Danger lurked among the plush California greenery, under the bright midday sun. A grouping of cumulus clouds could easily be mistaken for a snowcapped range of mountains. According to the weather report, a rainstorm would be moving in by nightfall. The white clouds were deceptive, laden with moisture. They would soon turn dark.

      Everything in his world was deceptive.

      What had first caught his attention were her shoes. When she walked, lights flashed inside the tiny heart-shaped cutouts. Following children wearing fancy shoes was a new game he'd been playing. It came to him one day while he was eating a corn dog and sucking on a lemonade at the mall. Sitting around and waiting for someone to call drove him crazy. Even worse was having to report in at a specific time. This broad was flakier than most drug dealers, and dealers always made a guy's life miserable. At least they had a reason for leaving you hanging. They were either out of product, their supplier didn't show up on time, or they were so doped up they didn't even remember you'd called. The lady changed the times he was supposed to call every time they spoke.

      He followed the kids with the fancy shoes to the parking lot, curious as to what types of cars their parents drove. During a four-hour period the day before, he'd followed nine kids wearing the same kind of shoes. Not the same exact style. The only criteria was that the shoes had to light up. He didn't care if the cutouts were animals, hearts, flowers, baseballs, or footballs. He knew the discount stores made knockoffs. No matter where the parents bought them, though, the shoes with lights still cost more than your average pair of children's sneakers.

      Flipping through his three-by-five notebook, he added up the two rows of numbers. If the make and model of a car was any indication of a person's income, there were far more poor kids wearing the fancy shoes than there were rich kids. The ironies of life had always amused him. Of course, he knew his game wasn't an actual survey. Checking kids' shoes wasn't his job or anything.

      He hated waiting. At present, he was looking for a place. He'd checked out several houses a few blocks away, but none of them fit his needs. He liked trees, houses set back away from the street, the kind of neighborhood where people didn't pry into a person's business.

      He'd never had a woman tell him what to do before.

      Leaning against a tree, he was inhaling the smoke from his cigarette when he saw her open the front door of her house and walk out onto the patio. God, she was beautiful. What kind of parent would let a little girl go out alone? Sometimes she rode her bicycle with the pink streamers. Other times she skipped. At least her mother had set some restrictions. She could not leave the block. He had seen her ride to the end and stop, then turn around and head off in the opposite direction. He glanced at his watch. It would take her eight minutes to reach the vacant lot behind him.

      The entire brood had left for church at nine-thirty that morning. He'd seen them leaving, all decked out in their Sunday clothes. They'd come home around one, parking their rusted out Volkswagen van in the driveway. Must have stopped for lunch somewhere.

      All week long, he had kept his eyes peeled for a man. He was almost certain the woman didn't have a husband. Damn, he thought, the youngest couldn't be more than six months old. The baby cried all the time, and the two boys were always fighting. The oldest was a girl. She must be in her teens — she had a set of knockers he could spot a mile away. Maybe the baby was hers, although he never saw her pay it much attention. Every evening she sat on the steps of the front porch, staring into space. A few nights ago he'd heard a lot of yelling. When the big sister came outside, he could tell that she'd been crying.

      The mother didn't work, so he assumed she lived on welfare, probably the Aid for Dependent Children she collected for each of her five offspring. He assumed she paid for her groceries with food stamps. At least no one in the household smoked. They couldn't use stamps for cigarettes or booze. People traded them to their friends for cash, probably at half their value.

      Flicking the ashes from his cigarette, he gave the mother extra points because she cooked. He knew she cooked because he'd spied on them through the kitchen window one evening. The aroma was good enough to make him want to knock on the door and ask if he could join them.

      The children appeared fairly clean, and he could tell the mother didn't spend whatever money came her way on herself. She wore rundown shoes and the same black rayon dress to church every Sunday, and carried a beat-up black plastic handbag. A thief would have to be nuts to try to snatch that old purse, he thought with a chuckle. He suspected it was stuffed full of cash. She was a big woman who could put a hurt on a man if she got riled up. No matter what was happening, she never once set down that purse. One of the boys had fallen off his skateboard and broken his arm two days back. His mother had rushed out to help him, the purse shoved under her armpit. It would take a crowbar to pry those arms apart. The purse was a clutch type of thing with no straps. Purse snatchers preferred straps. Most women didn't have that kind of insight.

