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for trying, there were a dozen on the streets who would take advantage of her. Some would only take her money for leads that would merely take her down blind alleys. Some were capable of doing far worse.
    Rick figured either he was going to have to trail along behind, protecting her, or he was going to have to find some way to join forces with her—for the program’s sake and for hers.
    Of course, that meant seeing her again, trying to cut through the pain and the hatred and the anger to convince her that they were on the same side. His pulse raced predictably at the prospect. His quick rise to any challenge was both a blessing and a curse. After the way he’d responded to the woman struggling in his arms the night before, he figured this time it was downright suicidal. His body apparently didn’t have the same high moral standards his head did, standards that said a man shouldn’t be intrigued by his best friend’s wife. Ken’s death hadn’t changed that. In his eyes, Dana Miller still belonged to her late husband.
    “ Que pasa, Señor Rick?”
    At the sound of the softly spoken question, Rick’s gaze shot up. “Maria, you have to stop sneaking up on me,” he told the teenager with the huge brown eyes and shy, dimpled smile. “My heart can’t take it.”
    The shyness faded, replaced by a knowing twinkle. “Oh, I think your heart can take quite a lot, Señor Rick.”
    “And how would an innocent girl like you know a thing like that?”
    “The others talk,” she said, then shook her head. “As if you didn’t know that already. They think you are muy sexy, a how-do-you-say-it, a chunk?”
    Rick laughed. “That’s hunk, as if you didn’t know that already. Your English only fails you when it suits your purposes.”
    “No, no,” she protested. “Para me, anglais es muy difficile.”
    “Maria, you were born right here in Chicago.”
    Her chin rose a defiant notch. “But my parents, they speak only Spanish at home,” she protested, her expression all innocence. “I heard no English until I went to school.”
    It was a common enough story in certain immigrant neighborhoods, including this one. Rick happened to know, however, that Maria could speak and understand English like a native, unless it seemed inconvenient to do so.
    “The way I hear it, you were a quick study. I’ve seen all your transcripts. Straight As. That’s why the padre was trying to help you get a scholarship to college.”
    At the mention of Ken, she immediately sketched a cross across her chest and her eyes turned sad. “I miss him every day,” she said softly. “He was very good to me and the others, especially my brothers.”
    “He loved you all. He wanted you to succeed.”
    Maria perched uneasily on the edge of the chair opposite Rick’s desk. She folded her hands in her lap in the pose of a proper young lady, but it was only seconds before she began to fidget nervously. “What do you think will happen now? Will they find the person who killed him? They don’t seem to try very hard anymore.”
    Rick couldn’t deny that. It was one reason he could understand Dana Miller’s determination to take matters into her own hands. “I don’t know whether the police have given up,” he told Maria honestly. “But I haven’t.”
    “Do you have any leads?”
    “No, but I think someone knew exactly what he was doing that night.” It was the first time he had voiced that particular opinion, but he was forced to temper it by acknowledging the other possibility, the one Dana Miller and the police shared. “On the other hand, if the killer is from the hood, I’ll find him.”
    Maria looked shocked. “You think one of us could have harmed him?”
    “No one in the program,” he said firmly. “But others, who knows? Others believe anything is possible here. The only way to prove them wrong is to find the person responsible. Have you heard anything, Maria? Anything at all? Is anyone bragging a little.”
    “Who would brag about