The past few months had been a challenge for Wyatt. A series of safes strapped to bodies he and his dive partners had recovered from the waters had ultimately led to an even bigger mystery. One that had blown the 86th wide open, shaking the precinct to its core.

  As Wyatt’s investigation had progressed, it had become clear the bodies and the safes were a diversion for the cops, one meant to keep eyes focused on the water and off the drug smuggling running through Sunset Bay. The plan was also designed to shake faith and trust, when it had been revealed the masterminds had a long-standing vendetta against the retired chief of detectives, Anderson McCoy.

  A vendetta that had started nearly thirty years ago with McCoy’s willingness to look the other way so his own son could avoid prosecution.

  They were all dealing with it, Arlo admitted, in what had come to be known as the Nightwatch case. Working through that betrayal was something they were all struggling with, but no one more than Wyatt. He’d not only found the bodies that kicked off the case, but he’d also fallen in love with Anderson’s granddaughter, Marlowe, in the midst of the explosive revelations.

  Proof, Arlo thought as he watched his friend help the rest of the dive team onto the boat, that responsibility might carry weight, but love did, too.

  It was a stark reminder of why he avoided it himself. Love might work for some, but he wasn’t interested in the responsibility. His job and his commitment to the city of New York were the only unassailable commitments he wanted in his life. He’d learned the lesson young that people might be loyal to their job or their ideals or their friends, but not necessarily to their family.

  Not one single bit, he thought as a ready reel of images flipped through his mind on a loop. Family was easy to walk away from.

  Too easy.

  Because when something was taken for granted, it was always easy to walk away.

  The last diver came up from the Zodiac boat and Arlo mentally counted off how many individuals had been needed for this mission before he stopped, every last thought fleeing his head. A tall, statuesque, neoprene-clad form hovered at the entrance to the boat, long dark hair spilling out of a swim cap. The goddess/diver pulled off the cap, crushing it in one hand. Long, slender fingers ran through her crown of hair in a one-handed shove out of her face, and what was left behind were high cheekbones, lush lips and dark brown eyes that were nearly black in the overcast mist on the boat deck.

  Damn, but she had a heartbreaker of a face.

  Heartbreaker everything, he amended.

  He’d never considered dive suits particularly attractive, especially the ones the NYPD used for their missions. Thick, and designed to withstand both the cold and the often disgusting and unhealthy mess beneath the local waters, the woman wore it well.

  Better than well, Arlo thought.

  She wore it like a second skin and he felt his breath catch as she started to strip out of it.

  “Yo, Prescott!”

  Wyatt’s bellow had him shifting his stare and Arlo caught the woman’s gaze, then he quickly ducked his head. As attractive as she was, he’d be damned if he wanted to stand there like he was ogling her.

  But, wow, she was a knockout.

  A fascinating one, if the dark look that came into her eyes at his perusal was any indication.

  Arlo gave Wyatt his full attention, tamping down the rush of interest at the goddess on deck. The team had wired in the news they’d recovered bodies, so he’d already braced for what was coming off the floor of the harbor. But even the advance warning couldn’t quite prepare him for what they’d discovered, now laid out on tarps beside the entrance to the boathouse.

  No time like the present, Arlo mused as he dropped into a crouch to assess what the dive team had pulled up. The effects of the saltwater and the active marine life near the wreck had already done even more damage than the deliberately set fire, but he could make out the solid strength of the bodies. There was a visible neck tattoo on one that the medical examiner’s office would capture and document, as well as the basic quality of clothing and shoes.

  These guys had been prepared for the trip into the water, as their feet were clad in waterproof boots. Both men also wore thick, wind-breaking jackets that would have kept them relatively dry as they went about their work on the boat.

  The stench of gasoline filled the air, rising off the bodies along with the distinct scent of death. But it was the quiet voice behind him that had Arlo looking up, right into those fathomless brown eyes.

  “If you turn the bodies over, Detective, you’ll see the cause of death.”

  Arlo was a cop who favored humor to manage the job, and he couldn’t quite hold back the sarcasm. “Drowning, wasn’t it?”

  “I’d say the bullets to the back of the head were far quicker.”

  Chapter 2

  Since joining the academy and making the commitment to police work, Kerrigan had spent a lot of time managing her personal judgments as well as her assumptions that she knew why or how people got mixed up in crime.

  Part necessity and part personal attitude, she’d joined the NYPD to make a difference. She wanted to believe in the good in people, despite the continued evidence to the contrary.

  And she’d come to accept that for those who made bad choices, there was a system in place so they could atone for those decisions and—hopefully—make a better life in the future.

  Naive? Maybe, she often admitted to herself. But it was a belief she needed to do the job and do it well.

  Yet none of it could prepare her for days like this one.

  Whatever these two men had involved themselves in, their choices were inexorably tied to the brutal, terrible acts human beings could perpetrate on each other.

  “Bullets?” the new arrival asked. “You recover any casings under the water?”

  “No, but I saw the condition of the bodies as my partner and I removed them from where they were tied to the boat railing. Both men were tied up with haphazard knots obviously done in a hurry.”

