Alex closed the coffee room door, muting the din of Homicide behind her. The noise didn't usually bother her, but today it put her teeth on edge—and it would only get worse once the media learned about the serial killer. The phones would ring nonstop then, and the usual din would escalate into chaos. Not that she'd be in the office much at that point. None of them would. They'd be too busy running down the leads called in by the ever-so-helpful public. Spending endless hours following up on crank calls, hoaxes, and runaway imaginations in the hopes that just one tiny clue would emerge. One truth.

Making a face at the thought, she yawned, not bothering to cover her mouth, and headed for the counter on the opposite side of the room. She debated whether she felt better or worse after the sleep Roberts had ordered and decided it was an even split—worse for the moment, but, with luck, better once she'd had a coffee and finished waking up.

She took a cup down from the shelf and lifted the thermal pot from the coffee machine. Empty. Her mood nosedived from irritable to outright bad tempered.

"Jesus fucking Christ," she growled.

"Really, Jarvis, it's only a coffeepot," a woman's dry voice commented.

Alex jumped at the realization she had company in the room. God, she hadn't even noticed. Rather unnerving, given her line of work. She rubbed the back of her neck as she turned to the elegantly suited woman seated at the table.

"Sorry, Delaney, didn't see you there."

Detective Christine Delaney arched a brow. "You almost tripped over me on your way in." The fraud detective's cool brown gaze swept over Alex, pausing once at the same dress pants she'd worn for the last two days and again at her plain white shirt, and then settled on her face. The under-eye circles Alex had noticed in the mirror suddenly felt the size of overstuffed grocery bags. Delaney flipped the page in her magazine and selected a celery stick from the plate in front of her, her glossy pink nails a perfect foil for the pale green vegetable. "Roberts told everyone you went home to sleep. You don't look much like you did."

Alex mentally counted to three and then favored the other detective with as sour a look as she could summon around another yawn. "Thanks."

"Don't take it personally. You all look like hell when you're working one of these cases. One of the reasons I don't work Homicide."

Biting her tongue—literally—Alex refrained from commenting on Homicide's good fortune and turned her attention to rummaging through the cupboards in search of a fresh coffee filter. "So how come you're slumming it today? Don't you have your own coffeepot in Fraud?" she asked over her shoulder as she stretched on tiptoe to retrieve the package from the top shelf.

"I'm killing time until I head out to Oakville. Some hoity-toity complainant who thinks he's too good to come to the office. Our coffeepot was empty, so I came here." Delaney eyed her over the rim of the mug she'd raised. "Relax, Jarvis, I'm not the one who finished off your precious elixir. You'll have to blame your visitor for that. Guess no one told him the rules."

Alex rocked back down onto her heels. "Visitor?"

"Mm." Delaney sipped her coffee and wrinkled her nose. "Ick. Whoever makes the coffee here could do with a lighter touch."

"Or you could make your own," Alex suggested through her teeth. She spooned coffee into the filter and considered asking more about the visitor, but hesitated. Christine Delaney had perfected the art of office gossip, and after having found herself the subject of the grapevine three years before, when her relationship with another officer had soured, Alex tended to avoid anything to do with the woman.

She rinsed out the pot and filled it with cold water. It would be easier to resist being drawn in, however, if Delaney didn't keep glancing in her direction, looking like a cat who'd made off with a whole cage of canaries. The woman knew something, and from that expression, Alex guessed it to be significant.

At last, after she'd poured the water into the machine, set the pot in place, and flipped on the switch, she caved. "All right, what?"

"Nothing." Delaney hesitated, then shrugged. "I was just admiring you, that's all."

Yeah, right.

The fraud detective's guileless gaze met her own. "I mean, you seem to be taking it so well. I know I'd be a lot more upset if I were you."

Upset? Now there was a word that didn't bode well. Alex glowered at the other detective and felt herself waver. She supposed she'd eventually find out what Delaney was talking about, but then again, forewarned might mean forearmed.

