Alex POV


My amusement at watching Connie out her relationship with Lupo was short-lived.

Cutter's news trumped it.

Stoat was dead.

And he'd been trying to put out another hit on me.

He hated Bobby that much? That he couldn't think of anything else but revenge?

It was sad. And infuriating. And a little scary.

Because the last time he'd put a hit on me, I'd been snatched by a lunatic with a penchant for explosives.

And that was after he'd shot at me through our bedroom wall.

And before he'd nearly blown us up in the car.

Frankie had been a relentless little bastard, and I wasn't sorry for one second that Mike had taken him out.

But apparently Stoat hadn't been ready to give up on his dream of taking me away from Bobby.

And then Lupo asked a vital question, one that was on the tip of my tongue.

"Why would he hang himself in the middle of working out another hit?" he'd asked.

No one had an answer, to that or to why Stoat didn't erase the information from his phone before killing himself.

And why? Seriously.

Why would he kill himself? It didn't fit his psychopathy.

Cutter went on to tell us about Irene, but I was only partially listening. I was still stuck on Stoat and the hit that wasn't.

I mean, I was happy for Irene. I didn't like her, but I felt sorry for her.

Or rather, I felt sorry for Dylan. He deserved to have a mother, and as messed up in the head as Irene was about men, I did think that she was a good mother.

Cutter left us alone, picking up on the fact that he was clearly the fifth wheel, and then Lupo asked us about Irene.

"Money or love? Because it's almost always one of the two."

And he was right. But I wasn't thinking about Irene any more. I was thinking about Heidi.

I thought back over what we'd learned about her today.

She'd had no money to speak of while growing up. No money, no real parents, not much education…and yet by the time she'd met John, she was sophisticated and well-employed and unconcerned with his money. And he had a lot of money.

"Hey Alex…" Bobby said, and it was like he was reading my mind. Despite everything we'd learned in the past twenty minutes, we were both back around to Heidi.

"Uh huh," I answered with a nod.

Was Heidi after John's money? Had she simply been killed before she'd been able to follow through with a con?

If so, that was going to crush him.

He'd been mourning her death for ten years. He'd dismissed other women because he didn't believe that anyone could love him the way that Heidi had.

But what if she hadn't?

I heard Connie and Lupo whispering, and I realized that we were being rude.

"I'm sorry," I said, shaking my head. "You just made us think about something with this other…non-case thing…that we're working on."

"Non-case?" Connie asked as she signaled to the waitress.

"They're doing preliminary investigative work on a cold case and until they elevate it to official case status, it's sort of off the books," Lupo explained, and I laughed out loud at his verbatim recount of my earlier explanation.

"Well, when it gets on the books," Connie said. "Tell Lupo. Or give me a call."

At my raised eyebrow, Lupo leaned across the table and mock-whispered, "She's still a little miffed that I waited so long to fill her in on the last case."

"It's not that," she argued. "I thought that maybe I could help. You know, expedite the process for wire taps, warrants, that kind of thing."

"It's out of state," Bobby told her. "But thanks."

"So are you guys going to be taking a road trip?" Lupo asked.

Bobby and I looked at each other before I answered, "It's still in the…"

"Preliminary stages," Lupo supplied. "I get it. We can change the topic."

"We're not normally so tight-lipped, it's just that this one is…"

"Of a sensitive nature," Bobby finished for me.

I felt a little bad because they were making the effort to be friendly and yet we were coming across as standoffish because we didn't want to talk about the case.

"Hey, you're talking to a cop and an ADA who practically live together. Every other sentence around our place is I can't talk about that right now."

"Yeah, no problem," Connie added.

The waitress brought more drinks and took our dinner order, so then we settled into a more relaxed conversation, and all in all it was an enjoyable evening.

"I like them," Bobby said to me once we were back in our apartment. "When I first realized that they were together, it didn't seem like they'd fit, but after spending an evening with them, they seem…I don't know."

"Meant for each other?" I supplied. And then I couldn't resist teasing him. "Are you getting all sappy on me, Bobby?"

"No. You know what I mean. He's so…and she's so…"

"You're unusually inarticulate tonight," I told him. I walked over to where he sat on the couch and he pulled me down onto his lap. "What's on your mind?"

"Heidi," he admitted. "And John. I think I'm past worrying about what Mike's going to think. Now I'm worried about what we're going to find."

"You mean how he's going to feel about the fact that she lied to him?"

"That, and the possibility that she was lying about more than just her education."

"We need to be sure before we say anything," I said. I settled my head in the crook of his neck and ran my hand up along his jaw.

"We promised we'd keep him in the loop."

"I know. But only the confirmed loop. I don't want to pull him into any theoretical loop."

"You're doing that creative thinking thing again. But I like it," he told me. He turned his face into my hand and kissed my palm. A shiver ran through me at the chaste contact.

"So tomorrow, we'll get UVA to look through their records again. And we'll widen the search to see if we can track Heidi during that time period. If she wasn't in college, where was she?"

"And we'll get the autopsy report," he added. "I'm curious to see if there were any other marks on her body."

"You mean like was there a struggle? Did she put up a fight for her purse?"

"Right. Because how many muggers have you heard about who do two taps to the back of the head?"

"I wonder why Denver PD was willing to let it go at that," I mused, letting my eyes fall closed as Bobby began running his hand over my hair, weaving his fingers through the strands.

With his other hand, he'd pushed up the hem of my dress again and was now leisurely moving his fingers over my thighs.

"You may be right. It may have been politics. Or just shoddy detective work."

We'd certainly seen that before.

