“Why? To their way of thinking, they got away with the crime of the century and besides, they’re not about to walk away from the money they feel is coming to them, even if it is in a bank in the Cayman Islands.”

  “They risked a great deal for freedom,” was the way he saw it.

  “No,” Orla contradicted, “they risked a great deal to get what they—at least Aimee—felt was coming to her. I guarantee that my sister is not about to go anywhere until she gets her hands on it. In case you missed it, my sister has a very inflated sense of self.”

  “So in the meantime, until this gets resolved, you’re going to be wandering around with a target on your back?”

  Orla squared her shoulders. “If that’s what it takes to resolve this and capture Aimee, then yes, I will have a target on my back.”

  * * *

  He frowned as he looked at her, desperately wanting to talk some sense into Orla. There was no getting away from the fact that, without even trying, he had managed to fall for her. He was not about to ignore that.

  But he wasn’t about to just rubber-stamp what she was planning on doing. “I can’t make up my mind if you’re being exceedingly loyal to your father—or just exceedingly stupid when it comes to carrying out vengeance. No offense,” he added.

  “Well, if I get a vote in this, I’ll go with choice number one,” Orla told him.

  Sean nodded. “I thought you might, but me, I’m not all that sure. You do realize that Captain Reeves is still thinking about arresting you for being in on your father’s murder.”

  “But you made her see the error of her ways, right?” she asked.

  “I’m working on it,” he said. “But bringing Aimee and her boyfriend in would go a long way in getting our point across.” He was convinced Orla was innocent and that her heart was in the right place. As much as he believed in her, however, he knew his boss would need more solid proof.

  “I think that maybe we should set a trap for Bonnie and Clyde,” Orla began. “I could—” She didn’t get a chance to finish.

  Sean’s face immediately clouded up. “No, no, no!” he declared. “There will be no setting up any traps on your part. I’m not about to have you turn into some sort of live bait. There just has to be another way,” he said. “In the meanwhile, I’m planning on keeping you close—not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t,” he told her plainly. “In the meantime, I’m sending the CSI team back to your father’s apartment to do another deep search. Maybe they missed finding a set of your sister’s prints that had been left on the scene.”

  “You haven’t found them yet,” she pointed out.

  “That doesn’t mean that we won’t,” he said stubbornly. “Things happen. It’s a big apartment, and your sister is definitely not a fool. She didn’t exactly run around, wiping her fingerprints off every single surface she came in contact with.” He paused as he finally started up his vehicle. “Did she show up at your father’s residence very often?”

  “He didn’t exactly mention it,” Orla told Sean. “But then, I didn’t keep tabs on what my father was doing. He had his world, I had mine. Occasionally, he would tell me what Aimee was up to. When she and Joe were arrested for stalking me two years ago, I thought that Aimee would stay put, at least for a while.”

  Visibly upset, Orla pressed her lips together as she looked away. “I should have never let my guard down.”

  He could hear the wave of emotion she was struggling to contain. His heart went out to her. “You know, this wasn’t your fault,” he told her.

  Orla must have realized what he was trying to do. “Saying so doesn’t make me feel any better. It also doesn’t change anything.”

  Coming to a stop, he glanced at her. “You’re not going to find any peace until you learn to forgive yourself.”

  “Since when did they make psych courses part of the required background that a detective brings to the job?” she asked.

  “It’s not required,” he told her. “It’s just something I managed to pick up along the way. I’m a quick study and Uncle Humphrey all but oozed the stuff when he talked to us. This was, granted, before he got married, but that still amounted to over sixteen years worth of education.”

  He glanced at Orla as he got to the point of all this. “Now that the funeral is over, I need to get back to looking for Uncle Humphrey. We’ve got videos of him walking into the courthouse, but then nothing. He never came out. The man couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air,” Sean insisted, frustrated.

  Orla shook her head. “For one thing,” she said, thinking of the photograph he had shown her, “the man is just too big.”

  Sean found himself being grateful that Orla wasn’t referring to Humphrey using the past tense. Yes, he had to admit that was a rather small thing, but at the same time, it did make him feel somewhat better. By not using the past tense, it made Sean feel as if the psychiatrist was still very much among the living.

  “Do you need help?” she asked suddenly.

  He wasn’t sure how she could help.

  “What do you mean?” Sean asked.

  “I’m asking you if you need help looking for Humphrey Kelly?” she explained. “I really need to feel useful right now and you just said you don’t want me laying a trap for Aimee, so this is the only other thing I can think of doing at the moment.”

  He had another solution for her. “You could pick up where you left off teaching those self-defense classes and showing abused women how to protect themselves,” he told her.

  “And you want me to do this with you hovering around?”

  He hadn’t taken that aspect of it into account, Sean realized. He was still on protective detail when it came to her. “You have a point,” he acknowledged.

  “I know,” she told him. “I do have a brain,” Orla stressed, then added, tongue in cheek, “I’m not just another pretty face.”

