Dying to Please by Linda Howard

relate. “Miss Stevens.” He nodded at her in good-bye and walked away before she could reply. He joined a husky guy in jeans, T-shirt, and baseball cap, who showed him a sheaf of paper targets, shaking his head in evident disgust. Detective Cahill examined the pistol, deftly reloaded it, then walked to the line and clipped on a new target.
    Sarah didn't let herself watch. She had her own practicing to accomplish, so she burned three more clips left-handed, at different distances, before calling it a day. When she looked around, Detective Cahill and his buddy were gone.

CHAPTER 5
    HAVING ESTABLISHED THAT RICK'S NEW PISTOL WAS INDEED a piece of shit, Cahill and his pal went to the gun shop where Rick had bought the pistol. Rick harangued the owner for almost an hour with no results: he had bought the pistol, it was registered in his name, the paperwork had been sent in the day he bought it, so his only recourse was with the manufacturer unless he wanted to resell the pistol to some other unsuspecting fool.
    They repaired to a bar and grill for an early supper and some liquid comfort. “Order me a beer, will you?” Rick said, and took off for the bathroom. Cahill slid onto a barstool and placed the orders. He was already sipping his coffee when Rick returned.
    “That was a sharp-looking woman you were talking to at the range.” Rick plopped onto the barstool beside him. “You banging her?”
    Cahill slowly turned his head and regarded his friend as coolly as if he had never before seen him. “Who the hell are you, and why the fuck would I care?”
    Rick grinned in appreciation. “That was good. Very good. You almost scared me. Mind if I use it sometimes?”
    “Feel free.”
    “So, are you banging her or not?”
    “Not.”
    “Why not? She married or something?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Then I repeat: Why not?”
    “I haven't tried.”
    Rick shook his head and reached for his beer. “You gotta get over this, son. So you had a rough divorce; it's over. You're free now and you have to move on to the next flower.”
    Since Rick was a veteran of two divorces and was now looking for wife number three, Cahill sort of doubted the worth of any advice he gave concerning women. Rick was good at attracting them, but not at keeping them. But because he was also a good friend, Cahill didn't point out any of that. “Give me time,” he said mildly.
    “Hell, it's been a year!”
    “So maybe I need a year and a half. Besides, I date.”
    Rick snorted. “Yeah, and they go nowhere.”
    “I don't want them to go anywhere. I just want sex.” He stared morosely into his coffee. He definitely wanted sex, but getting it was a problem. The women who offered one-night, no-strings sex weren't the type of women he wanted. Sleaze had never appealed to him. The women who really attracted him were long-term types, and long term was exactly what he didn't need right now.
    It wasn't that he hadn't gotten over Shannon; he'd gotten over her the minute he found out she was screwing a doctor from the hospital where she worked. But the divorce had been a bitch, with her fighting for everything she could get, as if she had to punish him for daring to not want her any longer. He didn't understand women, or at least he didn't understand women like Shannon; if she hadn't wanted out, then why screw around? Had she really thought he wouldn't kick her ass out if he found out? He did, he had, and she had reacted with an almost insane sense of vengeance.
    He had tried to be fair. That said, he wasn't dumb; the first thing he'd done after finding out about her affair was take out half the money in their joint bank account and open an account in another bank under his name only. He had also removed her name from all his credit card accounts, which wasn't a hardship on her because she had her own credit cards, but damn if she hadn't gone ballistic when she found out. He figured she'd found out when she tried to charge something on one of his