Even though he'd obviously been a topic of discussion between the two women, it was plain Maggie hadn't told Lisa everything. "Maggie was kind enough to keep me company for a while on Saturday night," Jack said.

"So you're returning the favor by keeping her company this Saturday night," Lisa quipped.

Jack returned her irresistible smile. "Right," he said.

From the vexed look on Maggie's face, Jack figured she wasn't used to being teased. Too bad. The lady needed to lighten up, and he was just the man to help her do it.

"I'm sorry, Maggie. I couldn't resist teasing you," Lisa said. She turned to Jack and said, "Roman and I will be joining you at Mr. Cobb's table."

The gods sometimes did smile on the wicked, Jack thought. "I'll be looking forward to talking more with you," he said.

"I've got a pleading to write, if you'll both excuse me," Lisa said. "Nice meeting you, Jack."

"You, too, Lisa." Jack made a point of closing the door behind her. "She seems like a nice person."

"She is. And so is Roman. I hope you found that out for yourself this morning."

"I didn't have much chance to speak to the doctor. He got called away on an emergency." Jack crossed to Maggie and settled himself on the edge of her glass desk where the marble supported it.

"There are two perfectly good chairs behind you," she said.

"I can see your eyes better from here."

She rose abruptly but had nowhere to go, since Jack had put himself between her and the door. He stood and took the steps to close the distance between them, so they were toe to toe, breast to breast. "Good morning, Maggie."

She hissed in a breath as he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers once, then again, lips catching, tongue teasing, before he captured her mouth in a searing, bone-melting kiss. As he released her mouth, she made a grating sound in her throat, as though she couldn't bear for him to let her go.

Her kiss was everything Jack had hoped it would be. It felt as if some giant empty place inside him had begun to fill. But he wasn't ready to stop there. He wanted, desperately needed, more.

He studied Maggie's face, wondering whether she had been as moved by the experience as he had. Her eyes were heavy-lidded when she finally opened them and looked up at him.

"Oh, Lord," she whispered.

Jack felt a tight place ease inside him. Yeah. She'd felt it, too.

He brushed his thumb across her still-damp lower lip and said, "That's what I wanted to do when I saw you come out of that stairwell this morning with your hair still damp from the shower and your skirt halfway up your legs."

She cleared her throat, eyeing him warily. "My skirt is down now, Jack. And it's staying down."

His hands were already in her hair taking out the pins, and he lowered his mouth to hers in a gentle caress meant to convince her she was safe with him. The kiss quickly evolved into something more than a meeting of lips. He felt her heat, her passion, her need . . . and the inner struggle she waged, unwilling to surrender completely to him.

She wrenched her face aside, breaking the kiss, panting as though she were running for her life. "I thought you understood this can't happen, Jack."

"It already has, Maggie."

She started to back away, then hesitated. Maggie hadn't struck him as the kind of woman who backed away from anything, and sure enough, she stood her ground.

"All right, Jack. You've had your kisses. You've made your point-you can flip a switch and turn me on. Now, can we get down to business?"

Jack let go of her and settled himself back onto the edge of the tempered glass desk. He was going to have to find out what made her so leery of men. He meant to have her, and he wasn't going to let any obstacles-like her reluctance to get involved-stand in his way.

"All right, Maggie. Let's do business," he said. "I've got some good news for you."

Once he wasn't crowding her, she put some space between them, crossing to the window, giving him the chance to look around.

Besides her desk and the two leather wing chairs, the only furniture in her office was a glass-topped credenza with a black and gold wooden Egyptian cat sitting on it. A single file was scattered across her glass-topped desk, but everything else was apparently tucked away in the floor-to-ceiling black cabinets behind her desk. All that clear glass and marble, and the complete lack of vibrant color, made the place feel cold and sterile-not at all like the Maggie he was coming to know.

Maggie leaned back against the window ledge, crossed her arms, and said, "All right, Jack. I'm listening. What's your good news?"

"I've got another suspect," he announced.

She raised an inquisitive brow.

