hardly mattered; even before she’d finished pouring her tea, the phone rang.

“Faith, I just got in,” Claudia told her sister after being verbally censured for not returning her calls.

“Well, I wanted to be sure you were all right. October sixteenth and all.”

Claudia stirred sugar into her tea. Leave it to her little sister to remember anniversaries that weren’t even her own. Faith remembered everything to do with family; not at all like Claudia. The only things she managed to remember these days were the details of her cases. It hadn’t always been that way, of course. Before Frank’s death, before she’d immersed herself so completely in her work that it seemed there was nothing else, things had been different.

Now, faced with Faith’s concern, Claudia wondered if maybe she should never have told her sister. It might have been easier to let the secret die along with Frank, so that no one could remind her of the love she’d shared so briefly with him.

“Look,” Faith was saying. “Greg mentioned just this morning that it’s been a while since you’ve been out here. And you know it’s only a forty-minute drive. You’d think it was a forty-minute flight given the number of times we’ve seen you in the past year. So what do you say to dinner tonight? I know it’s short notice, but it wouldn’t be if you actually listened to your messages.”

Claudia didn’t respond. She yanked the tea towel off the answering machine, the red light blinking as insistently as ever. James Silver. What if he had tried to call her? With preparations for the Brown arraignment, she hadn’t checked her messages in days.

“Faith, I’ll have to get back to you on that. Maybe tomorrow? I’ve been up since yesterday morning. I’m exhausted. But I’ll call.”

There was a pause before Faith finally complied. Making Claudia promise to call, and assuring herself that her big sister was really okay, Faith at last hung up.

Claudia’s hand hovered over the answering machine for a moment before she at last pressed Play.

As predicted, three of the messages were from her sister. But there were five others—all hang-ups. Using her Caller ID, Claudia wrote down the number, and within a minute she’d confirmed her hunch. The Yellow Pages lay in her lap, open to the listings for private investigators.

James Silver had called her five times in the past three days. It didn’t surprise her that he hadn’t tried her at the office, not if her suspicions were correct. If Silver had been looking into Frank’s death again, then the Homicide office was the last place Silver would have risked calling. But why hadn’t he bothered to leave even one message? Maybe because he thought this too would be a risk?

Claudia stared at Silver’s ad for a long time, her mind staggering over the countless alternate scenarios that might have played out had he actually been able to reach her. Would he be dead now? Would they have uncovered something new about Frank’s death? Could she have intervened?

Switching off both the machine and the phone, Claudia moved to the living room couch and turned on the TV. But the aimless flicking through channels did nothing to divert her thoughts from Frank and Silver. If she knew one thing for certain, it was that Silver had been taking a second look at Frank’s death. It was the only explanation behind his attempt to reach her.

But why? What had prompted him to relaunch his investigation into Frank’s death?

Claudia set down the remote control and reached under the couch. She groped for the orange pressboard binder that had been hidden there, unopened, for at least six months. Sliding it out, she brushed the thin layer of dust from its cover.

CC# 2L5915.

It was one thing to remove a case file, or any portion of it, from headquarters. The breach of security was done on occasion by detectives and overlooked by their supervisors. But to duplicate an entire file, from cover to cover—all the reports from officers and supervisors alike, from the Chief Medical Examiner’s office and the various crime labs, interview transcripts, detective’s personal notes, even crime-scene and evidence photos—was completely against department policy. Not to mention punishable by suspension, Claudia thought, as she eased the thick binder into her lap.

For Claudia, copying the file had been worth the risk. Ten months ago she had believed that Frank couldn’t have killed himself, and that everything in the reports must have been a cover-up.

She probably should have destroyed the file once she’d submitted to the consensus that Frank had taken his own life.

Yet, now Claudia was grateful she had kept it. After all, maybe questions remained to be asked and answers to be found. Obviously Silver had believed so. But had there actually been new information? Or had he simply been grasping at the same old straws he’d had the last time they’d spoken?

Claudia opened the file, trying to avoid the pages of photos. She was unsuccessful. The four-by-six color images brought back that unforgettable night as though it had been only yesterday. She relived the disbelief and the horror. And then the utter emptiness she’d felt when she held Frank’s hand for the last time.

She remembered crying, and then Lori trying to console her. It wasn’t until Claudia had caught sight of the picture on Frank’s mantel—a photo of the two of them receiving their bronze stars—that Claudia had finally pulled herself together that night. For Frank, she’d kept up appearances. For him, she’d never once let on that he’d been anything but a partner to her.

Claudia stared at the open binder in her lap. The crime-scene photos blurred with her tears. Frank couldn’t have killed himself, she thought for the millionth time. The Frank she had known, the man she’d loved…he hadn’t been a coward or a quitter. And yet, what else could she believe now that all the reports were in?

God, but she missed him.

She missed his voice and his laughter. She missed the excitement of working a case with him, having him by her side and knowing she was with the best detective on the force. And she missed the little things about Frank—the familiar gestures and wisecracks that could bring laughter to any gray day, his knowing smile when he’d look up from his desk to where she sat across from him, the light that would touch his eyes when she’d open her apartment door and find him standing on the landing, and the way his hand had felt in hers—rough, warm and secure. She missed the feel of his body against hers, and she missed the way he’d whisper his love for her and tell her they would always be together.

But in spite of her longing for him, Claudia wasn’t certain she could ever forgive Frank for giving up. With the file open in her lap, she closed her eyes and settled her head against the top of the couch. Maybe that was the real reason she hadn’t gotten rid of the case file—maybe she felt that by hanging on to it she still held a piece of Frank. And maybe she would never be able to let him go. He lived in her heart, along with her anger and her resentment. No one could ever come close to touching her the way Frank had.

Inexplicably, Gavin Monaghan entered Claudia’s thoughts. She’d be lying if she said there wasn’t a glimmer of attraction there. It was certainly the first time she’d felt anything like it since Frank. And she hadn’t been the only one who’d toyed with such thoughts—she’d seen the way Gavin had looked at her when they were in Silver’s office.

She remembered the effect his smile had had on her when she’d dropped him off at his car and apologized again for her behavior in Silver’s office. He’d had every right to question her. If the roles had been reversed, she would have demanded the same from him. He’d accepted her apology and given her a smile. Her entire body had responded to that smile with a quick shiver of excitement.

Claudia closed her eyes. She had to push Gavin Monaghan from her thoughts. It was ridiculous to think she was attracted to a man she barely knew. She was, Claudia rationalized, only because he’d done a couple of little things that had reminded her of Frank. That was all.

Besides, how could she possibly have feelings for anyone when her heart still belonged to Frank?

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