      Everywhere he looked he saw the distinctive signs of poverty. Broken down cars on the street that had to be pushed every seventy‑two hours to keep the police from towing them. The cops added to the misery of poor people. They didn't have enough money to register their car, so they got a ticket. How could they pay the ticket? If     they had any money, they would have registered the car. And car insurance was out of sight. More tickets. Pretty soon the person ended up in jail. When he was freed, there were more fines to pay and new court dates. Why even try? Stay at home and collect welfare. Nobody slapped a ticket on your ass walking to your mailbox. He spent his childhood in the same kind of neighborhood.

      Holding the Gideon Bible he'd stolen from the motel in front of his chest, his body surged on adrenaline. Five minutes and counting.  He could already hear her singing. It was hard to make out the words, but he recognized the song. Like everything else about her, her voice was pure and sweet. No heavy cologne, no sticky makeup, no body odor, no open sores or needle tracks.

      "Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so."

      "That's my favorite song," he told her, stepping up beside her. He hated it that her new shoes were making contact with the dirty concrete, and that she lived in that rundown old house. She was a princess, his beautiful princess. Her curly brown hair framed her adorable face. Her skin was a rich, warm brown, and her eyes sparkled with joy. How long before the singing stopped? Would she end up sobbing on the porch like her big sister?

      He had intended to wait another week, hoping he'd get caught up in his new job and forget what he had convinced himself was a harmless game of counting shoes. He wanted her too bad. He imagined holding her in his arms, smelling her freshly washed hair, stroking her warm and flawless skin.

      She stopped skipping and glanced over at him. For a few moments she was silent, then she saw the Bible he was holding. "Do you go to our church?"

      "Yes, I do," he lied, smiling. "I was talking to your mother this morning. She asked me to keep an eye on you. You know, make sure nothing bad happens." He turned and pointed down the adjacent street. "I don't live that far away. How's your brother's arm? Your mother told me he fell off his skateboard."

      "I want a cast too," she said, fiddling with the ruffles on her flower print dress. "Then all the kids can sign their name on it and my mom won't make me set the table for dinner. The plates are too heavy. I'm not strong enough."

      "I bet you're a lot stronger than you think," he told her, squatting down on one knee. "Put your hand in mine and push as hard as you can. You might even be stronger than me."

      "Really?" she said excitedly.

      Her small, perfect fingers wrapped around his own. He felt a jolt of electricity, a taste of the pleasure she would provide him. Tears welled up in his eyes. The dark cloud was above him. He had to move fast. As soon as it started to rain, someone would come looking for her.

      She deserved a palace and all he could offer her was death.

      The April rain was coming down in transparent sheets. Because she'd driven her two children to school, Carolyn Sullivan was twenty minutes late to work. She parked her white Infiniti in the closest spot she could find. When she got out and opened her umbrella, it snagged on the car door.

      Another Monday from hell, she thought, tossing the ripped umbrella onto the backseat and covering her head with the newspaper as she jogged toward the front of the building.

      Fifteen minutes later, Carolyn was sitting in a chair in her supervisor's office at the Correction Services Agency in Ventura, a small city on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Her hair was dripping wet, the soggy newspaper was clasped in her right hand, and she'd been called on the carpet before she'd even had a chance to grab a cup of coffee.

      Why had Brad Preston left a message on her voice mail demanding that she report to him the moment she arrived? Something big must be happening. Carolyn hoped it was good news — a long overdue promotion perhaps. As a single parent, her decision to get her law degree had placed a serious dent in her already strained budget.

   She walked to the outer office. Brad's assistant, Rachel Mitch had informed her earlier that he was in a meeting with the agency's chief and had left instructions for her to wait. "I'll be right back," she told the woman, pulling her damp shirt away from her chest. "I'm going to the break room for some coffee."

   A tall, handsome man with blond hair and blue eyes caught Carolyn by the elbow. "You're not going anywhere," Brad Preston said abruptly, steering her back into his office and kicking the door shut behind him. He released her and stared at the newspaper in her hands. "Did you get a look at the headlines?"