She dropped a teaspoon into her waiting mug with a loud clatter and retrieved the cream from the nearby refrigerator. Then she cast an irritated look Delaney's way. "Fine, I'll bite. What am I taking well?"

Delaney's perfectly lipsticked mouth curved with satisfaction and Alex tried to ignore a fish-hooked feeling. "Jacob Trent. Your new partner," the fraud detective said. She shook her head. "Poor you. It'll be hell training someone in the middle of something this big."

Was that all? God, for two cents—Alex summoned up a saccharine smile and reminded herself that cops had a moral obligation not to commit murder.

Granted, she wasn't thrilled with the idea of babysitting someone new in the middle of a case of this magnitude, but she could hardly complain. With her partner retired and wading through rivers for the last three months, the brass had been making increasingly unhappy noises about her working solo; a new partner had been inevitable.

She had to admit surprise, however, that no one had given her any warning. Roberts could have at least mentioned it at this morning's scene. Behind her on the counter, the coffee machine hissed and gurgled its progress.

"I didn't know about it, but I'm sure I'll have no problem working with Detective Trent. When does he get here?"

"He's already here. I told you, he had the last of the coffee." Delaney nodded out the window overlooking the Homicide Squad office. "That's him beside Roberts. The guy in the gray pinstripes."

Alex's gaze found her staff inspector, his close-cropped graying head just a few inches shy of scraping the top of his office doorway, with the slightly gaunt look that had made his desk a receptacle for anonymous food gifts ever since his separation. Then she turned her attention to the man beside Roberts—and felt her jaw go slack.

Well.

Jacob Trent stood at least as tall as Roberts, but nothing about the man could be described as gaunt. From the powerful set of his wide shoulders to the narrow taper of his hips, right down to the poised, balanced ease with which he shifted his stance, his strength emanated clear across the office. Strength, and a raw, unmitigated magnetism that made Alex's mouth go dry and her pulse rate kick up a notch.

Well then.

Her gaze traveled over him a second time, lingering on the thick, dark hair that fell in an unruly wave across Trent's forehead, the bold lines of a profile as harshly beautiful as it was classic...

Delaney cleared her throat and Alex jolted back to reality.

"Are you all right?" Delaney asked. "You look flushed."

Alex glanced at the other woman's smirk. If she wasn't careful, the fraud detective would have her in bed with Trent before she'd even shaken his hand. She turned from the window.

"Fine," she said. "Thanks. I think I just need that coffee."

Delaney nodded at the pot sitting in the now silent machine. "Don't let me stop you."

Alex poured her coffee, stirred it, and dropped the spoon into the sink. Seeing that Delaney had returned to her magazine, she risked another peek at Jacob Trent, but he was hidden from view. Just as well. She could probably use a few seconds to deal with certain unruly hormones before she went out there to introduce herself.

She picked up the mug, straightened her spine, and headed for the door, barely registering Delaney's laconic farewell.

***

Christine watched Alex Jarvis step into the homicide squad room, narrowly missing a file-encumbered clerk on her way toward the group clustered around Staff Inspector Roberts.

There but for the grace of God, she thought, taking in the appearance of every sleep-deprived detective in the place and remembering how she'd very nearly accepted a transfer to this section instead of Fraud. She shuddered. Jarvis was right. She'd never have survived. Not that the homicide detective had ever said so outright, but Christine knew the other woman's opinion of her. She'd long ago given up being insulted—about the same time she realized that Jarvis really was the superior cop. By far.

Not that she herself was a bad one, she just wasn't driven the way Alexandra Jarvis was, and she certainly didn't want or need the kind of pressure that came with working Homicide. She took a celery stick from her plate and nibbled at it. No, Fraud offered ample challenge, and it let her go home to sleep on a regular basis, too.

That didn't mean her job didn't have its own special moments, however. Like this morning's call. Talk about a bullshit complaint from an overprotective parent. Christine had known it the moment she'd answered the phone, and still couldn't believe she'd let that jerk pressure her into opening a file. The guy's kid was twenty-one, for God's sake, plenty old enough to decide for himself if he wanted to give away his entire inheritance to some mission or other. Without proof of coercion of some sort, the police could do nothing about it.

