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advantage of the fact that there was a Valentine serial killer on the loose the last two years, done his homework and done away with his freewheeling girlfriend by copying the serial killer’s MO. It’s not like that hasn’t been done before,” he reminded her, “hiding a murder in the middle of a bunch of other murders.”
    Bridget nodded. The theory did make a lot of sense—as if they needed the extra confusion. “Just when I start to think of you as just another handsome face, you actually have a thought and blow everything out of the water,” she pretended to lament.
    “I am another handsome face,” he acknowledged teasingly, “but I also like keeping you on your toes, Cavanaugh.” The moment the surname had slipped out of his mouth, he slanted a look at her face, waiting to see—or hear—her reaction.
    As expected, she frowned—but not as deeply as he thought she might.
    “Don’t call me that yet,” she requested. “Not until I get used to the sound of it. Deal?”
    “Deal,” he echoed. “Whatever you want.” And then he pretended to be feeling her out. “Is it okay to call you Bridget?”
    Bridget laughed and shook her head. Leave it to Josh to lighten the moment. It was a quality she really liked in him. “That’s not about to change, so yeah, you can call me Bridget.”
    “The apartment’s over in that direction,” he announced, pointing to an area to their left. “It’s just after the duck pond.”
    “Duck pond?” she echoed.
    “That’s what it says on the map. Looks more like a duck puddle if you ask me,” he declared as they walked by it. “One way or another, we need to get this over with sooner than later.”
    She completely agreed. She never liked putting off anything just because she found it unpleasant to deal with. “Man after my own heart.”
    Leading the way, Josh turned and looked at her over his shoulder and winked. “You should be so lucky.”
    The wink sent a ripple through her that she deliberately ignored. “Ha! The luck,” she fired back, happy to be bantering with him again, “would be all yours.” What they did, day in, day out, was dark enough. A little lightness was more than welcome.
    He probably would be the lucky one in this, he thought. If he were in the market for something stable and permanent—
    Which he wasn’t, he reminded himself firmly before his mind could go wandering.
    This wasn’t the time.
    They stopped in front of the ground-floor garden apartment door with the appropriate numbers affixed on it and rang an anemic-sounding bell.
    When no one answered, they rang it again.
    Bridget raised her hand to try ringing the bell for a third time when the door suddenly opened.
    “Finally decide to come home?” a deep, humorless male voice asked. “What’s the matter, lose your key again? Or did you throw it away?”
    Both questions came from a semi-wet man wearing a bath towel precariously wrapped around his rather lean hips. He was standing in the doorway and his eyes filled with wonder as he looked at them with surprise. He stopped drying his hair.
    His demeanor changed instantly and his expression darkened.
    “Hey, I’m not giving to anything or converting to anything so go bother someone else,” he said curtly. With that the man grabbed the doorknob and started closing the door.
    Josh put his foot in the way and effectively provided an immovable object that stopped the other man from closing the door.
    “We’re not selling anything,” he told the other man. “Are you James King?”
    “Yeah,” the man answered, his eyes shifting suspiciously from one to the other. “Who are you?”
    Bridget took out her badge and ID at the same time that Josh did.
    Josh made the introductions. “I’m Detective Youngblood. This is Detective Cavelli.” He’d faltered for a second, then decided, in order to avoid any confusion, to state the name that she still had printed on her identification. “We’d like a few words with you. Mind if we come