   "No," Carolyn said, depositing the wet papers in the trash can. "My umbrella broke. I used the paper to stay dry. What's going on?"

   "Eddie Downly raped an eight-year-old girl!" he said, tossing his copy of the Ventura Star Free Press at her. "She's alive but he did his best to kill her. This was your probationer. When did you last see the bastard?"

      Carolyn's fingers trembled as she stared at the rapist's picture. On    the street, they called him Fast Eddie. His real name was Edward  James Downly. At sixteen, he'd been sentenced to serve a year in the county jail, then placed on four years' probation. Since the crime had   been sexual in nature, Downly had been tried as an adult and ordered to register as a sex offender. Under the DNA Forensic Identification Data Bank and Data Bank Act of 1998, all registered sex offenders had to provide a DNA sample. At present, Fast Eddie was only nineteen years old.    

      "I ... I ..." Carolyn stammered, slowly raising her eyes. "I don't remember, Brad. I'll have to check his file."     

      "Of all people," he said, dropping down in the leather chair behind his paper-strewn desk, "I never thought I'd be having a conversation like this with you, Carolyn. How long has it been?"  

      "I told you," she said, her voice shaking, "I'm not certain. His probation is due to terminate any day. Eddie never gave me any indication that he was a rapist or pedophile. In the underlying offense, all he did was slide his hand up the dress of the fourteen-year-old who lived next door. Eddie swore she was his girlfriend. He claims the  only reason he was prosecuted was due to some kind of vendetta between the two families. The last time I talked to him, he was engaged to get married."  

      Brad leaned forward, his face frozen into hard lines. "The media's beating our door down. You're one of our best officers. Tell me what I want to hear, Carolyn."

      She rubbed her forehead, covering a portion of her face with her  hand. He wanted to be reassured that she'd seen Downly that     month, that she'd monitored his every move, that there was nothing the agency could have done to prevent him from brutalizing a child.    

      "The truth? Do you really want to know? It's not what you want to

hear."     

      "Of course I want the truth," Brad shouted, standing and removing his jacket, then yanking off his tie. "We have to back up our statements with documentation. I promised we'd get copies of everything in Downly's file to the police within the hour. The address they have for him is no good. How long has it been, Carolyn?" He walked over until they were only a few inches apart. "Christ, we can't play twenty questions while a rapist is on the loose. Tell me where we stand, damn it."

   “A long time," she said, nervously rubbing her palms on her skirt. "Nine months ... maybe as long as a year."

   “A year!" Brad exclaimed, his hot breath on her face. "You haven't seen this man in a freaking year?"

   "Don't forget," Carolyn told him, "I'm not assigned to field services. I had over forty pre-sentence investigations to complete last month. On top of that, I now have a caseload of over two hundred offenders. To stay on top of everything is humanly impossible. You know that, Brad."

   "When I heard it was your case," he said, pacing around the room, "I didn't think there was going to be a problem." He shook his hands to release the tension. "Get everything you have on Downly to the PD. Don't answer your phone, and don't leave the building until we figure out what we're going to tell the press."

   Carolyn pushed herself to her feet, then stood with her arms limp at her side. "There's nothing to figure out," she said. “As soon as I hand over Downly's file, they'll know I let the case fall dormant. Even if the brass decides to fire me, I refuse to falsify information."

   Brad pointed at his chest, even more agitated than before. "Did I ask you to falsify information? Are you trying to blackmail me?"

   Carolyn fell silent, linking eyes with him. They'd been lovers until Brad's promotion six months ago. The affair had been doomed from the onset. He was thirty-nine and had never been married. A decent man in most respects, Brad had a wild streak, probably what made him so irresistible to women. He raced cars in his spare time, liked to hang out and drink with the guys, and his temper was notorious. Carolyn could never understand how he maintained a perfect physique and didn't look a day over thirty. Good genes, she told herself, thinking his lifestyle would eventually catch up to him.

   "I don't want a repeat of the Cully case," she told him. "It blew up in our faces, remember?"

