No Immunity

laugh. “And you’ll tell them what, Kiernan? That a crazy colleague of yours somewhere in Nevada is worried about an autopsy? Come, see for yourself. If it weren’t vital, you know I wouldn’t have called... you.”
    That much she did know was true.
    “You can fly into Las Vegas . I’ll meet you at the airport.”
    “No,” she said w ith a sigh, giving up as much to curiosity as to urgency. She didn’t trust Jeff Tremaine enough to let herself end up three hours into the desert without a car of her own. “I’ll get a rental.”
    “Bring double gloves and a full head mask,” he said before hanging up.

CHAPTER 3

    “And you’re going? To Nevada ? Without taking a lee?” Brad Tchernak smacked the serving platter so hard on the table that the skewered, %-stuffed Canadian quail almost flew to the floor. Ezra lifted his shaggy wolfhound head and tensed his muscles in readiness.
    At barely five feet and not quite a hundred pounds, Kiernan was nowhere near Tchernak’s size. But, as she’d taught herself early on, authority was not physical but mental. She let a moment pass before saying, “Yes, I’m going. This is a courtesy to a, uh, colleague, not an agency case.”
    “What about your time? Does this guy, this doctor, think that just because you’re not part of the exclusive medical fraternity anymore, your time’s worth zip? Clients could call while you’re gone. Ongoing cases could go sour. Investigation waits for no woman. This could mean big bucks lost while you fly off to play around with an uh— colleague.”
    “Boundaries, Tchernak! You’d think a former offensive lineman would have a clearer concept of the meaning of out-of-bounds.”
    “When I was playing football, the quarterback stayed in the pocket,” he reminded her.
    “I am not in your pocket. I’m your employer.” Before Tchernak could get to the real focus of his pique, she added, ““You were in the process of serving dinner.”
    He pursed his face in what she assumed was the fierce! look he’d aimed at defensive tackles across the line of scrimmage. Tchernak had been invalided out of the pros j before the era of trash talking, so his threatening glare must have been his entire preamble to each play. That scowl, under a helmet and above shoulder pads the size of: a 747, doubtless was once a fearsome thing. But now, with a weath of wiry brown hair capping brown eyes as big as? Ezra’s, an oft-broken nose that pulled to one side when he laughed, and a ripped T-shirt on a hundred pounds less of sleek muscle, the effect was no longer terrifying. It was endearing.
    But this was an inopportune moment to mention that. She watched Tchernak stride into his half of the duplex. If ¿ the way the man had played football was anything like the way he worked for her, he must have blocked the defensive tackles down the field and into the bleachers. There was a time when she would have said Brad Tchernak had been the second best addition to her life, the first being Ezra, her wolfhound, whose loyalty was severely strained by the meaty smell on the table. She had advertised for a housekeeper and ended lip with a gourmet cook who adored her dog. Adored her work. Aid her. For ninety percent of America ’s women, and men, that would have been heaven. Sometimes she wished she were in that majority. But then she had seen the truth.
    It had been revealed in two epiphanies. The first had been right here in her living room. She had been sitting outside on the balcony rail watching the deep apricot sun settle into the green-gray Pacific. Her eyes were adjusting to the indoor light when she walked into the living room and spotted Tchernak on the sofa, his wiry brown hair unfettered as he leaned forward, elbows on knees, whiskered chin cupped in palms. Beside the sofa lay Ezra, paws crossed, whiskered chin resting on forelegs. The physical resemblance she had noticed before. But that was the first time she registered that they were brothers under the fur.
    She hadn’t yet felt it appropriate to mention the similarity to Tchernak. But she thought of it when Ezra eyed her food, sniffed at her work papers, stood beside her bed with his big brown eyes staring at her lovingly, his head tilted to one side. It was only through consistent discipline that she’d kept him off the bed.
    The second great realization was that Tchernak could never be trusted off leash. He had taken the job as house-keeper-cook-dogwalker to “find himself” after the sudden