"Isabel Rojas, Hollander's surgical nurse."

She made a derisive sound and shook her head. "What makes you think Roman's nurse is a killer?"

"I only said she's a suspect."

"What makes her a suspect?" Maggie asked.

"She's been with Hollander as his nurse for the past seven years. Like him, she worked at the hospitals in Houston and Dallas where the other five suspicious deaths occurred. She had the same opportunity as the doctor to commit the crimes."

"Surgical nurses often transfer along with a doctor. That doesn't make her a suspicious character. What's her motive supposed to be?"

"The same as the doctor's-easing the pain and suffering of the patient."

Maggie shook her head. "It's not enough, Jack." She crossed back to her glass-topped desk, but it wasn't much to hide behind. He noticed she was careful not to get within arm's reach of him. "People don't commit murder for reasons like that," she said. "They let the patient die a natural death."

"What if the patient isn't going to die on his own?"

"People who dedicate themselves to saving lives aren't purposely going to murder someone, especially not a child, just because that someone might be suffering."

"You're wrong, Maggie. Doctors and nurses do it all the time."

"I suppose you have statistics," Maggie retorted, pacing agitatedly behind her desk.

"Studies have been done."

She stopped and stared at him. "You're kidding, right?"

"When I got assigned to this case, I looked at a lot of literature on the subject. Twenty percent of the critical care nurses in one study admitted they had hastened the death of a terminally ill patient, usually by giving an overdose of painkillers."

Maggie pointed an accusing finger at him. "There's the flaw in your reasoning."

"What?"

"You said they helped 'terminally ill' patients to die. The kids in question weren't going to die. Ergo your study doesn't fit."

Trust a lawyer to find the flaw in his logic. "Maybe not precisely, but-"

"Not at all," Maggie insisted. "You need to find another reason for the murders besides mercy killing. Like a life insurance policy or selfish parents who don't want to care for an invalid or-I've got it," she said excitedly, "the money they'd get suing Hollander for malpractice."

"A conspiracy of parents killing their children for malpractice settlements?" Jack said dubiously.

"It makes as much sense as believing Roman Hollander is killing patients so they won't have to live a difficult life!"

Jack sighed. "Mercy killing made sense when Captain Buckelew suggested it to me."

"You hadn't met Roman then. Can you really believe he's a murderer, now that you've seen him in action at the bioethics committee meeting? Now that you've spoken to him personally?"

"Neither of those meetings has changed my mind about the doctor, Maggie. Besides, I've heard of parents killing their children rather than watching them suffer," Jack said. "Why not a doctor, especially a compassionate one, or his nurse?"

Maggie shoved an agitated hand through her fallen hair.

Jack was distracted when the sunlight caught it, turning wheat to gold. He imagined it spread across his chest or tangled in his hands as he angled her head for his kiss.

She looked up, caught his hungry stare, and rolled her eyes.

He flushed like a teenager caught with his zipper down and realized he'd lost his train of thought. "Where was I?"

"Saying some very disturbing things about Roman and Isabel."

"Oh. Yeah. Closing your eyes to the truth isn't going to make it go away, Maggie. If Roman Hollander or his nurse is playing God, I intend to find out and stop it."

A phone call interrupted them, and Jack fiddled with a toy on Maggie's desk-a bed of headless nails that took any shape he pressed into it-waiting for Maggie to finish.

She put the call on hold and said, "This is going to take a while."

"How about dinner tonight? We can finish our conversation then."

"I have to work late tonight. And every night this week," she added.

"You're avoiding me," Jack said.

"I'm a busy woman," she countered.

"I guess I won't see you again until Saturday."

"I guess not."

Jack backed off. He could read a No Trespassing sign when he saw one. He was tempted to ease himself out of the picture by reneging on the Saturday invitation, but as he watched Maggie's hands fidget, he realized she wasn't as unaware of him, or as unmoved by his presence, as she wanted him to believe.

"What time should I pick you up on Saturday?" he asked.

"Eight o'clock."

He turned and headed for the door. "I'll be there."

