Inked

administrative section. Lily could hear voices from an open doorway at one end; three closed doors studded the hall in the direction Daly took. He marched to a door at that end, jerked it open, and let it slam behind him.
    “Oh, geez,” Lily muttered. “Why didn’t you warn me the two of you had a history? I had him ready to cooperate. Then he saw you.”
    “I said that the cops here weren’t trustworthy. You didn’t ask how I knew.” Rule was still watching the door Daly had used. Slowly his gaze shifted to her. “Five years ago, Pete Daly—he was a detective at the time—tried to beat Steve to death. A difficult task, considering how fast we heal, but he did his best.”
    Her eyes narrowed. “Well, he’s a bastard, then, and a disgrace to the uniform, but what did you do to him? Because that isn’t the way a man reacts to someone he despises. Despises would mean he won, and he didn’t. He’s scared shitless of you.”
    “Ah.” Now Rule looked at her, and his smile turned genuine. “Very insightful. To answer your question, I did nothing to Pete. How could I? He was an officer of the law. I was newly and publicly revealed as a lupus. I did nothing to him…over and over and over.”
    She studied him a moment. He was truly relaxed now. Before he’d faked it, posing to look at ease in the presence of his enemy, announcing how little he considered Daly a threat.
    Dominance games. He was good at them. “You stalked him,” she announced.
    His smile widened. “I do love your twisty mind. How did—” A door opened in the short hall and a middle-aged woman glanced at them as she emerged from the office. “Perhaps we should discuss this elsewhere,” Rule murmured and took Lily’s hand.
    “Quit that.” She pulled her hand free. “I can’t wander around holding hands when I’m investigating. You ever see a cop holding hands on duty? Or an FBI agent,” she remembered to add. The woman click-clicked her four-inch heels down the hall toward the door Daly had used. “Come on. Explain while we head to the car. You can start by telling me why you were here waiting for me. Or for Chief Daly?”
    “That’s simple enough. I spoke with Jason’s former supervisor, as I told you I planned to do, but she’s on shift and couldn’t give me much time.”
    “That wasn’t exactly what I asked. I suppose you heard Daly talking to me on the stairs and that gave you time to pose for him. What did you learn from Chance’s former supervisor? Was he or she responsible for him getting fired?”
    Rule opened the door, holding it for her. “No, and they remained friends afterward.”
    The hall opened onto the hospital lobby with a Pink Lady station, tiny gift shop, the main exit, and a couple elevators. “He was fired after coming out as a lupus, you said.”
    “Jason didn’t announce it openly the way Steve did. He simply stopped hiding certain things, such as his visits to Clanhome, and let others draw their own conclusions. They did. He was fired.”
    “He found another job pretty quickly.” He’d moved to San Diego for it, but Rule said he returned to Del Cielo sometimes to see Hilliard, who’d lived here. He’d been here on such a visit when Steve was killed.
    “The nursing shortage,” Rule said dryly, “is acute. His current employers don’t want to know if their suspicions about him are true, and Jason doesn’t speak of Clanhome at work.”
    “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
    “Pretty much, yes.”
    “I always ask.”
    Rule’s grin flashed. “I know.”
    “Like right now, I’m asking why you brought me to the elevator instead of the exit.”
    He pushed the third-floor button. “So you could speak with Jason’s former supervisor, too. She’s a lovely older woman named Lupe. I thought she might be able to alibi him, and that he, for chivalrous reasons, had failed to mention this to the police.”
    Lily quirked an eyebrow. “She’s that kind of friend?”
    “Unlike you, I don’t always ask. But if their relationship did include intimacy, it would be very like Jason to protect her by concealing that.”
    The elevator door opened. Three people got out; Lily followed Rule on. He usually took elevators even though he hated them. More like because he hated them. They were so small. “You like Jason.”
    “I do.”
    “Since you didn’t open your story with the alibi, I take it there isn’t one.”
    “Unfortunately, no. He did stop by to see her, but he did so here at the hospital,