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named Lillian Lavelle, who’d come to his office just this morning.
    As Ric now watched, Annie got ready to go inside of Screech’s, the so-called gentleman’s club where a young dancer named Brenda Quinn had last been employed. They had been hired—
he
had been hired—to find Brenda, who was Ms. Lavelle’s recently deceased daughter’s former roommate. Ms. Lavelle apparently had a photo album that she wanted to give to the young woman.
    The entire case was proving to be slightly more difficult than he’d first imagined. He’d taken it just this morning, expecting to be filing it in the “case closed” drawer long before noon.
    It was now sunset, pink and orange clouds streaking the western sky, as a cooling breeze blew in off the Gulf of Mexico.
    As Ric watched, Annie took off her jacket, tossed it in the back of her car, and ran her fingers through her light brown curls.
    “Maybe he won’t recognize me,” Ric said as she fished in her shoulder bag for something.
    He deserved the look of scorn that she shot him, because it
was
a stupid thing to say. There was zero chance in hell that Screech’s bouncer, Tommy Fista,
wouldn’t
recognize him. Seven years ago, almost to this very day, Ric had jammed his knee into the middle of Tommy’s gargantuan back as he’d cuffed him and read him his Miranda rights. Fista had gone to Raiford Maximum Security for five to seven for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
    Ric tried again. “I heard he found God in jail.”
    As he watched, Annie glanced around the corner at the bouncer. Clearly Fista hadn’t found Jenny Craig in the lockup. The huge man was standing at the door to Screech’s, which was a fairly new establishment, having opened since Ric had left the police department last year.
    Still, it hadn’t taken Ric much effort to learn that it was owned and operated by Vitardo Co. Strip clubs in this part of Florida were usually owned either by local scumbag Gordon Burns or his main rival, Miami-based Bernie Vitardo.
    “So what’s the best-case scenario?” Annie asked as she applied lip gloss with one finger, leaning down to see herself in her little car’s side mirror. “Tony-the-bouncer takes you by the hand, leads you inside for a joyful hymn and prayer session before sharing—willingly—everything he knows about Brenda Quinn?” She straightened up, smacking her lips together as she put the container back in her bag.
    “It’s
Tommy
the bouncer,” Ric corrected her. This was possibly the first time he’d ever seen Annie with makeup on, and he searched his memory, trying to prove himself wrong. But no. Aside from Halloween back when she was little, he couldn’t think of a single time that she’d gotten dressed up. She hadn’t gone to her school prom. And she’d worn one of Bruce’s suits and ties to her high school graduation. Although, as far as makeup went, what she had on now wasn’t much. It just made her full lips look shiny. More moist.
    If that was possible.
    Annie Dugan wasn’t traditionally pretty, at least not in a helpless-and-fragile delicate female sense. She did, however, have the fresh-faced, Irish American peasant-girl thing down pat, with big gray eyes and freckles, naturally curly hair, and a wide smile that could, at times, be incredibly sweet.
    Her attitude, however, was pure twenty-first-century kick-ass dominatrix.
    With the exception, perhaps, of her attachment to her ridiculous little dog, Pierre. Ric would’ve expected a woman like Annie to have a golden Lab. Something large and outdoorsy, capable of playing ultimate Frisbee in the park. Something that galloped. Something friendly named Pal or Lucky.
    Not this glorified fuzzball of a quivering rodent named Pierre, that she now hugged and kissed and gave a doggy treat to, all while reassuring it that she’d be right back.
    “So what’s the worst-case scenario here?” she asked, plopping the rat-thing back onto the front seat of her car, making sure his travel