  Midtown traffic was incredibly slow. Sean’s eyes managed to hold hers for a long moment.

  “No,” he agreed, “you’re not. You are a very specific, unique pretty face.”

  “I wasn’t fishing for a compliment,” she said.

  The smile managed to make its way to his eyes. “I know.”

  “And besides, any compliment you give me perforce fits my sister as well.”

  “I’m afraid I’d have to argue with you on that score,” he said, thinking of a clip he had seen of Aimee’s prison escape. “Your twin’s eyes lack a soul, which makes the two of you look completely different,” he told her.

  Orla’s smile grew wider. “You do have a way with words.”

  “You inspire me,” he said.

  “Something tells me I should quit while I am ahead,” Orla muttered.

  “Why don’t we continue this discussion later on—in bed?” he suggested.

  She smiled. “Works for me.”

  * * *

  Orla wasn’t fooling herself. This relationship between them did not have the mark of “forever” about it, but she planned to make the very most of it and enjoy it to the nth degree for as long as it lasted.

  They arrived at his apartment and she was prepared to get down to work in an attempt to clear her mind of what had just transpired. But Sean had another idea and told her as much, deliberately being vague.

  “All right, then,” she said agreeably. “Lead the way.”

  But rather than walking, he told her, “I’ve got another idea.”

  And Sean suddenly scooped her up in his arms and in a matter of moments, he was carrying her into his bedroom.

  Delighted, feeling all the tension momentarily leeching out of her body, Orla wove her arms around his neck and gave herself up to living in the moment. She had just learned the hard way how few and fleeting those moments could be. That meant they could be utterly gone within the blink of an eye.

  Her heart was racing madly as Sean carried her into the bedroom and lay her on his bed. Orla focused on that and nothing more, rejoicing in the way that Sean made her feel.

  Tomorrow it might all change, she knew that. But now, following her father’s burial and living in the moment that had been created by all those kind, respectful words that had been said about her father, Orla was singularly focused on making love with Sean and enjoying doing that to the nth degree.

  They made love several times until, exhausted, they both fell asleep.

  When morning arrived, Orla’s normal inclination to bounce out of bed, something she had been doing every morning for her entire life, stalled to the point that she found herself curling up into Sean’s body. It was a very nice feeling, she caught herself thinking, for him to be with her as his siblings were looking into Humphrey’s disappearance.

  She was really reluctant to get up.

  Catching hold of his shoulder—despite this being the dead of winter, and neither one of them were wearing anything beyond a satisfied smile—she pulled him back to her.

  “Stay,” she whispered seductively in his ear.

  He raised his head, a quizzical look in his eyes. “I thought you told me that you were an early riser.”

  “I am. Normally,” she answered.

  “But not today?” he asked.

  Her smile spread out along her lips. “Not today,” she replied. “At least, not just yet.”

  “Not just yet?” he echoed, raising himself up on his elbow so that he could look down into her eyes. “Then what is it that you do want to do first thing this morning?” he asked her.

  Orla was very aware of the time and knew exactly how much she had to spare. Just enough to get her engine running, she thought. She moved, centering herself until she was beneath Sean. Reaching up, she took his face into her hands so that she only had to raise her head up just a little bit more in order to plant her lips directly against his.

  Her breath moved seductively against his lips, just out of reach.

  Her eyes met his, holding him in place. His question echoed in her brain.

  Then what is it that you do want to do first thing this morning?

  “Guess,” she whispered.

  His eyes shone as he answered her. “Less talking, more doing.”

  Those were the last words that were exchanged between them for a long while.

  Chapter 19

  Sean was utterly convinced that there just were not enough hours in the day. Even if he gave up sleeping altogether and found a way to just run on batteries, he knew he would never be able to get even close to everything accomplished that he needed to. He had loved every moment of the time he’d spent with Orla, but now he had to focus his thoughts on his work.

  He had to touch base with Mitch Mallard and see if he’d made any progress in finding Lana’s killer—or at least proving who killed her because, in his gut, he already knew who had done away with the young hostess. He hoped Mitch could find the proof to put Wes Westmore away. Her well-to-do fiancé was convinced that he could float through life completely untouched by any consequences for anything he did just because he was such a privileged person.

  In addition, Sean still needed to find just what had happened to Humphrey. As the hours passed, they seemed no closer to determining what had become of the psychiatrist. The more research his siblings did, the more questions they came up with. Humphrey had a laundry list of high-profile clients. Right now Cormac was interviewing Assistant District Attorney Emily Hernandez. Sean knew they would keep searching until they found Humphrey—or whoever had harmed him, if that was the case. They wouldn’t stop no matter how long it took. They owed the man that much. So far, though, none of them had been able to find a connection between Orla’s dead father and the missing Humphrey. They didn’t even seem to be business partners. Had Humphrey planted a red herring before he disappeared?

  And, of course, he needed to find just where Orla’s twin had gone before that woman wound up succeeding in doing something terrible to Orla or someone else.

