when the following morning came, reilly woke up right before her alarm clock went off, and it was hard to know whether that was a good or a bad thing.

she'd been in the middle of an erotic dream, one that had put her and veck back on the kitchen table. except there had been no pizza interruptus this time. she'd ended up totally naked, with veck on top of her, the two of them on a wild ride that -

her clock's buzzer started yapping like a yorkie.

"shut. up."

as she silenced the damn noise, she decided, "good thing" on the early wake up. even though her body felt cheated, those were hardly the images she needed to go into hq with.

shower. blow-dry. dress - with white cotton underneath her clothes, thank you very much.

grabbing her travel mug, she was in her car and heading into work just in time to hit the traffic on the northway. and what do you know, being stuck in gridlock with hundreds of other morning commuters was exactly the kind of forced introspection she didn't need.

god, mothers were right about so much: brush your teeth and floss before bed even when you're exhausted; wear a hat when it's cold even if you think you look like an idiot; eat your veggies even if they're boring, because you need the fiber and the vitamins.

and don't get involved with coworkers even if they are hot as hell and have magical hands and lips.

as she rolled along at a snail's pace, her mind rode a seesaw that tilted between what had been playing through it as she'd woken up, and the nightmare that had been last evening when the sex had stopped short and sanity returned.

talk about your polar opposites -

when her phone went off, the first thing she thought was, please let it not be my mom. the pair of them were clos but they'd never had a psychic connection, and now was not the morning to start.

except the screen wasn't showing home. "detective de la cruz?" she said as she answered.

"morning, officer. how are you?"

frustrated. on so many levels. "stuck in traffic. yourself?"

"same crap, different direction."

"you have coffee?"

"better believe it. you?"

"yup. so this is almost like being at the office."

there was a sipping sound and then a swallow. "so i have news."

"and here i thought you were calling just to say good morning."

"kroner's turned around."

her grip on the wheel tightened. "define 'turned around.' "

"his doctors just called me and they're floored. sometime last night, everything changed. his vitals are steady and strong, and get this: he's frickin' conscious."

"holy ... i have to talk to him."

"they're not prepared to accommodate a lot of visitors, but they're allowing us to send one representative over there. and it's my recommendation that you not be the one who goes in."

"why the hell not?"

"you are his target. white woman, in her twenties - "

"i'm late twenties."

" - and so i think we could get farther with a man - "

"i can handle him."

"i want him to talk, not get distracted by all the things he wants to do to you."

well, wasn't that a gruesome thought.

"i'm not saying you shouldn't get with him. it's just this could be our one and only shot to hear his side of things. i don't trust things that can't be explained, and his doctor doesn't have a clue why the bastard is still alive - much less awake."

reilly cursed, but it wasn't like she couldn't see his point. besides, he wasn't a chauvinist.

then again, there could be another angle - although she felt like a shit for bringing it up. "any chance you don't want me to hear what he has to say about delvecchio?"

"i am not protecting veck. if he committed a crime, he will be dealt with just like anyone else - trust me. and i will let you know immediately when my guy gets out so you can follow up. okay?"

it was hard to doubt the logic, and impossible to doubt the man.

"i want to know everything."

"you will, officer. i swear it on my mother."

"call me."

"soon."

as reilly hung up, she tossed the phone onto the empty seat beside her. the good news, she supposed, was that they were going to find out what the hell had happened in those woods - theoretically. serial killers were not necessarily known for candor when they were finally caught.

changing lanes and putting her directional signal on, she got ready ttake her exit. and once she was off the highway, she made better time, although it turned out the delay with the traffic had been a good thing. when the graceless heft of headquarters finally loomed up ahead, she was ready to get to work - and see veck.

they'd had one slipup. fine. but it didn't have to be repeated, and she wasn't going to let it affect the job she did. there was a lot at stake, and she was not about to be distracted or get sloppy and unprofessional just because she was attracted to her partner.

sissy barten, and the other victims, deserved so much better than that. and the likes of kroner required nothing less.

"you look like shit."

veck glanced up from his office computer's screen. bails was standing in front of his desk with a satisfied expression on his face and his jacket in his hand.

"thanks." veck eased back and wanted a cigarette. "and you look like someone just gave you - "

"a blow job, right?"

"i was going to say 'a winning lottery ticket.' what's doing?"

"guess who's wakey-wakey."

"given the bj reference, i don't want to know."