   The situation with Jerry Cully had been similar, yet far more serious. Cully had been placed on probation for indecent exposure. In most instances, men who exposed themselves were not sexual predators. The nature of their crimes was passive. They tended to be introverted, almost pathetic individuals who weren't known to commit acts of violence. Jerry Cully had been an exception. He'd raped a student the previous year on the same campus where Carolyn attended law school, a few months before Brad had been promoted. His probation officer, Dick Stanton, had been counting the days until his retirement. Unlike Carolyn, who had supervised Eddie Downly diligently for over three years before falling lax, Cully's probation officer had only seen him on one occasion.

   When the rape occurred, Stanton had doctored the files so it appeared that he'd been routinely monitoring the man's activities. As it turned out, Cully had been a serial rapist. Dick Stanton had unknowingly provided his probationer with an alibi for one of his crimes. Stanton had come forth with the truth, then turned in his resignation. During the time he and Carolyn had been seeing each other, Brad had confessed that he was the one who'd encouraged Stanton to alter the files. He knew what he'd done was wrong, yet he'd defended his position as protecting not only his fellow probation officer but the reputation of the entire agency. Carolyn wanted to make sure he wouldn't ask the same thing of her.

   "To expedite things," Brad told her, "bring the file and let Rachel copy it and get it to Hank Sawyer at the PD. If there's anything you left out, e-mail it to Hank later. I'll call the boss while you're gone and deliver the bad news. I have another case I want you to handle."

   "What do you think?" Carolyn asked, worried she could lose her job once the truth came out regarding Downly.

   Brad Preston reached across his desk for the phone. "Do what I said," he told her, gesturing with his free hand. "The sooner they catch Downly, the quicker things will die down."

   At nine-forty-five, Carolyn handed Rachel the thick file on Eddie Downly. Before she returned to Brad's office, she darted into the ladies' room, then burst into tears. Opening her purse, she removed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes. She tried to tell herself that even if she had seen Downly every month for the past year, it wouldn't have prevented him from raping an innocent child. When an offender began to disintegrate, however, telltale signs generally appeared.

      This wasn't always the case with a sex offender, though. Many times they came across as model citizens. A pedophile was like a crack in the wall, hidden behind a piece of furniture. Regardless, she would have to live with this for the rest of her life, never knowing if she could have somehow stopped it.

      Carolyn propped the paper up on the mirror above the sink. An eight-year-old girl, for God's sake. Her daughter, Rebecca, was twelve. Downly had not only raped the child, he'd strangled her. When the girl had fallen unconscious, he'd mistakenly thought she was dead. Yesterday while Carolyn and her children were enjoying a cookout with her mother in Camarillo, Luisa Cortez was in a ditch be-hind an abandoned building that had once been a Dairy Queen.

      Carolyn wadded the newspaper up in a ball and hurled it across the room. Years ago, she'd enjoyed her job. Now she woke up every morning with a knot in her stomach. They had to stop giving her more work than she could handle. Before Brad had taken over the unit, she'd lost it one day. The eleven-year-old victim in the case she'd been investigating had been made to bend over the toilet every morning before school while her stepfather sodomized her. When she fought back, he'd twisted off her nipples with a pair of pliers. The case alone had been horrifying. During the investigation, Carolyn learned that the social services agency had failed to provide the child with psychological counseling. While the stepfather remained in the home pending trial, the girl had been placed in foster care, leaving behind her friends, her school, and even her mother. Her mother continued to reside with the defendant under the belief that he was innocent. During the trial, Cheryl Wright had tried to kill herself.

   Carolyn had stormed into her supervisor's office and demanded that the case be reassigned to another officer. She was investigating four other crimes against children and she couldn't handle it. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, she'd thought of going to the step-father's house and shooting him. Irene Settle, the woman in charge of the unit at the time, had told her that she must finish the case or turn in her resignation. When Carolyn had asked why, the woman had looked her squarely in the eye and told her she was the only one in the unit who was qualified to handle a case of that magnitude.

