Internal Affair Read Free Page B

been assigned. Once upon a time, before the lure of the badge had gotten her, she’d entertained the idea of becoming an actress. Working undercover allowed her to combine both her loves.
    “I guess they didn’t tell you.”
    He had a crime scene to take charge of, he didn’t have time for guessing games initiated by fluffy blondes compromising his crime scene. “Tell me what?”
    “That I’m your new partner.”

Chapter 2
    “T he hell you are.”
    Patrick glared at this woman who looked as if she would be more at home on some runway in Paris, modeling the latest in impractical lingerie than standing beside a waterlogged corpse, pretending to look for clues.
    “Yes,” Maggi replied with a smile. “The hell I am.”
    No one had notified him. He hated having things sprung on him without warning. In his experience, most surprises turned out bad.
    “Since when?”
    “Since this morning. Last night, actually,” she corrected, “but it was too late to get started then.”
    He couldn’t believe that someone actually believed that he and this woman could work together. He found working with another man difficult enough; working with a woman with all her accompanying quirks and baggage was out of the question.
    “By whose authority?” he demanded.
    “Captain Reynolds.” She gave him the name of his direct superior, although the pairing had not originated with Reynolds. The order had come from John Halliday, the man in charge of Internal Affairs. A fair, honest man, if not the easiest to work with, Halliday had found a subtle way of getting her in so that not even Reynolds knew the true purpose behind her becoming Cavanaugh’s new partner. “He said you wouldn’t be thrilled.”
    Patrick’s frown deepened. He knew why Reynolds hadn’t said anything. It was because the captain didn’t care for confrontations from within. Well, he couldn’t just slide this blonde under his door and expect things to go well from there.
    “Captain Reynolds has a gift for understatement.” His voice was brittle. “I haven’t seen you around.”
    His icy blue eyes seemed to go right through her. She could see why others might find him intimidating. “I’ve been there. Around,” she clarified when he continued to stare at her. She shrugged casually. “I can’t help it if you haven’t noticed me.”
    Oh, he would have noticed her, Patrick thought. A woman who looked the way she did was hard to miss. She was the kind that made heads turn and married men stop to rethink their choice in a life partner. He wasn’t given to socializing, but he would have noticed her.
    Something didn’t feel right, though. “How long have you been a detective?” Patrick asked.
    “Three months.”
    Three months. A novice. What the hell was the captain thinking? Even a man as photo-op oriented as Reynolds had to know this was a bad idea. This woman needed training, aging, and that just wasn’t his line.
    Patrick waved her away. “Tell Captain Reynolds I don’t do baby-sitting.”
    “I don’t think that’ll matter to him,” she told him crisply. “He doesn’t have any school-aged children.” She indicated the vehicle next to her. “Now, why don’t we just make the best of this and get back to work?”
    Patrick looked at her sharply, about to make his rejection plainer since she seemed to have trouble assimilating it, when her words echoed in his brain. “We?”
    “We,” she repeated. There was more than ten inches difference between them in height. Maggi drew herself up as far as she could, refusing to appear cowed. “You’ve got to know that working with you isn’t exactly my idea of being on a picnic.”
    His eyes were flat as he regarded her. “Then why do it?”
    Halliday had told her to blend in, to stay quiet and gather as much information as possible about Cavanaugh and his dealings. The less attention drawn to herself, the better. But from what she’d managed to piece together about him, a man like Cavanaugh didn’t