Vortex by Catherine Coulter

Savich and Sherlock

Georgetown

Washington, D.C.

Monday evening

Sherlock looked over at Sean, sprawled on his stomach on the living room rug, looking through the first book of the Magic Tree House series, a gift from his grandparents in San Francisco. “Mama, Papa, it’s not really a tree house, it’s a time machine!”

Savich and Sherlock were sitting side by side on the sofa, enjoying the soft rustling of the flames in the fireplace when Sean shouted, “Dinosaurs!” Savich imagined time travel would be all his son would talk about with his friends in school tomorrow. Savich leaned down and ruffled his son’s dark hair, the same shade as his. No head of red curls like his mother’s, he’d tell her, and sometimes she punched him for it.

Sherlock tucked her feet beneath her and leaned into Dillon, her curly hair tickling his nose. She tilted her head up, kissed his chin. “This is so nice, Dillon, like another dessert after the tiramisu.” She nipped his chin again and he closed his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. Though Sean was time-traveling back to the era of the Tyrannosaurus rex, Savich kept his voice low; Sean had bat ears and endless curiosity. “It’s going to be even more frigid in New York than here, so dress warm.”

She settled in, sighed. “I can’t imagine it being any colder. What a March. You know I couldn’t say no, and Kelly wouldn’t ask me to come up if she weren’t in a jam, although what she thinks I can do baffles me.”

He raised a dark brow. “Baffles you? Why?”

“It’s not like there aren’t dozens of really smart agents in Manhattan. Why me?”

He kissed her nose. “I’m not going to feed your ego. I expect you to go to New York and prove how brilliant you are.” Fact was Savich didn’t want her to leave, even for only a couple of days, but he knew she couldn’t turn down a fellow agent in the New York Field Office who’d been in the trenches with her, as Kelly Giusti had. “At least you’re helicoptering to New York, not fighting your way through the crowds at Dulles.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence and the pressure. I think Mr. Maitland pulled some strings to get me the helicopter and all because he set up an interview with the Guardian while I’m there, revisiting the JFK terrorist incident again.”

“He knows you’ll make the FBI look good and so you deserve the helicopter.” She smiled, turned her face to rest against his, and her hair tickled his nose. He found himself inhaling her scent, a light rose, sweet, inviting, and it made him want to cart her off upstairs, but Sean was now dealing with baby dinosaurs, naming them aloud, telling them what to do, and so Savich said, “So Kelly’s the lead in investigating a triple murder they think might be the work of an unusual serial? That sounds interesting, right up your alley.”

Sherlock shot Sean another look, heard him speaking to Cletus, a baby dinosaur, but still she kept her voice low. “She wants my fresh eyes on the crime scene—the kitchen in a spiffy home in Brickson, New York. She said the triple murder was made to look like a robbery, but they realized almost immediately it didn’t add up. It seems the murdered husband’s ex-girlfriend also had two former husbands, and both of them ended up dead soon after they left her. Both deaths were suspicious, one obviously a murder, but the proof wasn’t there so she skated. Both Kelly, her team, and local Homicide think the woman could have killed all of them.”

Savich never liked it when they worked apart, but he sucked it up. “Don’t get a big head, but no one is better than you at reconstructing a crime scene, sweetheart. If there’s something there, you’ll see it.”

Sherlock rested her face against his heart, smiled as she leaned up to kiss him. His heartbeat kicked up again, hers as well. She whispered against his neck, “Let’s get Sean to bed with his time machine and snuggle in under mounds of blankets, maybe discuss how to warm me up for my trip.”