Dangerous. Diana Palmer

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      “I’m on leave of absence,” Kilraven pointed out.

      “Yes, but you still have a boss who won’t like your involvement in a case that isn’t connected to your present employment.”

      “I have a great boss. He’d understand.”

      “Sure he would, but he’d still fire you.”

      “I’ve been fired before.”

      “You’ve been reprimanded, too. Don’t pile up too many demerits, boy scout,” Jon teased. “You’ll get yourself kicked out of any federal work.”

      Kilraven sighed and stuck his big hands in his pockets. “I guess I could be a small-town cop in Jacobsville for life if I had to.”

      “You’d never manage it. Cash Grier told Marquez that he’s already one step closer to nailing you in a barrel and sending you down the Rio Grande.”

      “He’d have to get me in the barrel first and drive me all the way to the Rio Grande. By the time he got there, I’d have extricated myself from the barrel, appropriated his truck and had local authorities arrest him for kidnapping.”

      Jon didn’t say anything. He just smiled. He knew his brother well enough to believe it.

      “That said, he’s a good man to work for. He goes to the wall for his officers.”

      “So does Garon Grier, here.”

      Kilraven nodded. “They’re both good men.” He frowned. “Don’t they have two other brothers?”

      “Yes. One of them is also in law enforcement.”

      “Like the Earp brothers,” Kilraven mused.

      “There were five of them. There are only four Grier brothers.” He got up. “We’re still running down leads on the murder victim,” he said. “I’ve got Ms. Perry checking parole files to see if we can find a match there. Maybe the victim was just out of prison and between jobs when he was wasted.”

      “If he has a rap sheet, he’ll be easier to identify,” Kilraven agreed. “And if they cheek-swabbed him, which I imagine they did, Alice Jones can use all that high-tech stuff at the forensic lab to discover his identity.”

      Jon nodded. “DNA is a blessing in cases like this where the DB is unidentifiable under conventional means.”

      “Makes our job easier,” was the bland reply, “but good police work still largely consists of wearing out shoe leather. Speaking of which, I want to have a talk with Marquez. He might have gotten a look at his attackers.”

      “We’ve already asked. He didn’t.”

      “I want to talk to him anyway.”

      “He isn’t back on the job yet. He’ll be at his mother’s house in Jacobsville.”

      “Thanks,” Kilraven said drily. “I did know that, living in Jacobsville myself.”

      Jon’s black eyes twinkled. “I understand that you had a visitor recently at your house. A blond one.”

      “Good Lord. You heard that all the way up here?”

      “You were seen by a substantial number of uniformed people.”

      “Who drove by my house just to spy on me,” Kilraven said with mock disgust. “What is the world coming to when a man can’t have a cup of coffee with a guest?”

      “A cup of coffee at a picnic table, outdoors, in freezing temperatures. Something wrong with the sofa in your living room?”

      “If people can’t see you, they guess what’s going on and they’re usually wrong. I didn’t want Winnie subjected to gossip,” he added quietly. “She’s an innocent.”

      Jon’s eyebrows went up over twinkling eyes. “And how would you have found that out?”

      Kilraven glowered at him. “In the usual way.”

      Jon pursed his lips. “Imagine that!”

      “It’s not serious,” came the short reply. “She’s a friend. Sort of. But I asked her to the house because I wanted to know why she painted that picture that was a dead-ringer for Melly’s raven drawing.”

      Jon sobered at once. He remembered his brother’s visit that night with the painting. “And?”

      “She said she started to paint a landscape,” Kilraven replied with a puzzled expression. “She didn’t know why she painted a raven, or those colors on the beads. She didn’t know how I knew it was her, either. I’ve never even told her that our ranch is called ‘Raven’s Pride.’”

      “We have those flashes of insight because it runs in our family,” Jon reminded him. “Our father had a cousin who was notorious for his very accurate visions of the future.”

      Kilraven nodded. “I wonder where Winnie’s gift comes from. She doesn’t know. Funny,” he added, “but Gail Rogers, the detective who’s helping me with our case, has those premonitions. She gets some gossip when she pegs a suspect that nobody else connected with a case.”

      The intercom buzzed. Jon answered it.

      “Agent Wilkes is on his way in with Agent Salton, and you’re all due for a meeting in ASAC Grier’s office in ten minutes,” Joceline said in a voice dripping with sugar. “Would you like coffee and donuts?”

      Jon looked surprised, as he should have. Ms. Perry never volunteered to fetch snack food. “That would be nice.”

      “There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts shop around the corner,” she reminded him. “If I were you, I’d hurry.”

      “I’d hurry?” he repeated.

      “Yes, because my job description requires me to type and file and answer phones. Not be a caterer,” she added, still sugary. She hung up.

      “One day, so help me, she’ll drive me to drink and you’ll have to bail me out of some jail where I’ll be surrounded by howling mad drug users,” Jon gritted.

      Kilraven patted him on the shoulder. “Now, now, don’t let your blood pressure override your good sense.”

      “If I had good sense, I’d ask for reassignment to another field office, preferably in the Yukon Territory!” he said loud enough for Ms. Perry to hear him as he opened his office door.

      “Oooh, polar bears live there,” she said merrily. “And they eat people, don’t they?”

      “You wish, Ms. Perry,” he shot back.

      “Temper, temper,” she chided.

      Jon was almost vibrating, he was so angry. Kilraven smothered laughter.

      “I’ll call you,” he told his brother. “And thanks for the information.”

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