Kate Hoffmann: Conor

Conor shook his head. “I guess they figure they can monitor everyone coming and going this time of year. One highway, one airport. Easier to spot suspicious characters.”

Conor pushed back from the bar and started toward the door, Wright dogging his heels. He gave Sean a wave, then called out a farewell to his brothers. When he reached the street, he pulled up the collar of his leather jacket and turned his face into the wind. He smelled the ocean on the stiff, damp breeze and he knew a storm was on the way. For a moment, he worried about Brendan, almost two days late on a return trip from the Grand Banks where he’d had a last run with the swordfishermen before they started to work their way south. Why he’d decided to write a book about swordfishing, Conor would never understand.

Hell, swordfishing had been the ruin of their family life, the reason their mother had walked out, the reason their father had left the parenting to Conor. He sighed and cursed softly. Brendan could handle a storm at sea-he’d spent many a summer vacation making runs with their father. And Dylan could handle a fire out of control. It was Conor who was having trouble handling his life of late, making sense of it all.

His head bent to the wind, hands shoved into his pockets, Conor strode down the rain-slicked street toward his car, Danny hard on his heels. He glanced up when he heard footsteps coming his way, his instincts automatically on alert. A slender woman with short, dark hair passed, nearly running into him in the process. Their eyes met for only a moment. He glanced over his shoulder, thinking he recognized her. Bunko artist? Hooker? Undercover cop?

He watched as she slowly stopped in front of Quinn’s, then peered through the plate-glass window. A few seconds later, she started up the steps, then paused and hurried back down, disappearing into the darkness. Conor shook his head. Was he so jaded that he now saw criminal intent in a perfectly innocent stranger? Maybe a few days of solitude on Cape Cod would put everything back in perspective.

The District Four station house was buzzing with activity when Conor and Danny arrived in the unmarked sedan. Conor was used to working the day shift, but days and nights would mean nothing now that he’d been assigned to protect a witness. Just endless hours of boredom, bad takeout, and what amounted to nothing more than baby-sitting.

According to Danny, the witness had been transported earlier that evening from the downtown station house. The lieutenant had been vague on the particulars of the case, preferring to speak to Danny and Conor in person about their new assignment-no doubt to use the meeting as a lesson for an unruly detective.

But when they strode into the squad room, the lieutenant’s office door was closed. Conor checked for messages, grabbed a cup of coffee, then searched the mess on his desk for his pocket pad, the leather bound notepad that each detective carried for witness interviews. He remembered that he’d had it last in the observation room while he watched an interrogation through the one-way window.

He grabbed a pen and backtracked, finding the door to the room open. But his search for the missing notepad was stopped short when he glanced through the one-way window into “the box.” The featureless interrogation room contained a single table with a chair on each side, a light above, and the mirrored window on one end, through which Conor now stared.

The sole occupant of the room was a woman, a slender figure with ash-blond hair, patrician features and an expensive wardrobe. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was certain she wasn’t a call girl or a drug dealer or a con artist. He’d be willing to bet his badge that she hadn’t committed any crime. She lacked the hard edge to her features that most criminals acquired after working the streets. And she looked genuinely out of her element, a butterfly in the habitat of…cockroaches.

He stepped closer to the window and watched her for a long moment, noting the tremor in her delicate hand as she sipped at the paper cup filled with muddy coffee. Suddenly, she turned to look his way and he quickly stepped back into the shadows. Even though he knew she couldn’t see him, he felt as if he’d been caught looking.

God, she was beautiful, Conor mused. No woman had a right to be that beautiful. He found in her features sheer perfection-a high forehead, expressive eyes, cheekbones that wouldn’t quit and a wide mouth made to be kissed. Her hair fell in soft waves around her face, tumbling just to her shoulders. Conor’s hand twitched as he imagined how soft the strands might feel between his fingers, how her hair would slide over his skin like warm silk.

A soft oath slipped from his lips and he turned away from the window. Hell, what was he thinking, fantasizing over a complete stranger? For all he knew, she could just be a better class of call girl, or some drug-runner’s high-living girlfriend. Just because she was beautiful, didn’t automatically make her pure.

Old habits did die hard. How many times had he looked at an attractive woman only to have his father’s voice nagging in his head? All those cautionary tales, hidden between the lines of Seamus’s old Irish folk stories. A Quinn must never surrender his heart to a woman. Look beyond the beauty to the danger lurking beneath.

He turned back to the window in time to see her wrap her arms around herself. Her shoulders slumped and then she rocked forward, her body trembling. When she tipped her head back, he saw the tracks of her tears on her smooth complexion. Conor’s heart twisted in his chest at the fear and regret in her expression, the raw vulnerability of her appearance. She looked small and all alone.

Had she been standing next to him, she might have crumpled into his arms, hiding her sobs against his shoulder. But the glass between them was like an impenetrable barrier and he’d become nothing more than a voyeur. He’d never seen a woman cry before, except for the hookers he’d arrested, but those tears were usually just for show.

She cried for a long time while Conor watched, memories of his mother’s pain flooding his mind. He knew he should leave and allow her the privacy of her emotions, but he couldn’t. He felt as if his feet were glued to the floor, his gaze caught by her beauty and her pain. The tears had opened her soul and for a moment, he could see inside. He fought the urge to pull open the door and go to her. Whoever she was, criminal or not, she deserved a shoulder to cry on.

Conor reached out to turn the doorknob so he could enter the box, but just as he was about to open the door, he saw Danny Wright stroll into the room, a grocery bag in his arms. Slowly, he drew his hand away, stunned by the unexpected change in the woman’s expression. The transformation was astounding. Almost instantly, the vulnerability vanished and her expression became cool and composed, almost icy. Surreptitiously, she brushed away all traces of her tears and glanced up at his partner, her lips pressed into a tight line.

Conor flipped the switch on the intercom, then braced his hands on the table beneath the window and listened to Danny’s voice, crackling through the speaker.

“Ms. Farrell, I’m Detective Wright. My partner and I have been assigned to protect you until the trial. I’m sorry you’ve been waiting so long, but we’ve been making arrangements to take you to a safe place.”

Conor sucked in a sharp breath. This was his witness? This woman who’d drawn him into her troubles with just a few tears and a stunningly beautiful face? “Aw, damn it,” he muttered, throwing his notepad onto the table. He figured he’d be baby-sitting some wimpy little accountant or slimy two-faced informant. Considering his reaction to Ms. Farrell so far, spending the next two weeks in her company would be hell on earth.