"I'm going to get John to tell me his story. I want to know what he knows. Where they met, what she said, what their life together was like…"

"Good idea. We'll do that together. I'm curious to hear what he has to say, too," Bobby agreed.

"We need to find out who her friends were. Maybe talk to some of them."

"Uh huh," he murmured.

He slipped his hand further underneath my dress and I sucked in a breath as his hand scraped first across and then beneath my panties.

"I think we were talking about a case here," I said, putting up merely a token protest.

And my objection lost all validity when I shifted one leg to allow him better access.

"We were talking about it," he replied. He tipped my head back and brought his lips onto mine for a scorching kiss. Then he pulled back and added, "Now we're doing this."

I wasn't going to argue with him.

Because I love solving cases. The thrill of the hunt and the excitement of unraveling a mystery…it's the second most meaningful thing in my life.

But I love doing this with him even more.

"Is that okay with you?" he asked as he shifted us yet again, this time pushing me back onto the cushions.

"Well…if we have to."

He smirked at my response, but then was suddenly serious as he looked down at me.

"When you came into my office earlier…and the light hit you…I swear, you looked like an angel."

"Well, we know better, don't we?"

"Angel on the outside. Devil on the inside," he whispered as he gently traced his finger across my lips. "You're the perfect woman."

I had a response ready for him, but it was lost when he leaned down to kiss me again.

I grabbed his shirt in an effort to pull it over his head, but I hadn't unbuttoned it yet, so I was having trouble, but he was still kissing me and my hands were only partially cooperating because he's just so good at it…

And then came a knock on the door.

Visitors were proving to be as annoying as cell phones, with equally bad timing.

"It's after eleven," Bobby said as he sat up on the couch, instantly on alert.

"It can't be a neighbor. We weren't even being loud yet," I grumbled as I got up and adjusted my dress to its intended position.

Bobby grabbed his gun from the side table, so I did the same and then he looked through the peephole.

"It is the neighbor," he told me in confusion.

He tucked his weapon into the back of his pants and then waited while I put mine back into its holster and set it on the table before he unlocked the door.

"Mr. Rensini," Bobby greeted. "Is something wrong?"

Al Rensini was an elderly gentleman who lived across the hall. He wasn't one who had ever complained about us, but that's probably only because he's more than a little bit hard of hearing.

He was also the resident busybody, so why he was at our door at this time of night had my curiosity piqued.

"Somebody was knocking on your door," he told us in his typically loud voice.

"When?" Bobby asked him.

"A few hours ago. I thought that you might want to know."

"Why, did he look suspicious?" I asked him.

"What?" he questioned, turning to look at me.

"Did he look suspicious?" I repeated.

"No, but he looked suspicious!" he answered.

I bit back a smile, and instead looked at Bobby.

He looked worried. And then it hit me, and I felt like an idiot for having forgotten.

He was thinking about Stoat and his supposedly unsent hit request.

"There's no way, Bobby," I said quietly. "It didn't get sent."

"That one. What if one already went out? One that he did take the time to delete from the phone?"

"It would be on the log."

"Do you trust the warden to have been thorough? Because I don't."

Mr. Rensini was still standing in our doorway, looking back and forth between the two of us.

"What did he look like?" Bobby asked him.

"Who?"

"The man at the door!"

"Black suit, black shoes, black sunglasses. He had dark hair, too, slicked back with all that crap you kids put in your hair these days," he retorted, and then he stood up on his toes and looked at Bobby's hair. "Although you don't, do you?"

"Was he tall?" I asked.

"No! He was tall, like him," he answered, pointing at Bobby. "Only thinner."

"So he knocked, and then what?"

"Then what?" Mr. Rensini shouted.

"What did he do after he knocked?"

"He turned the knob!"

And despite my amusement at the entire conversation, his last words sent a shot of trepidation through me.

He'd checked the knob? Who would do that?

"It's a good thing for you two that you lock your door!" Mr. Rensini yelled. "Because he tugged on it for a minute, and then he looked around and pulled something out of his jacket! But that's when Mrs. Fleur came home, and you know how she likes to yell at those damn cats, so she was causing quite the fuss and so then the spook took off!"

"Spook?" I asked, raising an eyebrow at Bobby. "You think he looked like CIA?"

"CIA. FBI. AARP. What the hell do I know?"

"Okay. Thank you, Mr. Rensini!" Bobby said, getting ready to close the door. And then he added, "Can you describe him to a sketch artist? If we bring someone out here tomorrow?"

"A sketch artist? What the hell good will that do?"

"It might help us find out who he is!"

"Well, don't you think a picture would be better than a sketch?"

Bobby and I looked at each other again as the old man shuffled back across the hall. He left his door open, so we waited, and after a minute he came back with a digital camera in his hand.

"I can't figure out how to get the damn pictures off of this thing, but I got a good shot of him out the front window after he left! It's four stories up, but this thing has one of those damn zoom lens things on it!"

Thank God for nosy neighbors.

"Give me a minute and I'll get the picture off!" I called to him as I walked toward my computer with his camera.

"It's past my bed time! You can give it back to me tomorrow!"

And then he went across the hall and slammed his door.

Bobby closed ours and slid the deadbolt home before following me to the computer.

"What do you think?" I asked him as I found a cord that fit the old man's camera. "Random? Or do you really think it's Stoat?"

"I don't know what to think. We're not listed. The address wouldn't be easy to come by. I guess it could've been random," he said, although neither of us really believed it.

And then I had the picture up on the screen.

"Who the hell is that?" I asked slowly.

"I have no idea. But I think we call Lupo and get him to come out and dust for prints."

TBC...