Page 1 of Falling For You

CHAPTER 1

Romance Novels

ANDY

There were parts of me I couldn't access by myself. Not because I was incomplete, but because some things only come alive when someone else makes it safe for them to.

"She comes up to me backstage holding this tutu. Tiny pink thing. Tells me all the other dads are doing it. I look around. None of the other dads are doing it."

Doug switched lanes without checking. I grabbed the handle.

"But she hits me with the please, Daddy, and that's it. I'm done. I'm a grown man putting on a tutu in a room full of kindergartners."

Doug Price. My partner for the last three years, and the only cop I knew who could make me laugh on the drive to a bad call.

"Did you actually wear it?"

He held his phone across the console at the red light. The screen showed a stage full of little girls in pink tutus, and in the middle of them, visible from the waist up because the camera couldn't fit all of him, was Doug Price in a pink tutu, doing a plié next to his daughter.

"Is that a tiara?"

"She put it on me backstage. I couldn't say no to that either."

Doug could clear a room just by standing up. He was 6'2" and 240 pounds. People crossed the street when they saw the size of him. He was also one of the softest men I'd ever met. Patrol in Las Vegas meant the horrific was almost routine. Doug stayed soft anyway, which said more about him than any commendation on his wall.

The radio crackled.

"419, Code 3. Alley behind 2100 East Bonanza Boulevard. Caller reports a female down, possible stabbing. Victim is not breathing. No suspect description."

Doug tucked the phone deeper into his chest pocket. The laughter left his face as he hit the lights.

"Copy, dispatch. En route."

The woman was on her back in the alley behind East Bonanza. Sex worker, by the clothes. Stabbed twice, the blood pooled dark beneath her shoulder. There were needle marks on her left arm and a small glassine bag two feet from her open hand.

Doug wrote down first officer observations while I worked the body from three feet back.

The tattoo on the inside of her left wrist caught my eye. It was a man's name in heavy black ink. The letters were crude and uneven. It didn't look like the kind of work you got at a tattoo parlor, and it was clearly not something she walked in and asked for.

"Doug. Her left wrist."

He crouched beside me. "Is that a name?"

A cruiser pulled to the curb behind us. Sergeant Elliot Handler stepped out. Tall, sharp jaw, light eyes, stubble that belonged in a cologne ad. If the department ever wanted to make the public fall in love with a cop and forget they hated us, Elliot Handler in uniform would be a good place to start.

He pulled off his sunglasses and glanced at the body. "Another hooker on Bonanza. What else is new?"

"Maybe not. This might be a case for Vice and the trafficking task force."

Elliot looked at me for a second. "Canvass the block for cameras. I'll get a second unit out here for witness statements."

I nodded and was just about to turn when I heard it behind me.

"Officer Walsh."

Detective Zeus Alexander was walking toward us. Gray suit, black tie, and a face lined by thirty years of crime scenes. In a job that killed people or burned them out, Zeus Alexander was still here. His parents swung for the fences with that name, and the man delivered. You hear Zeus Alexander and you expect someone extraordinary. Then he walks in and you think yeah, that tracks.

"What do we have here?"