“Sorry, Sarge,” Turner mumbles.

“I’m not entirely sure what that was about,” I admit. “It could have been simple overzealousness, or it could have been something more. I want you to know, though, that I had the situation completely under control.”

Canavan’s only reply is a grunt that he somehow manages to fill with skepticism.

“I did,” I insist.

“Sure you did, Wells.”

“Whatever,” I say. “So how did you happen to come driving by? It seems a little coincidental.”

“It wasn’t. Your boyfriend, Cartwright, called me and said I was going to hear from you, but that if I didn’t, I should go check on you, since you were probably in trouble. Given that we at the New York City Police Department have nothing better to do all day but jump at the command of every two-bit private eye in town, I hightailed it over here to save your ass, as I am wont to do on what is becoming a regular basis. And what do I find, but that you are, indeed, in trouble. You, Wells, are what we in the force like to call a shitkicker. If there’s any shit around, I always seem to find you in the middle, kicking it.”

I’m torn between righteous indignation over Detective Canavan calling Cooper a two-bit private eye, me a shitkicker, and the idea that I’d need rescuing in the first place.

Although the overwhelming sensation I’m feeling is waves of love toward Cooper for having done such a dopey, masculine, wonderful thing like call in the cavalry to come rescue me when he himself couldn’t be there to do the job. I fish in my purse for my cell phone, pull it out, discover that I’ve left it turned off all afternoon, turn it back on, and text Cooper:

So you called Canavan to come rescue me? You’re going to get a lot more than a finger sandwich when you get home. Love you, you big lug.

I push send before I remember I still don’t know what a finger sandwich is (sexually).

“First of all,” I say to Canavan, from the backseat, “I am perfectly capable of looking out for myself. Secondly—”

“It’s a good thing we came looking for you,” Canavan’s seemingly irrepressible trainee interrupts. “We almost had another body on our hands.”

“Turner,” Canavan says, in a warning tone.

“Oh, come on,” I say. “Hamad wasn’t actually trying to kill me. The prince wouldn’t have allowed it. I don’t think so, anyway. And besides, I was ready to give that guy my patented Heather Wells chop to the shins—”

“I didn’t mean you, Miss Wells,” Turner interrupts again. “I meant the kid from the student center, what’s his name, again, Sarge? Ripley something or other?”

I feel a cold grip on my spine. “Cameron Ripley, the editor of the New York College Express? He’s dead?”

“Dammit, probie,” Canavan grumbles. “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your fat yap shut?”

“Sorry, Sarge.” Turner looks guilty-faced.

“What are you two talking about?” I demand, my heart in my throat.

“Cartwright told us about the little visit you paid to Ripley earlier today, and the tip you gave him, about how the last person who leaked intel about the prince to the school paper ended up dead,” Canavan explains. “So we contacted campus security, told them they might want to keep an eye on the kid. Unfortunately, the rent-a-cop got there a little late. Kid had already been strangled. Sorry, Wells. Like I said, you’re a shitkicker.”

22

An invitation to a wedding invokes more trouble

than a summons to a police court.

William Feather

I feel a sudden urge to vomit, even though it’s been hours since I had anything to eat, and then it was only tiny pieces of bread with delicate slices of salmon between them.

“Stop the car,” I say, reaching woozily for the door handle. “I need to get out now.”

It’s only when the door won’t open that I remember I’m in a police car, even if it’s an unmarked one. Of course the door won’t open.

The backseat of police cars is for suspects.

“What’s going on here?” I demand. “Am I under arrest? I didn’t hurt that boy. What happened to him wasn’t my fault!”

Except that it was. Cooper tried to warn me.

Now Cameron Ripley is dead, and his only friend in the world, a baby rat, will die of starvation because no one else will be kindhearted enough to leave slices of pizza lying around for him.

“What’s wrong with you?” Canavan notices my frenzied attempts to escape in his rearview mirror. “I said the kid was strangled, not dead. He’s up at Mount Sinai. He’s in serious, but stable, condition.”

I quit pounding on the door handle and sink back against the seat, my heart slowing its riotous beating.

“Oh,” I say, relief pouring over me. “Well, why didn’t you say that?”

“I did,” Canavan says crankily. “Strangled doesn’t mean dead. Did I say dead? No, I did not. Kid had a cord wrapped around his neck pretty tightly, cutting off his windpipe, so he’s not going to be doing any swallowing—much less talking—for a while, but he’s going to be all right eventually. Now why don’t you tell me just what in the hell is going on over there at that lunatic asylum where you work. Your husband-to-be wasn’t too clear when he called. But that’s probably because he seemed to think you were in mortal danger, and he’s stuck somewhere in traffic uptown.”

This only partly explains why Cooper hasn’t called me in so long, I think, pulling out my cell phone again and checking it for a return text.

Nothing. But this isn’t so unusual, I assure myself. Cooper would never talk or text on a cell phone while driving.

Still, you’d think someone convinced I’m in “mortal danger” would have texted, or even left a voice mail, earlier in the day to that effect.

Quickly I fill in the detective on the addition of Prince Rashid to Fischer Hall’s student population, and the subsequent death of Jasmine Albright, and the determination by the U.S. State Department that the investigation into the case be handled by them, and not the NYPD.

“Can they do that?” asks Detective Turner, Canavan’s newly assigned, much younger, and much less cynical “probie” (detective-in-training, still under probation).

Tags: Meg Cabot Heather Wells Romance
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