  To that end, he needed to convince his superior, Captain Reeves, that Orla really was innocent of her father’s murder. He could tell by the way his captain spoke to him when she called to see how things were going that Reeves was still not fully convinced.

  Her doubts would make it harder to prove Orla’s innocence.

  Leaving his notes on Humphrey’s disappearance for his brothers and Eva to review—he was more than willing to admit that he just might have missed something important—Sean turned his attention toward Orla and clearing that first hurdle, his captain’s lingering suspicions.

  “Do what you have to do to get ready,” he told Orla, walking into the living room after terminating his video conference with his siblings.

  Orla looked at him quizzically. That sounded like a very strange thing for him to say. “Are you taking me out?” she asked, amused.

  “In a matter of speaking,” he told her, closing his computer. “I’m taking you to meet my captain so she can see for herself why I think you’re innocent of your father’s murder.”

  “Captain Reeves still has her doubts about the matter?” Orla asked.

  Sean thought it best not to pull any punches. “Not as many as before, but yes, I can see it in her eyes, she still does to some extent. I think it would serve our purpose a lot better if you were the one to talk to her and make her realize that you’re innocent of any wrongdoing.” He smiled at Orla. “After all, the best thing I can say about this matter is that I am not that easily convinced about things. And you managed to convince me.”

  Her brow furrowed slightly as the meaning of his words sank in. “I didn’t try to say anything to convince you that I was innocent. As far as I was concerned, that was just a given from the beginning.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. So Orla had never even thought that that was ever up for debate. Sean decided to leave that matter alone. He simply said, “It was the way you didn’t say it.”

  From Orla’s expression, it appeared that she didn’t know if he was just pulling her leg or was being serious. “You are definitely an enigma, Detective Colton.”

  “That might be,” he granted. “But for the time being, I am your enigma.”

  Sean looked at Orla’s face. How did she feel about being his enigma? He couldn’t say for sure.

  “Let’s go,” Orla told Sean, gathering her things together. “I’m ready.”

  * * *

  Sean was oddly quiet as he drove himself and Orla to the precinct. She had no idea if that was a good sign or not. He still hadn’t said a word by the time they arrived at the 130th Precinct and he parked his vehicle outside the building.

  She did her best to remain calm as he escorted her inside. This was his superior he was taking her to meet, she thought. Orla had no intentions of allowing her nerves to get the better of her—but it wasn’t easy.

  Very honestly, she had no idea just who to expect when they walked into the captain’s office. It was definitely not the pretty, slightly older, slender blonde who immediately looked up. The next moment, Captain Reeves was on her feet and crossing over to her when she and Sean entered.

  The captain’s hand was extended toward Orla and at the ready. The smile that followed was slightly delayed but friendly.

  “So you did come after all,” Captain Reeves acknowledged in mild surprise, her eyes meeting Orla’s after briefly nodding toward her detective.

  Orla was slightly confused. “I understood that you and Detective Colton had made arrangements about that,” she said. “It wouldn’t have been very polite of me to avoid this meeting.”

  She’d almost forgotten the most important detail. “Besides, Detective Colton thought I could do a better job of convincing you that I had nothing to do with my father’s murder than he could.”

  “I’m listening,” the captain told her.

  Taking a breath, Orla launched into her explanation. “My father and I were both usually too busy working at our separate undertakings to spend time together. But I did love that man dearly,” Orla said with feeling. “I always have. Something my twin sister did not,” Orla couldn’t help adding with more than a little emphasis. “That was her loss.”

  Captain Reeves took in the information silently. She continued studying Orla without saying a single word. Rising from her seat, the captain quietly circled around Orla, for the moment keeping her thoughts to herself.

  Orla kept her eyes forward as the woman made a complete circle around her.

  “If you’re trying to unnerve me, Captain Reeves,” she told the older woman, “I have to tell you that compared to my mother, you are, sadly, a mere rank amateur.”

  “Contrary to what you might think, Ms. Roberts, I am not trying to unnerve you,” the captain told her. “What I am trying to do is just get a read on you.”

  The way she said it, it sounded as if Colleen Reeves felt that she’d succeeded.

  Orla avoided looking at Sean. She thought the captain might have interpreted that as a sign of weakness. Instead, her eyes never wavered from Reeves’s. Orla raised her chin almost pugnaciously.

  “And the verdict that you reached?” Orla wanted to know.

  Rather than give her an answer, Captain Reeves’s eyes shifted toward Sean. The corners of her mouth turned up just a little.

  “She’s awfully cocky, isn’t she?” Reeves asked.

  “That was my impression too, after I brushed aside the unhappiness I saw there,” Sean told his superior, then explained, “I was with her when she discovered her father’s body.”

  The captain nodded knowingly. “And it is your honest opinion that none of that was orchestrated for your benefit?”

  The detective shook his head. “You had to have been there,” he told her.

  Orla raised her hand as she looked from Reeves to Sean and then back again. “Excuse me, but I’m standing right here, listening to the two of you talking about me,” she pointed out.