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and, smiling, she looked up. “Gin.”
    Jillian’s nerves stretched taut when she left Meadow Brook a half hour later, the demons of doubt nipping at her heels. Everything she believed in had been forged from her relationship with Rob. His sincerity, kindness and compassion had made her believe in the goodness in people again. If that was all a lie…she couldn’t even believe in him, what could she believe in?
    But that wasn’t Rob. That wasn’t who he was and nothing anyone said was going to make her believe it. That’s what she kept telling herself all the way home and for hours after. But nothing she told herself rid her brain of the horrible possibility. Now, hours later, with all manner of drama playing out in her head, she sipped a glass of wine while listening to the early-evening news on television, hoping the noise would drown out the horrible thoughts corrupting her good sense.
    She could not, would not, doubt Rob. Because if she did, everything she’d come to believe about love and trust would crumble. Rob had been an honorable man. Doubting his veracity was a betrayal of the worst kind.
    Yet…that most awful what if question kept rearing its ugly head.
    She couldn’t just sit here and wonder. She needed to see those photos again.
     
    ***
     
    “I’ve got nothin’,” Adam told Rico on the phone.
    “Hey, hold on a minute. Someone’s here.”
    “Yeah, sure. What else do I have besides time?” Adam dropped onto the bed and leaned against the padded beige headboard in the beige motel room.
    He had all the time in the world. Because nothing was urgent in cold cases that made up the bulk of his assignments these days. And according to the chief, the situation wasn’t likely to change unless he could prove himself.
    For a guy used to being in the trenches, working cold cases depressed the hell out of him. And Enrico Santini, his new partner who’d come on board only a year ago, had taken the brunt of his dissatisfaction—until one morning when the kid had laid into him, telling Adam that if he wanted to tank his career and spend the rest of his life wallowing in self-pity, that was his choice.
    But Rico wasn’t going to put up with his sarcastic jabs anymore, wasn’t going to keep covering his ass or let Adam’s attitude screw with his head or his job.
    You’re the problem, Ramsey. If you’re going down, you’re gonna do it alone, Rico had said—right before he’d contacted the employee-intervention program.
    Despite the scuttlebutt that the fresh-from-the-academy New Jersey propeller-head was a go-by-the-books wuss, Adam figured Rico had mega cojones to take on a multi-decorated senior officer. The kid, all full of shiny ideals about the way the world should be, reminded him a little of himself when he’d started on the force more than a dozen years ago.
    Now, after three months in therapy, a whole lot of determination and a new lead, Adam was dried out and on a course to set things right. Four years was too long to be in limbo.
    With the new information connecting Sullivan to Bryce on the night he died, he was going to uncover who was responsible for his former partner’s death and make the scumbag pay.
    He couldn’t fix his broken marriage, but he was better off for it. A cop who couldn’t focus on more than one thing had no business being married. He’d learned that lesson the night his partner died. And the guilt still plagued him.
    “I’ve got some stuff for you to check out when you get back tomorrow,” Rico said when he returned to the phone.
    “Yeah? Like?”
    “Nothing huge. You’ll see when you get here.”
    Adam had come to respect his new partner’s sharp eye for detail and his powers of deduction. The kid thought things out, while he charged through life like a bull, a just-do-it, act-on-instinct kind of guy who cut to the chase. Despite their rocky start, they made a helluva good team.
    “What’re you gonna do about the widow?”
    “Nothing. Not yet. I’m hoping