Slow Burn

Danny lived. Amazingly, he survived the surgery. The list of things the bullets had done to his body was endless, ripped and torn pancreas, liver. Damaged lungs and intestines.

But he held on. For days he held on. Day by day, she held his hand as he lay in the trauma unit.

Then, three weeks to the day after the shooting, the doctors told her that he had gone into a coma. David was there with her, standing behind her along with Sly as they explained what had happened, what she hadn’t wanted to understand. None of the injuries to his body had really mattered. Somehow an infection had gotten started and spread to his brain. And the brain was the one thing they absolutely couldn’t bring back. So Danny was alive. But he was dead. They wanted her permission to take him off the machines.

She signed the papers. And she sat by him again in the hospital. She held his hand. His hand looked so good! So strong, so normal! Long, still bronzed fingers. Clipped nails. Those hands had touched her, loved her. She could still draw them to her face, feel his knuckles against her cheeks. It wasn’t fair that he should still be the same….

Four weeks after the shooting, he drew his last breath. David was with her again, not speaking, just watching, waiting. He’d been there all along. There were always cops around, too—waiting, praying, guarding. David wasn’t a cop anymore, but it didn’t seem to matter. He’d let his business go straight to hell to sit with Danny. With her. He was silent most of the time. But he was there. And the past remained buried. A silent truce held between them. They both loved Danny, and for his sake, everything else was set aside. Her family came; her friends came. They offered words of comfort, words that, despite the very best of intentions, could do little. David’s silent presence was the only thing that mattered. She heard him talking sometimes to the cops who came. They were completely baffled as to who had done this to Danny. It hadn’t even really hit her yet that he was going to die, was already dead in the only way that mattered. She still thought that he would twist, turn, move, listen to her, awaken. They had said that he was brain-dead, but his heart was so strong. It kept beating. And David kept his quiet vigil behind her.

And after it was over, he was there to hold her when they came for the body, when she shrieked out, unable, after everything, to believe that Danny was really gone.

David was the one to give the eulogy when hundreds of people appeared at Danny’s funeral. He talked about Danny the boy, and Danny the man, and what Danny had meant to those who loved him. He talked about how he’d been a good cop, too, always there, the most moral man David had ever met, the finest.

When he was done, he stepped away from the microphone while the dispatcher stepped up to it.

“Detective Daniel Huntington is now oh-six,” she said softly.

Officer off duty, out of service. A twenty-one-gun salute exploded in the air.

And then it was over. Danny was, at last, at rest.

2

He’d been reading the file on his desk when she suddenly swept in, just like a relentless breeze. No, just like a damned hurricane, was more like it. She threw the morning paper down on his desk, and those beautiful, crystal blue and accusatory eyes stabbed into him like twin knives.

David looked up, arching a brow. “Spencer. How nice to see you,” he said dryly. It was nice to see her. No matter that she looked like a lioness on the hunt—ready to go right for the jugular. No matter what, Spencer looked good. The last year had take its toll on her, her face was leaner, her cheeks a shade more hollow, but even tragedy looked good on Spencer Anne Montgomery. Huntington, he reminded himself, as he so often seemed forced to do.

He’d been avoiding her, and he knew it. She’d made it easy for him at first. Right after the funeral, she’d gone to one of her mother’s family’s estates in Newport; then she’d come back and worked in her own West Palm offices for a few months. But she’d been in Miami for nearly two months, and now she was standing in his office, staring at him with barely suppressed fury.

“I take the Miami Herald,” he told her.

“Taking it doesn’t mean you read it,” she said. She inched the paper closer to him with a long, slim, beautifully manicured finger, and he was convinced that if he didn’t pick it up soon, she would press his nose right into it. He knew the article; he’d already read it—and ached over it.

All this time, in the year since Danny’s murder, there hadn’t been an arrest. There still wasn’t even a solid suspect. The police had worked on the case continuously, and David had put all his energies into it, called in favors, prowled the streets. They still didn’t even have a firm motive, though a number of them had been conceived and then dismissed. Hell, he’d even been questioned. So had Spencer. Wives were automatically number-one suspects, just as best friends were often number two—unless, of course, there were a number of ex-wives or mistresses running around in the background.

