Love Can Be Murder

of heart like the lady in the newspaper article."
    Roxann lifted her chin. "If Melissa Cape sought refuge through Rescue, she must've had reason to believe her life or her child's life was in danger. By pursuing her, you could be making things worse."
    "That doesn't change the fact that I have a comatose cop on my hands."
    "Better a comatose cop than a comatose cop and a dead witness."
    He opened his mouth, then wiped away whatever he'd been about to say and sighed. "Ms. Beadleman, the best way to keep Melissa Cape safe is to put her ex-husband behind bars, but we can't do that without her testimony."
    "And she'll have your personal guarantee that he won't get off on a technicality?"
    His neck muscle ticked.
    "And even if the man is convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder, he faces what—a few years?"
    "Six to ten."
    "So what happens when he gets out early due to prison overcrowding? He'll kill her for sure."
    "We'd protect her."
    "Right." Roxann shook her head. "Detective, what makes you think I would help you even if I could?"
    He pursed his mouth, then shrugged. "I guess I'm counting on whatever sense of duty drove you to work for this organization in the first place." Then he angled his head. "Unless you're a fake."
    Without knowing it, he'd hit a nerve. After the legal system had deprived her of her mother, an innate sense of judiciousness had embedded itself in her belly. She rooted for the underdog, adopted the strays, gravitated toward the outcasts, and in general, tried to build her life on the foundation of doing what was right. And except for a couple of deviations—
    "Come on, Ms. Beadleman, I'm running out of patience."
    She blinked, then looked him over. A big man with a badge whose loyalty lay with a fellow uniform. She admired his allegiance, but she wasn't about to betray Melissa Cape out of sympathy for the wounded officer. Melissa was safe, and she deserved to be left alone to start a new life for herself and her daughter.
    "Goodbye, Detective. I have an appointment with the want ads." She pivoted and attacked the path with her trusty blue Adidas.
    "The next time I see you," he shouted, "I just might arrest you for assault and obstruction of justice."
    She didn't look back, but her skin burned from his gaze. Had she seemed as vulnerable as she felt? When she looped around the quarter-mile path, she half expected to find him lounging by the tree again, but he was gone. Had he retreated to watch her? To follow her? The police had come sniffing around the organization before, but usually to follow up on a missing-person report, not because the client was wanted for questioning.
    Filling her lungs with the perpetually fish-scented air of Biloxi, Roxann forced herself to slow down, to finish her five-mile run at her normal pace. Afterward she showered and launched Goldie on a winding route toward 255 Amberjack, Unit B, checking occasionally to make sure she wasn't being tailed by the cop—again.
    Few people knew her address since the duplex was leased through the agency's network. She had lived all over the southeast, although over the last five years she'd migrated back toward the Mississippi Valley—guilt over her father, she presumed, which was alleviated somewhat by being on the same page of the atlas.
    She received her mail through a post office box, and her phone was unlisted. She relied on pay phones to conduct most business with Rescue, whom to meet and where, setting up details of a relocation, arranging transport. The only people who knew the number for her cell phone were her father and her Rescue supervisor. In a desperate attempt to contact her, Melissa Cape had obtained the number from a friend who worked for the wireless company. Roxann hadn't recognized the number on the display, and should've known better than to answer, but she'd been afraid not to. Afraid something had happened to her father, afraid...
    She sighed. Maybe she would take this opportunity to visit her father. Try to reconnect. An outlandish notion, considering they'd never really connected in the first place. Disparate relatives, sharing a roof, both longing for a black-haired woman long gone.
    Perhaps her recent restlessness was rooted in the shakiness of the relationships with the people she should be closest to. Working odd jobs and operating covertly didn't lend itself to forging intimate liaisons. She thought she'd found a friend in Elise, who also worked for Rescue, but that had ended disastrously.