      Carolyn continued to work at her job for the benefit of the victims. In her first year at Ventura College of Law, she attended classes every Monday and Wednesday evening. She was fortunate that her fifteen-year-old son, John, was responsible enough to look after his younger sister. She had enrolled in law school to better herself and    increase her income. She was also looking for a way to escape.

   At thirty-seven, Carolyn was small in stature, yet possessed a curvaceous and feminine body. Her chestnut hair fell to her shoulders in natural waves, her skin was flawless, and her eyes were the color of molasses. Dressed neatly in a pink cotton shirt and a simple black skirt, she'd draped the matching jacket over a chair in her office so it      could dry from the rain. Two identical suits hung in her closet at home, differing only as to color — one navy blue, the other beige. Carolyn varied her wardrobe with six pastel shirts which she ironed every Saturday morning. Now and then she wore a dress, something simple yet tasteful. Her only accessories consisted of a sterling silver cross with a flower in the center given to her by her mother, a Swiss Army watch, and an antique pair of pearl cuff links that had been in her family for over a hundred years. During the thirteen years she'd been a deputy probation officer, the cuff links had become her trademark.

   Carolyn kept her head down as she darted down the hall toward Brad's office. Rachel wasn't at her desk, and the door to his office was standing open. He looked harried, yet not to the extent he had earlier.

   "Wilson took it fairly well," Brad told her, referring to the head of the agency. "I just got off the phone with Hank Sawyer at the PD. He was amazed at the amount of work you put in on Downly. You've got all his known associates, local haunts, relatives, employers." He flashed a confident smile, displaying a row of gleaming white teeth. "My bet is Downly will be behind bars before the day is over. Sawyer didn't even mention anything related to the supervision problem. The average term of probation is thirty-six months. We may luck out on this one. The press certainly doesn't know what we do. The idiots don't even know the difference between concurrent and consecutive sentences."  

      "You mentioned a new case," Carolyn said, concerned there might be repercussions. Brad Preston was a proverbial optimist. And all his emotions were out in the open. If you made a mistake or pissed him off, he pounced on you like a cougar. On the other hand, if he caught sight of a solution, he instantly moved on to the next problem. Although she'd resented the fact that he'd been promoted over her, she had to admit that Brad had been the better candidate for this stressful position.

      "Yeah, the case," he said, handing her a file. "The last thing we need is another parolee, right? The knuckleheads in Sacramento should take the heat for what happened with Downly. As soon as the maximum case levels are reached at the district parole offices, the overflow is dumped in our laps. We work for the county, not the state."

      "Why doesn't field services handle the parolees?" Carolyn asked him. "Our job is to write court reports, reports that are mandated by law. That's why the unit is called Court Services, even though no one seems to care."

      "Same problem," Brad told her. "Field services can't possibly supervise the number of people we have on active probation." He paused, then a moment later continued. "Okay, here's the deal. After twenty-three years, they paroled the man who killed Charles Harrison's son. This is a famous case. You must have heard about it."

      Carolyn's jaw dropped. "Are you referring to the deputy chief of the LAPD?"

      "Harrison, yeah," Brad said. "But when his son was killed, he was

the chief here in Ventura."

      "But why would you want me to handle this case?" Carolyn asked, glancing through the prisoner's release sheet from Chino. "Even though the PD didn't spot the problem with the Downly matter, that doesn't mean it won't come back to bite us."

      "You're the bomb, sweetheart," Brad said. "Look over the particulars. I'll get us some coffee." He leapt out of his chair and disappeared through the doorway.

      Carolyn looked up to ask him a question before she realized he was no longer in the room. Another one of the man's unique traits was that he moved like a bolt of lightning. Where did all the energy come from? She knew he wasn't on drugs. Brad always said he'd trade his frenetic energy for her ability to concentrate. When Carolyn put her mind to something, a person could drop a brick on her foot and she wouldn't notice.

  She stared at the photo of her new parolee. Whereas Brad looked remarkably young for his age, Daniel Metroix appeared ten years older than his forty-one years. His skin was ashen, his dark brown hair was matted and dirty, and his eyes were lined with dark shadows.

  When Brad returned and shoved a steaming cup of coffee into her hand, she accepted it eagerly. "You know why I stopped seeing Eddie Downly, don't you?"

