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information to the additional clues, he had a direction in mind. He took his leave of Slavin’s crew, all of whom were still gathering evidence even as their boss left the site to begin analyzing what they already had in hand. The more details they had, the better. One never knew what odd bit of intel would blow a case wide open.
    Freezing and unable to even see a damned cab, he headed on foot to the coffeehouse. He should’ve accepted the ride from Slavin. Twenty damned blocks in the snow, which was coming down in thick white clumps. The stuff was heavy and wet, dropping the temperature even further. The snow stopped falling when he was half a block from his destination, and the sun struggled to seep through the cloud cover.
    The eatery was warm, noisy, and smelled of strong coffee and fresh bread. The fairly large space was crowded, mostly locals and kids from the nearby university. Everyone was still shaken by what happened earlier, and the place was filled with the buzz of excitement about the bombing and speculation as to who had done it and why.
    Head down, Winston sat beside the window at the rear of the café, the wall at her back, her computer screen angled away from prying eyes. The dim sunlight, reflecting off the snow beyond the window, bounced off her pale hair like a halo and made her creamy skin look impossibly soft.
    Rafe imagined he could smell her enticingly female perfume, but he knew she wasn’t wearing any. Damn it to hell.
    She appeared oblivious to the people around her. To him.
    Nevertheless, Rafael bet she knew where everyone was, what they were doing, and probably what they were drinking. It was part of the training. He knew she knew, because he did the same and took in each person in the place as he moved from the door and skirted chairs, tables, and people to reach her.
    She was at least a decade older than most of the people there, and she should’ve blended with them in her lavender sweater, jeans, and boots, but she was just too beautiful, too sophisticated. She looked rich and pampered. He frowned.
    He’d make sure she wasn’t correct with her speculation that this could’ve been a cover-up for a cybercrime, then he’d send her on to some other op. Or back to Montana. She wasn’t field op material.
    Her shoulders tensed as he approached, her fingers maintaining the rapid click across the keyboard. He picked up the cardboard cup placed conveniently at her left hand and gave the lid a sniff. “Herbal tea? Jesus, how can you drink this crap? Tastes like straw soaked in warm water.” Replacing the cup, he kicked out the chair to her right.
    “Whatever you want to drink is right over there,” she told him absently as he slid into the molded plastic seat. Without looking up, she indicated the order desk across the café with a wave of her right hand, while her left hand worked independently on the keyboard. “Knock yourself out.”
    He wondered briefly what her story was, the story beyond the cold, hard facts in her dossier, which he’d read on the plane. She’d done the same and found out no more about him than he had about her. Two fucking closed books. No. More like bookends. Lots of stories between them, given their line of work, but polar opposites with nothing in common.
    He didn’t give a shit how old she was or which ops she’d been on. He didn’t give a flying fuck about the accolades or the string of degrees that seemed to go on forever in her personnel dossier. So, she was a quick study and apparently had plenty of spare time. Big fucking deal. None of that told him what made Honey Winston tick.
    Her parents had both been Hollywood royalty back in the day, murdered before they could snort or squander their double fortune. Honey Winston had been a multi-gazillionaire heiress at the age of fourteen. Tough to lose parents at such an early age, but clearly, she’d never lacked for anything material. It wasn’t as though she’d been in foster care or out on the streets. It