  “Would you help me? I want to see those wounds.”

  Kerrigan realized her mistake as she crouched down beside Detective Arlo Prescott.

  She knew who he was, of course. Most everyone in the 86th knew of the hotshot detective who’d developed a reputation as one of the NYPD’s best detectives. He also did a considerable amount of work with the harbor team, so it was inevitable she’d come into contact with him from time to time. Up to now, though, she’d only seen him from a distance.

  Although she’d helped out on dives throughout the city since joining the team, her home base had been her precinct in Queens. She’d only become a full-time member of the harbor team out of Sunset Bay, Brooklyn, about six weeks before.

  Which meant she’d better get her heart out of her throat and get used to seeing the very able-bodied, dark blond, blue-eyed detective.

  Not that his eye color mattered one whit to her.

  Even when the full heat of those baby blues had been focused on her, snapping her to attention as she’d stripped off her dive suit.

  It was something she did several times a day, but never before had the action seemed fraught with meaning, or the remotest trace of sexiness. Yet, somehow, getting caught up in one look from Arlo Prescott meant that routine had become so much more.

  Since Laverne’s voice and her friend’s steady admonishments “to find herself a hot cop and enjoy herself” had grown a bit too loud in her head, Kerrigan kept her attention focused on the grisly forms in front of her.

  They were in a covered area of the boat, designed for privacy in handling recovery work, but the thick rain outside the space had left the deck wet and slick. The atmosphere was cold enough to have them both breathing out puffs of air as they spoke.

  “Help me roll him to his side.”

  Arlo did as requested, the waterlogged body even heavier than the two-hundred-pound-plus frame would suggest.

  And just as she’d promised, the work of a single bullet was evident at the lower base of the skull.

  “Damn.” Arlo let out a low whistle. “No honor among thieves.”

  “Apparently not.” Her voice was dry, a side effect of her breathing apparatus and the stress of the dive. She resolutely would not believe any hints of breathiness could be attributed to the sexy man currently holding a dead body with her and giving off glorious heat where his body crouched close to hers. “Other guy’s the same. I think he was the second shot because his bullet wound isn’t quite as clean.”

  Arlo laid the body back, wiping his hands on his slacks as he turned to her, still in his crouch. “What’s that?”

  Once again, that attention was laser-focused on her, but this time she didn’t see any traces of interest. Instead, all she saw was cop.

  And that, she knew what to do with.

  Pointing toward the other guy, she expanded on the theory she’d puzzled through as she and Jayden had worked to free the bodies and bring them up to the surface.

  “The second one.” She pointed to the other man, who was still lying face up, untouched. “If you look at his wound, it’s low on the back of the head, too, but it’s clear he moved in some way. The shot isn’t nearly as clean or even. I’d guess he figured out what happened to his buddy and braced to fight.”

  “With a third crew member. One who left no traces in the boat.”

  And there it was. That nagging, mental toothache that suggested the case had grown even more complex than they’d first thought.

  “That’s what I thought when we brought them up. There had to be a third person.”

  “One you didn’t find?”

  “No,” Kerrigan replied. “No trace of anyone else.”

  Arlo nodded, obviously working through the problem as he spoke. “These two might have doused the boat, but neither of them thought they wouldn’t get out.”

  She exhaled hard, affirming Arlo’s hypothesis. “It appears that way, and while I’ll leave it to the medical examiners to make the final assessment, I’m sure they’ll find traces of the accelerant on the victims’ hands that suggest the same. These two were destroying evidence, but in full expectation they’d get off the boat.”

  “Looks like.”

  He pointed toward the other body. “Help me turn him. I’d like to take a look at that gunshot and then we turn them over to the ME to see if we get an agreement there, too.”

  Kerrigan moved with Arlo, resettling into a crouch beside the second body. This man was a bit smaller than the first in heft, but roughly the same height. And just as she’d assessed on the recovery, the bullet wound wasn’t as clean—the shot had shifted at the base of the skull with the man’s movement.

  “Hell of a way to go.” Arlo shook his head before gesturing to let the body back down. “And you’ve done a proper assessment, Officer...?”

  He let the question hang there, obviously waiting for her name.

  “Officer Doyle, Detective Prescott.”

  “You got a first name, Officer Doyle?”

  It wasn’t protocol, per se, to ask her first name, but she’d addressed him by his rank and he’d technically done the same.

  “Kerrigan. Kerrigan Doyle.”

  He nodded and then surprised her when he reverted back to her rank. “This is good work, Officer Doyle. I’m more than happy to have you on this case if you want to see it through.”

  “I’d—” She broke off, the small bubble of happiness at having his professional attention popping at the remembrance of the way his gaze had settled on her when she’d stripped off her suit. “Thank you, sir. I’d appreciate the opportunity.”

  Something dimmed in his gaze, but it fell away after that quick flicker. And then he nodded, tilting his head toward Wyatt. “I’ll clear it with Detective Trumball. This is very good work.”

  He got to his feet, stepping back as he spoke. And before she could say another word, he turned on his heel and left.