“Want to sit, Spencer?” he asked her, indicating the leather-upholstered chair in front of his desk. “Or do you want to keep standing there, glaring at me.”

“I want you to do something!”

By that time Reva had come to the doorway. “Spencer’s here, David,” she informed him cheerfully. No one else could have gotten past his kid sister. Reva knew how to stop anyone in his or her tracks—except Spencer. He almost smiled. It had been like that even when they’d all been kids.

“Thanks, Reva. Why don’t you suggest to Mrs. Huntington that she sit down?” David said.

“Spencer—”

“Reva, have you read this article?” Spencer demanded, swinging around. She and Reva were both of an age, and both striking women, David thought, watching the two of them, a bit distracted for the moment. He’d been feeling that way lately. Frustration did it, he thought. They looked a little like a pair of modern-day fairy-tale princesses, Rose White and Rose Red, Spencer with her sweeping golden hair and sky-colored eyes, Reva with a curling mass of nearly black hair, tanned to the hilt, and though her eyes were really a very deep blue, just like David’s, they often looked as if they were black. They had always liked one another, but their relationships with him, he knew, had kept them from ever becoming close friends.

“I’ve read it, Spencer,” Reva said. “But you’ve got to know that David has done everything in his power—”

“It’s not enough!”

“But, Spencer—”

Spencer turned to face David again. “He was your best friend. How can you just forget him? Read the article! The reporter is claiming police incompetence, that no one seems to care anymore.”

David stood. “Spencer, I did read the damned article. And in case you didn’t notice, that reporter is also suggesting that you should have been more thoroughly investigated.”

“And all the while the real murderer is walking around at large, laughing at everyone.”

“Spencer,” Reva said, beginning to grow protective, “David almost allowed his entire business to fall apart, he was so desperate to find Danny’s killer. You’ve got—”

“Then I’ll hire David and the entire damned agency, and that way no one will be worrying about anything falling apart.”

David stood. He’d had it with Spencer carrying on, and he would be damned if he’d have his little sister fighting his battles for him, even against Spencer.

“I won’t work for you, Spencer,” he said flatly. “And for the moment, you can either sit down, in which case I’ll go over everything I know, or you can get out.”

“Damn you, David, I will not leave.”

“You will leave, because I’ll set you out bodily, then call the cops and tell them you’re harrassing me and affecting my business,” he told her, then sighed with exasperation as she continued to stare at him as if she were about to explode any second. “Spencer, please, sit!”

She sat. Reva caught his eye. “I’ll get some coffee,” she said.

“If it’s for Spencer, make it decaf. She certainly doesn’t need the caffeine!” David said.

Spencer let that pass. When David sat down behind his desk again, he felt a wave of guilt and sorrow sweep over him. She was so pale, and so damned thin. All her life, she had dressed beautifully but simply, and that hadn’t changed. She was wearing a sleeveless dress that stopped just above the knee. But the cut was perfect, and David assumed it was some kind of designer original, although Spencer also made a point of buying things just because she liked them, not because there was a name attached to them. Spencer had never acted as if she came from money, but it was always there in the background, just the same. He had to admit, though, he wasn’t sure just who had buckled to the family pressure, him or her.

Whatever, the dress, simple, perfect, looked wonderful on her. One minute she seemed like a tempest, and now she seemed all but ethereal. She needed more meat on her bones, more color in her face. Her eyes were haunted. Hell, his probably looked that way, too. It had been rough, learning to live with Danny gone.

And hunting for his killer.

“It’s been a year, David,” she said almost tonelessly.

“Spencer, have you been to the police—”

“Of course. Lots of times. They’re always as nice as they can be—except, of course, when they start questioning me again.”

“They have to do that, Spencer.”

“How could I have killed him?” she asked bleakly.

He hesitated. “The way they see it, anything is possible. You might have run out, shot him, run home, then waited for someone to come and give you the news.”

“But you know—”

“I’m telling you what the D.A.’s office could come up with in terms of motive. You were his wife. You inherited a sizable fortune on his death.”

“But you found me—”