Unless Daddy played golf with the mayor and opening a file wasn't so much a courtesy as it was a career move. As in wanting to keep her career.

Christine grimaced and rose from her chair. CYA, she reminded herself. Cover your ass. If she went through the motions, she could at least say she'd done her job. She carried her dishes to the counter and dumped the remainder of her lunch into the trash. So she'd meet Daddy first, then get the son's side of the story, and then, just to be on the safe side, she'd even interview the accused "money-grubbing missionary."

Leaving plate and cup sitting beneath the sign that ordered her to wash her own dishes, she stepped out into Homicide, where she was grateful all over again not to be a part of the tension driving her colleagues.

***

Halfway across the office on her way to join the group clustered around Roberts's door, Alex glimpsed a pinstriped shoulder and her heart skipped an irritating few beats. She paused beside a desk and set down her coffee, and then wiped damp palms, one at a time, against her pants.

He's just another cop, she told herself. A very hot other cop, maybe, but a cop all the same.

And if Delaney was right about him being her new partner, she'd do well to remember past lessons. She'd done the office romance thing once, and the repercussions had reverberated through her life for nearly a year after the fact. It wasn't a scenario she was anxious to repeat.

Alex picked up her coffee again, composed her features into what she hoped was professional welcome rather than drooling idolatry, and approached the others. Weaving her way to Roberts's side, she cleared her throat. Might as well meet things head-on.

"Jacob Trent?" She smiled. "Alex Jarvis. I understand you're my new partner."

Trent turned his head. Cold eyes ran over her and then lifted to meet hers, their depths filled with an intense dislike that bordered on loathing. Alex blinked and took an involuntary step back. What the hell—?

She'd barely registered her new partner's reaction to her greeting, however, when a shutter came down over his expression, turning it bland. Impersonal.

Trent smiled, reaching out a hand to her. "Detective. Good to meet you."

Still reeling from what she'd thought she'd seen in his eyes, what she had to have imagined, Alex stared at her new partner's outstretched hand. She pulled herself together with an effort, dredged up another smile—albeit a shakier one than the first, and reached to accept the handshake. Her fingers brushed against Trent's. Their palms touched.

And Alex's world imploded.

Power surged from Trent's hand into hers, jolting through her to sear every nerve, every fiber; flooding her with an energy that was not her own, but belonged to her in a way she did not understand. An energy that made her more aware in that instant of Jacob Trent than of life itself. That tried to repel her even as it drew her into its source.

A lightning bolt, Alex thought. I'm shaking hands with a lightning bolt.

The grip on her hand tightened and pain shafted through the delicate bones. She pulled back, breaking the connection, but still the energy remained, swelling between them, linking them, holding her immobile, squeezing the breath from her lungs. And then...then she saw the wings. Rising from Jacob Trent's shoulders, spread in fiery, golden glory behind him. Wings, like those of a giant bird.

Or an angel.

The coffee cup dropped from her hand and shattered across the thinly carpeted floor in a shower of scalding liquid and ceramic shards. All around her, people scurried into action. One called for paper towels, another took her arm and tugged her away from the steaming mess. In the sea of chaos that surrounded them, that isolated them, Alex looked again into Trent's eyes. Dark gray and turbulent, like LakeOntario at the height of an autumn storm, they riveted on hers. Stunned. Disbelieving. Angry.

Earthshakingly angry.

On some instinctive level, Alex thought she should be afraid. Knew anyone else on the receiving end of that fury would have quailed in their shoes. But the quiver running through her—swift, stunning, shockingly familiar—had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with recognition. Alex sucked in a ragged breath, fighting for an existence she sensed being ripped from her.

She might never have seen this man before, but somehow she knew him.

*****************

I hope you've enjoyed the first few chapters! I would love to know what you think, so please leave me a comment. :)

And yes, I'll be back each Friday with a new installment.

Happy reading in the meantime!