"kroner."

veck sat forward. "impossible."

"well, then, de la cruz is talking out of his ass, because he just told me to go down and see what the bastard has to say. guess he rallied last night."

veck burst out of his chair before he knew his thighs had gone to work. but it was a waste of vertical impulse: he was going nowhere. at least not in an official capacity.

veck parked it again. "fuck."

bails leaned in, his face dead serious. "i'll take care of you. i'll tell you everything. which reminds me - you won't believe the evidence taken from kroner's impounded truck. the cataloging alone is going to take another day, at least - there's so much of the stuff. cross-matching it to victims? you're talking a year, probably. at least the fbi is being cool and actually working with us instead of against us."

shit, he needed to check in with that agent.

veck took a suck off his coffee mug. "i can't believe kroner's alive."

"miracles happen."

"i guess you could call it that."

"it is. he's going to set you free, my friend. trust me."

veck wasn't at all sure of that, but whatever. offering his knuckles for a pound, he said, "go get 'em, brother."

"you got it. i'll call you when i'm through."

as the guy turned to leave, reilly appeared in the doorway. she looked composed, professional, serious ... all those things that someone in a business environment should be. between one blink and the next, however, he saw her undone on her kitchen table, head back, breasts exposed, panty hose off, and skirt around her waist.

veck rubbed his aching head. he'd woken up with a pounder at the temples, the vague tendrils of a terrifying dream lingering in his mind - and that wasn't the half of it. he'd had the eerie conviction that someone had been in his house during the night. he'd checked ti'll ors and windows, though - all good; no break-ins. nothing out of place, either.

after bails nodded to reilly and took off, she walked over. "good morning."

"morning." veck glanced around. nobody was paying any attention to them, and that seemed like a miracle - he felt like they both had neon signs around their chests that read, we hooked up last night. but apparently only he and reilly knew the damn things were there, because she was surreptitiously looking at his fellow detectives, too.

"you ready to go through the barten file?" she said, as she put her things on the desk next to his and handed him a printout.

the pages were neat, bundled, clipped at the corner. clearly reprinted.

swiveling his chair toward her, he wondered what had happened to the two reports from last night. no doubt she'd had to throw them away after they'd been crushed underneath two heaving bodies and then shuffled off onto the floor.

he rubbed his head again. "you hear about kroner?"

"de la cruz called me."

"i'm surprised you're not going in to interview the guy."

"oh, i will. you can bet your life on it." she unclipped her stack and spread out the various stapled sections. "so as i was reading through this, something bothered me."

he caught himself staring at her mouth and wanted to kick his own ass: not only was it inappropriate, but it felt disrespectful.

"what's that?" i'm sorry about last night. "where are you in the report?"

"the anonymous tip line section. page two - there was a caller who said he saw sissy get into a black car at the hannaford."

"got it." i shouldn't have put you in this position. "yeah, no follow-up, though. guy didn't leave his name."

"i've been thinking about what her mother said about her. sissy doesn't strike me as the type to do something like that. she was not someone who would get into the car of a stranger."

"maybe the tip was wrong, or a lie." i wish i could tell you i don't want you, but i can't. "wouldn't be the first time, and with no follow-up possible?"

now her eyes fully met his. "but that's the thing. why weren't there other people who saw her after she walked out the door into the parking lot? she left her car there, right? why didn't anyone else see what happened when she left - especially if there was a struggle? there were employees retrieving carts, customers coming and going. if we assume sissy had to be forced into a vehicle, someone should have seen a struggle, or something out of the ordinary."

scanning the other tips, he nodded. "yeah, and the layout of that supermarket ... there's nothing across the street or to either side, really. it's set off the road, so it's not as if she would go walking off anywhere."

"someone should have seen something."

christ, it was almost like what had happened to him with kroner: nothing but aftermath ... surrounding a whole lot of blank hole.

maybe there was something in the caldwell water that was making people forget.

"let's start at the beginning," he said, reordering his pile. "and tau, b one step at a time."

as he thought about bails talking to kroner, he took out his cell phone and put it on the desk in case the guy called in.

sissy barten definitely fit the profile of the killer's victims, and was one of only two reported missing persons in the city who did: kroner had never gone for males, children, or anyone over thirty, and the other girl who was on the list had been reported as gone almost a month ago, so she might well be outside the time scope.

sissy was it, veck had a feeling.

sissy was his way back into the kroner case.