CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5

The call came in not long after midnight.

Montoya groaned as he rolled across the bed and answered his cell. While his wife, Abby, burrowed under the blankets, he kept his voice down and slid out of bed as he had a hundred times before. He was a detective with the New Orleans Police Department. Odd hours and late-night calls were part of his job.

“What now?” Abby asked, her voice muffled before she tossed the blankets off and shoved a tangle of hair from her eyes as he hung up.

“Dead woman. A nun. Possible homicide.”

Abby pushed herself upright, propped her back against the pillows, and clicked on the light. “A nun?”

“According to the officer who responded to a nine-one-one call.” He slid into a pair of battered jeans that he’d tossed over the foot of the bed, then found a clean T-shirt in the closet and pulled it over his head.

“Why would anyone kill a nun?” She scraped her hair back from her face, but wild curls sprang loose.

“Don’t know, but I’ll figure it out.” He flashed his wife a humorless grin and thought back to another time when a nun had been killed—that one being his own aunt. “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

“Yeah, right.” She didn’t smile as she tugged at her hair. “Just be careful.”

“Always am.” He started for the door.

“Hey! Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked, angling her chin toward him, practically begging for a kiss.

“Oh, yeah!” He walked to the closet, found the locked box holding his sidearm, and retrieved his weapon. After strapping on his shoulder holster, he slid his arms through his leather jacket and started for the door.

“You can be a miserable SOB when you want to be,” she charged.

“I always want to be.”

“I know.” But her eyes twinkled and the reddish blond curls that framed her face were sexy as hell. “You’re a father now, so . . . don’t take any unnecessary risks, okay? I want Benjamin to know his daddy.”

He snapped his Glock into place, then crossed the room and pushed her back onto the mattress. “So do I.” He stretched his body over hers and kissed her hard, his tongue probing her mouth, his hands splayed wide across her backside. “Wait for me,” he whispered against her ear.

“Not on your life, Detective,” she said, but there was a smile in her voice, and he had to keep his thoughts on the coming investigation to control the tightness in his groin and the rock-hard response she always elicited from him. One interested arch of her eyebrows could cause a reaction deep inside of him. Man, did he have it bad.

“Pussy-whipped,” his brother, Cruz, had commented on more than one occasion.

In this case, Cruz was right.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be ready.”