"Jack," she said, catching him before he could leave. "It's black tie. You can rent a good tux at Anthony's."

He glanced at her over his shoulder, his lips curled in a bitter smile. "Thanks," he said. "I'll try not to embarrass you."

"I only thought . . . I wanted to help," she said lamely.

He hadn't figured her for a snob, and he didn't like the way she'd made him feel. He wanted to hurt her back and found the words to do it.

"Watch out, Maggie," he said. "You might turn out to be more like Victoria Wainwright than you think."

Chapter 7.

Jack spent the rest of the week interviewing Dr. Hollander's colleagues at the hospital. On Friday morning, he headed to Austin to make his weekly report to Captain Buckelew at Ranger Headquarters. He could have done it by phone, but ever since Jack was nine, and his own father, also a Texas Ranger, had died in the line of duty, Harley Buckelew had been like a second father to him. The truth was, he enjoyed visiting the old man, which was a damned good thing, because he didn't have much to report.

During the sixty-odd-mile drive from San Antonio north to Austin, Jack went over every detail he'd learned about Hollander and his nurse, Isabel Rojas, in his head. All he managed to do was give himself a headache. He already had a fairly constant ache in his gut, or thereabouts, because Ms. Maggie Wainwright was stuck deep in his craw.

I should still be on leave. I should be up in the Hill Country on the Guadalupe River, fly-fishing for some of those Colorado brown and speckled trout the Fish and Wildlife guys have stocked up there. I should never have let the captain talk me into taking this case.

But Harley Buckelew was not only his captain, but a surrogate father. Jack wanted his captain's respect. Even more, he wanted Harley to be proud of him.

The captain had dropped off the folder of information the first day of Jack's administrative leave and said, "I've got an assignment for you-investigating a possible serial killer."

"I'm not sure I ever want to pin my star back on, and you want me to track down a serial killer?" Jack had asked incredulously.

"I need somebody to go undercover, and since that isn't something we Rangers do a whole lot, you're the man with the most experience. Putting on those lieutenant's bars you just earned and settling in at a desk can wait a while. I need you on this."

"I'm on leave for a reason, Captain. Find somebody else."

"He's killing kids, Jack."

Jack had felt the squeeze inside and knew Harley had him by the short hairs. He'd also heard the waver in Harley's voice that revealed he wasn't as certain of Jack's response as he wanted Jack to think. And the warmth that showed he cared.

"I'll think about it," Jack had said.

Two days later, he'd agreed to go back to work. Jack wondered now if he'd made the right decision. He didn't seem to have the distance from the case that would allow him to see the situation objectively. Maggie's opinion of Hollander and his nurse mattered, even though it shouldn't have been a factor in his investigation.

As Jack neared Austin on I-35, he saw more results of the previous year's drought. What should have been acres of bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush spreading a blanket of lavender and orange along the roadside had been reduced to patches of blue here and there amid the green. Without enough rain, the wildflowers-compliments of Lady Bird Johnson's Texas beautification program-simply didn't bloom.

Once in Austin, Jack exited the interstate onto Lamar and caught sight of the large brown metal B bolted onto the side of the Headquarters Building, an off-white concrete two-story built like a bunker, so half of it was underground. He pulled into the lot and parked beside a Jeep Cherokee he knew Buckelew had claimed as his ride, even though the captain didn't usually venture into areas where he needed four-wheel drive.

Every time Jack entered Harley's office, he wasn't sure whether to chuckle or groan out loud. The captain collected Texas souvenirs-no matter how much in poor taste-just like a tourist. The Ranger's wall boasted not only a legitimate eight-foot set of horns from a Texas longhorn steer, but the mounted head of a jackalope, a fictional Texas animal consisting of a rabbit head with tiny deer antlers.

Once Jack was settled in front of the captain's desk in a genuine black-and-white cowhide chair with arms and feet made of cow horns, Harley slurped tar-black coffee from a giant mug bearing the motto EVERYTHING IS BIGGER IN TEXAS and said, "What have you found out?"