Harmonized by Mary Behre Page B

awareness shooting through her nerve endings.
    â€œWhen he started talking to me, really talking to me, his color shifted to a warmer blue-green. Like he was happy to have someone to talk to and like he really wanted to help me. What did you see with your super-spidey-cop’s senses?”
    Zig frowned at her until she batted her eyelashes at him. A half smile on his face he shook his head. “Cute. My spidey-cop-senses told me that guy has no clue about the people in his building. He didn’t know he even had a neighbor named Tina or that Gwyn had a baby upstairs. He was a dead end. We’ll go back and knock on her door again in the morning, see if we can catch her then.”
    â€œOh, so that’s it? Just wait until morning?”
    â€œWe’ve done everything we can do on the case for tonight. Awake now that you’ve had a nap?” Humor sparkled in his eyes. “I’ve got notes to make on the case but they can wait if you want to do something else?”
    Oh yes, she definitely wanted to do something else. “I’m awake. What do you have in mind?”
    He took another pull on his beer. A long one. Finally, he lowered it. His eyes were deadly serious. “How about we have that talk now? The one where you explain what happened eight years ago?”
    If a human heart could literally jackknife into a stomach, hers would have done it. “On second thought, it’s late.”
    She started to push to her feet, but he placed a gentle hand on her knee again. This was not casual, nor was it aggressive. “Let me see if I can get you started. This has something to do with your mother.”
    Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Karma asked, “How did you know that?”
    â€œMy super-spidey-cop’s senses.” He gave her a tender smile. “You mentioned earlier tonight that she died years ago. And everything always seemed to come back to your relationship with her. If I hadn’t been so emotionally invested all those years ago, I’d have seen it then too. So what happened?” He traced his fingers lightly over her knee.
    He’d been emotionally invested in her back then, but wasn’t anymore. It was logical. It was smart. It was painful. More so because she could so easily fall for him all over again.
    Reluctantly, she admitted to herself she’d never completely gotten over him. Eight years and he was still the star of her sex-filled dreams. Fall for him again, right. Like she’d ever completely stopped being in love with him.
    Karma downed half the bottle of beer without tasting it. Zig watched her through those laser-blue eyes of his, curious and assessing.
    He took a pull on his beer, set it aside, and sighed low and long. “Guess there’ll be no answers tonight for anyone.”
    It wasn’t what he said so much as the tone and the look of defeat on his face that prompted her to speak.
    â€œYou remember I told you about my mother dragging me to the priest when I was fifteen? Well, what happened eight years ago, actually started way back then in Mexico.
    â€œThe near-exorcism was the beginning of the end for me. My mother married that boyfriend, José. He brought two children from a previous marriage into the mix. I don’t know if you remember me mentioning stepbrothers or not, but they were younger than me and a handful.
    â€œOnly two weeks after they were married, José began complaining about me. He claimed I was a bad influence on my younger stepbrothers.” Karma snorted her disgust at the idea of José calling her a bad influence.
Madre de Dios
. She’d barely started speaking and already her hands were shaking. “It came down to them or me. I was only a few years from going to college, but the boys were four and two. My mother loved them and didn’t want to lose them. So, one night she came to my room and told me she’d made arrangements for me to live with my father in the