  She wouldn’t feel bad for that flash of frustration that he might have only asked her out of some misplaced sense of attraction, but she could honestly acknowledge that she was a bit disappointed as he walked away. She wanted to progress in the NYPD and working with a celebrated detective was one of the pathways to do that.

  But what if he’d only asked for her help because he liked how she looked wet?

  It was a harsh assessment—and possibly an unfair one—even as she still shivered from the memory of that intense stare. It hadn’t been lascivious, but rather, she’d seen real, tangible interest in his eyes.

  A two-second glance, Doyle? Get it together.

  She’d have to, she realized as she stared down at the two vics. Because working with one of the lead detectives in the 86th would be a huge boon to her career.

  Kerrigan consoled herself with that as she crouched down beside the bodies once more, her gaze roaming over the charred clothes and the premortem wounds. And as she pictured those gunshots—one clean, one not so much—she couldn’t help but feel there was one more thing she was overlooking.

  But what?

  There was a third person on that boat, and that meant they had a lead. A lead she’d been given the opportunity to see clear through to its inevitable end.

  It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  Something, Kerrigan knew, that she was determined to make into everything.

  * * *

  Arlo knocked on the door of the ME’s office, a large box of doughnuts in hand. He knew the rules of order and waiting in line—and was well aware his harbor bodies weren’t the only priority in the medical examiner’s office—so he’d come bearing a gift.

  He’d given the ME more than a day, after all.

  Thirty-six hours, to be exact, to give proper time to examine the bodies and allow that team to do their essential work when the bodies still had fresh tales to tell.

  He’d still brought breakfast.

  For those who were smart and paid attention, a truism could be learned very early in a law-enforcement career: copious amounts of sugar could, and often did, work miracles in a cop shop.

  A fact his new “partner” on the harbor case must have known, because Kerrigan Doyle was gesturing with a heavily glazed cruller toward their chief medical examiner, Lorelei Mayes, who at this very moment had a jelly bear claw in hand.

  “Officer Doyle? Dr. Mayes?”

  Both women glanced over at him, their irritation at being interrupted smoothing away as their gazes landed in unison on the box in his hands.

  But it was Lorelei who smiled first, a gleam in her eyes.

  “I see the bakeries in Brooklyn have been busy this morning.”

  Arlo shot her a wry grin. “Or as I prefer to say, great minds thinking alike.”

  He didn’t miss the slightly guilty flush that added color to Kerrigan’s cheeks, and he kept his smile in place even as a shot of annoyance skated over his skin.

  She’d done nothing wrong, yet the sexual politics at the precinct likely made her feel as if she had. And he knew why. Some people—hell, more than some—would have been frustrated with Kerrigan’s early arrival, effectively beating him to the punch with the doughnuts, but he was far more pragmatic than that.

  Whatever got the job done.

  And it was also one more notch in the column that the woman had a real future as a detective. A rank she could still make on the harbor team, just as Wyatt had. Career progression was readily available to all cops in the NYPD, but they made adjustments by pairing the experts in the harbor team with the “landlubber cops,” as Wyatt had often called him.

  The fact that Kerrigan Doyle had taken on the work with him for this case in addition to her dives was a sure sign she wanted that career. Her ideas and careful consideration of the victims pulled off the harbor floor were more indicators she was smart and focused. But that she’d arrived early this morning told him all he needed to know.

  The woman was as bright as she was ambitious. But more than that, she was determined. He’d take a partner or a trainee any day of the week who showed that level of commitment to the work.

  “Well, the bribery was unnecessary this morning, despite the sweet, delicious flakiness of this bear claw.” Lorelei’s gaze still twinkled with some amusement. “My team and I worked late to finish up your water rescue last night.”

  “Thank you.”

  Lorelei waved a hand. “It was our pleasure. The storm’s been nasty, and this crime had an extra layer that bugged all of us.”

  “And we were waiting for you to discuss the specifics,” Kerrigan quickly added. “I only just got here.”

  He didn’t miss the quick answer or her eagerness for him to know she hadn’t usurped the chain of command.

  “As Dr. Mayes knows, I’m not particular on how the news gets shared. The more good minds working on this problem, the faster we catch our killer.”

  “I did finally figure out what was bugging me,” Kerrigan said, seemingly more at ease with his acceptance. He was pleased to see that momentary concern over jumping rank had settled, and her natural eagerness was rising back to the surface.

  “What’s that?”

  “The third person. They had to be quite a bit shorter than the two victims. The angle of the gunshots coming so low at the base of the skull.”

  Once more, she’d impressed the hell out of him. Her quick, thoughtful assessment on the boat and now this. She was observant, a necessity for police work. But she was tenacious, too.

  Which shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was a key trait of any good cop and Arlo had observed long ago that it was beyond essential for the men and women who worked the harbor. His own knowledge was limited more by what he knew of Wyatt’s work than his own experience, but the harbor team was top-notch. They worked in unceasingly harsh conditions, in a city so large that crime in and around the water was a forgone conclusion.