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He always did, which made him one of her most valued colleagues and closest friends. “I, um, I need you to make sure you’re careful with any of the cards that came from Virginia.” She could feel her face heating with embarrassment. “Nick has to…you know…acknowledge them.”
    “Got it,” Gonzo said without blinking an eye even though he probably had something he was dying to say about her high-profile love life.
    “Let’s hit it, Cruz.”
    When they were in the car on their way back to Carl’s, Freddie turned to her. “Sorry about the crack back there. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
    “I know that. I hate all the attention Nick and I get in this city. I wish they’d get tired of us and move on to bothering someone else for a change.”
    “I doubt they’ll get tired of you guys anytime soon, especially with him running in the November election.”
    “It’s maddening. I just want to live my life in peace. Is that too much to ask?”
    “Because you’re you and he’s him and people are interested in the two of you, I’d say that is indeed too much to ask.”
    Sam scowled then moaned when her phone rang with the tone she’d set for the one reporter she’d learned to tolerate, Darren Tabor from the Washington Star.
    “What?” she barked into the phone, wondering if the guy was psychic or something.
    “I can see that two weeks in the tropics didn’t do a thing for your surly disposition,” Darren said.
    “What do you want, Darren?”
    “While I was hurt to not be invited to the wedding, I wanted to say congratulations.”
    “Thanks. Anything else?”
    “What’ve you got on the murders at Carl’s?”
    “Not a goddamned thing.”
    “You’re not usually so forthcoming, Lieutenant.”
    “I’d ask you not to quote me on that, but I suppose it’s too late to go off the record now.”
    “I won’t quote you if you tell me it’ll compromise the case.”
    And that, Sam thought, is why she took his calls. That and a favor he’d once done for her that she wouldn’t soon forget. “Go ahead and quote me this time. Maybe it’ll generate some leads. We can use all the help we can get.”
    “May I soften the goddamned to just damned? ”
    Sam snorted. “By all means.”
    “Keep me in mind if you have an exclusive or two you can share with your favorite reporter.”
    “Bye, Darren.”
    “I really think he’s growing on you,” Freddie said after she ended the call.
    “The way fungus grows on a tree.”
    That cracked up her partner. “You have a way with words, Lieutenant. Speaking of which, I’d prefer if you wouldn’t use the one that starts with G and ends with D. ”
    “You mean good? Or are you referring to gonad? Then there’s always Galahad.”
    Freddie’s scowl made her laugh.
    They spent the afternoon pouring over Carl’s tidily kept books, bank accounts and personnel records and discovered that the last person he’d fired had been let go more than eight years earlier.
    “Rules out a disgruntled ex-employee,” Sam said, frustrated. Rarely did she find herself in the midst of a homicide investigation without a single idea of what to do next. “We need a thread to pull, and we’ve got nada.”
    “Maybe we should dig deeper into the kid,” Freddie said. “Perhaps he wasn’t as squeaky clean as his father thought.”
    “Entirely possible. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But let’s go find out what we can about him.”
    They spent three hours talking to teachers, coaches, the parents of Daniel’s friends as well as his devastated girlfriend and came away with an impression that was exactly in keeping with what his father had told them—a good kid on the right path with a bright future ahead of him.
    “Depressing,” Freddie said on the way back to HQ. “The kid had everything in the world to live for.”
    “This wasn’t random,” Sam said. “Someone went in there looking to take out one of them and the other