  "We've already gone through it," Brad said. "I was in your shoes until recently. I know how overworked you guys are. Downly left a ton of evidence at the scene. How do you think they fingered him as the rapist so fast?"

  Carolyn closed the Metroix file. "I have to take work home with me every night as it is, and I've never put in a request for overtime."

      Brad gave her a chastising look. "Now isn't the time to complain."

  "I'm not complaining," she said. "I'm attending law school, in case you've forgotten. The reading alone is killing me. Last night I fell asleep at the kitchen table in my clothes. And I'm not spending enough time with my children." She stopped and sucked in a breath. "You don't assign me thefts and burglaries, Brad. If you want me to do a decent job on the serious cases, you can't expect me to ride herd on a bunch of probationers and parolees. And especially not a case as sensitive as this one. I know you're my supervisor, but shouldn't you rethink this?"

  "You're our top investigator," he told her, riffling through his desk drawer and pulling out a bottle of Tylenol. "Never drink tequila on a weeknight." Once he washed the pills down with his coffee, he continued. "What would take another officer several months to complete, you can knock off in a few days. Sometimes I think you know more about the law than half of our judges. When you recommend a fifty-year sentence, it's a done deal. If you told the court a defendant should be taken out and shot, a few of the judges would start shopping for a shotgun."

  "Don't be asinine," Carolyn said, her face flushing in embarrassment. "My recommendations are imposed because they're well researched and appropriate. The judges know me, that's all. They know I take my work seriously."

      "No," he argued. "That's power."

      "Wielding power in the courtroom doesn't pay my bills," she told him. "Why do you think I'm working so hard to get my law degree?"

      "Put in for overtime. Are you that much of a martyr?"

   "You know what's going on, Brad," Carolyn told him, surprised that he'd make such a statement. "With the budget cutbacks, if we start putting in for overtime, they'll start laying off people. Then we'll have more work than we have now."

   "I admit I assign you more difficult cases," he said, bracing his head with his hand. He hadn't taken the time to get a haircut, and with his blond hair almost reaching his eyebrows, his face took on a deceptive look of innocence. "Sure, it's not fair. I don't have a choice. You're one of the few people who understands the complexities of sentencing. Assign one of our other officers a twenty-count case, with multiple victims and dozens of enhancements, and I'll end up doing most of the work myself."

      The cases kept coming like bullets, and the only way Carolyn could meet the mandatory deadlines was to start plowing through them as soon as they hit her desk. Officers who procrastinated either did a lousy job or ended up putting in twenty-four-hour days. With her outside commitments, Carolyn couldn't afford to let her work stockpile.

      Supervising a parolee was not anywhere as complex as handling a pre-sentence investigation, however. Unless the individual violated, the only obligation was to monitor his activities on a monthly basis. On the other hand, supervision was dangerous. After glancing through the file, Carolyn knew Brad was placing her in a precarious position, the last place she needed to be at the moment. "Everyone and his dog are going to be looking over my shoulder with Metroix."

      "Good observation," Preston said sarcastically, tapping his pen against his teeth. "Metroix killed a kid, Carolyn. The kid's father is a high-ranking law enforcement official. He falls into a sewer and fifty cops will nail down the lid."

   "I'm aware the victim was Charles Harrison's son. I even dated Liam Armstrong when I was in high school."

      "Who's Liam Armstrong?"

      "One of the two boys who survived," Carolyn told him, bringing forth images of the egotistical football player who'd tried to force her to have sex with him on their second date.

      "Small town," Preston said, gulping down another swig of his coffee. "I'm glad I didn't grow up in this place. Bring me up to snuff on your other work."

      Ventura was a unique city, Carolyn thought. The community had sprung up around the San Buenaventura Mission, and in many ways still maintained a Spanish flavor. Houses with boat slips were now crammed along the ocean side of the 101 Freeway, and the real estate in the foothills offered fantastic views. An hour north was Santa Barbara — home to millionaires, polo fields, and pristine beaches. The citizens of Ventura, however, were mostly hardworking, middle-class people.

      "Well," Brad said, "are you going to tell me or do I have to beat it out of you?"

      Carolyn was tempted to lie, tell him that if he persisted in assigning her Metroix, the same thing would happen that had occurred with Downly. There were other competent officers in the agency. No matter how heavy the workload, though, someone had to do it. Knowing it was Carolyn gave Brad a sense of security. After the Downly incident, she would have expected him to back off. Obviously, that wasn't the case, and it wasn't how the man operated. He liked to live life on the edge. Doing things the easy way, he'd once told her, was boring.

      "I finished dictating the Dearborn shooting yesterday," Carolyn answered. "I recommended the aggravated term as we discussed. The Perkins robbery has already been filed. As for the Sandoval shooting, I've summarized the facts of the crime. I interviewed the defendant at the jail last week. I'm seeing the victim, Lois Mason, this afternoon. Since Sandoval has two priors for assault with a deadly weapon and the DA filed under three strikes, he's going down for the count."

      "Great," Preston said, one side of his mouth curling into a smile. "That means one less asshole on the street. I can't believe Sandoval shot an old lady to steal her purse."

      "She fought back," Carolyn reminded him. "I have a few other minor things on the burner, and that's it." Being efficient had its drawbacks. She ended up doing twice as much work as many of her fellow officers. "I guess you can slap me with anything that comes in,       Brad. You will anyway."

      "I don't have a choice," he said, relieved that he'd heard at least some good news for the day. He had twelve new cases that had to be assigned, and no officers available to handle them. At least four of the twelve would end up with Carolyn Sullivan's name on them. Now all he had to do was find someone to investigate the remaining eight.

      "Keep me posted on Downly," Carolyn told him, standing to leave.

      "Everything's going to be fine, baby," Brad tossed out. He began thumbing through a thick stack of phone messages from the week before. He stopped and looked up. "The file said Metroix tried to get himself transferred to the prison hospital by claiming he was a paranoid schizophrenic. Every psycho I've ever run across knocks himself out trying to convince you he's sane. A man who's been in prison     this long is dangerous. Watch your back." He paused and then    added, "And start carrying your damn gun."

      "I'll start carrying my gun when you stop calling me baby and sweetheart," Carolyn snapped back. "You're my supervisor now. Whatever happened between us is history."

      "Cut me some slack," he said, placing his hands behind his neck. "We may not be seeing each other anymore. That doesn't mean I   don't care about you. I can't sleep with someone I supervise."

      "I hear you've been putting the make on Amy McFarland," she told him. “Doesn't the same rule apply to her that applied to me? I suggest you clean up your act before you get hit with a sexual harassment suit."

      Carolyn had worked with Brad Preston since the day she'd been hired. Before making the mistake of sleeping with him, she'd wondered why he had never married. After their affair had ended, she'd noted a specific pattern. Preston liked the thrill of the chase. Once he got the girl in bed, it was only a matter of time before he lost interest. Amy McFarland had been on the job for less than three months. Carolyn didn't trust her.

      "I'm not chasing after Amy McFarland. Amy and I kid around now and then. What's the big deal? You used to be fun, Carolyn. Are you jealous because I got promoted? I've got five years' seniority on you. I should be running this agency. Instead, I'm not much more than a glorified clerk. I'd change places with you in a minute if it wasn't for the money"

      "That's baloney, Brad," Carolyn said, her face set in defiance. "With all the real estate you own, you could walk out the door right now and live better than the average person. Your father was a wealthy man."

      "Cheap shot," he told her. "Nothing says we can't have lunch together. Stop by around noon." She was about to walk off when he raised an arm to stop her. "Oh, I scheduled Metroix for two. We need to get a fix on this guy right away. Harrison's up there in years. That doesn't mean he isn't a tough son of a bitch. We screw up on this one, and both our careers will go down the toilet."

      "Forget lunch," Carolyn said, glaring at him over her shoulder as she was about to step through the doorway. "I don't have time for lunch. I have a maniac for a boss."

      Brad tilted his pencil toward her. "You're feisty. I like that in a woman. Maybe I'll ask to be reassigned and we can pick up where we left off."

      "Not on your life," Carolyn said, pulling his door closed behind her.