Читать книгу Veiled Intentions - Delores Fossen - Страница 13

Joe reread the overview of the proposed mission that Lieutenant Brayden O’Malley had handed him just minutes earlier. The overview didn’t read any better the second time around, and he didn’t hold out hope that a third read would make it any more palatable.

There were quite a few points of contention so Joe chose the first one. “You really think the shooting day before yesterday was a result of a botched burglary of the building next to Sacred Heart church?”

“No,” O’Malley readily answered. “But I’d rather have the press report that than link it with the shooting that happened a week earlier.”

Joe nodded, but the two shootings wouldn’t stay unlinked for long. All it would take was another incident, and unfortunately another incident was probably in the planning stages. That is, if the gunman hadn’t already finalized his next hit. But the real question was—was the killer linked to the matchmaking agency or the florist?

Or neither?

The or neither was the most troublesome scenario of them all. If the shootings weren’t connected through the businesses, then maybe they had a thrill killer or just a plain psycho on their hands.

Not that they didn’t have that anyway.

But Joe preferred his psychos to keep to a discernable pattern, because with hard work and some luck, patterns could be identified.

“The shell casings taken from the two crime scenes didn’t match,” Katelyn said, reading from a copy of the overview. She gave a weary sigh. “So that complicates things.”

“It just means our shooter likes to trade off weapons,” Joe advised her. “It doesn’t mean the crimes aren’t related.”

Another sigh from her. This one wasn’t weary. It had a you-think? tinge to it.

“Arguments? Comments? Objections?” Lieutenant O’Malley asked. “If so, direct them to me and not at each other.”

The man was definitely a multitasker. While he tossed out those leading questions and semireprimands, he looked through a report, scrawled his signature on it and tossed it into his out-box before he went onto the next one. But then, no one had ever accused this particular O’Malley of being inefficient. Just the opposite. The only accusation had been in the area of his preferential treatment.

“Concerns,” Joe volunteered.

Time to move on to point two. He had a lot of concerns, but the major one was the woman with the short, flame-red hair who was sitting next to him. Now the question was how to voice that concern without thoroughly riling Katelyn’s oldest brother, a man he had no desire to rile. Even under a cloud of suspicion, Brayden was formidable. Joe’s investigation into departmental favoritism would no doubt irritate the man enough without adding more to the mix.

“Sergeant Rico thinks this case is too personal for me,” Katelyn countered. “He believes I should step aside because I knew Gail.”

And with that totally accurate observation, she looked across the desk that separated them and met her brother’s gaze. In the next few seconds, at least a hundred or more words passed between them, even though neither spoke.

It was an interesting encounter to watch.

The lieutenant stared at her and lifted his eyebrow, just a fraction. That was it. No other change in his otherwise calm, authoritative expression. Yet the simple gesture caused Katelyn’s mouth to tighten, and her grip on the chair arm whitened her knuckles. Joe could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped by a full ten degrees. It was the most efficient warning he’d ever witnessed.

“Your sister has renegade tendencies,” Joe added, feeling that after what’d just happened, he was probably preaching to the choir. Still, a little choir preaching might go a long way to some changes in this mission proposal. “I’d prefer to work with another detective on this case.”

And Joe already had one in mind. Detective Dawn Davidson, a veteran officer who’d worked a serial killer case just the year before. She had the experience and from all accounts was levelheaded.

“Bringing in another detective might be a problem.” The lieutenant extracted a manila folder from a stack and slid it Joe’s way. “This’ll be an undercover assignment, and Katelyn already has her foot in the door.”

“What door?” Joe asked.

“At the matchmaking agency that might be connected to the two shootings.”

Judging from the soft groan that Katelyn made and the way she sank slightly lower in her chair, this would not please him. From the lieutenant’s elevated eyebrow, it didn’t please him much, either.

“I must have missed that foot-in-the-door part when reading the overview,” Joe commented.

Brayden pointed to the folder. “It’s all in there.”

Katelyn turned slightly away when he opened it and kept her attention focused on her brother. The top page in the folder was a rather lengthy questionnaire from the Perfect Match Agency, and it was dated a week earlier. It’d been filled out just two days after the first shooting.

And the name at the top?

Kate Kennedy.

Joe felt a groan coming on, as well.

“Is this your handiwork?” he asked her.

“Yes. But no one at Perfect Match has any idea that I’m a cop. No one. Kennedy is obviously an alias.” Katelyn directed the rest of her explanation to her brother. “I wanted to get a look at the people who worked there. I figured this was the fastest way to do it.”

“But not the smartest way,” Joe quickly let her know. “You could have jeopardized everything by going in there on your own.”

“But I didn’t.” Moving to the edge of her seat, she repeated it to her brother. “I can do whatever you need me to do to make this undercover assignment work.”

“I’m not the one you need to convince, Katelyn. The chief assigned Sergeant Rico as the lead for this case.” And the lieutenant sat back and left it at that.

The proverbial ball had just been tossed into Joe’s proverbial court.

Unfortunately, he also knew how these next few minutes were about to play out.

Hell.

Katelyn O’Malley had certainly put him in a hard place with her coloring-outside-the-lines attitude. Still, it’d only compound the problem if he let his personal feelings influence the most logical way to approach this. Well, it was the most logical approach considering she’d already tossed a monkey wrench or two into the scenario. “It wouldn’t be smart for me to use another detective at this point,” Joe concluded, speaking more to himself than the O’Malleys. He glanced at the questionnaire while he finished up his explanation. It figured. Katelyn had listed chili as her favorite food. “If the killer’s part of the Perfect Match Agency, then he or she might be suspicious of anyone registering so soon after the second shooting.”

“Guess that leaves you out then, huh?” Katelyn all but smirked at him.

Even though it was borderline petty, Joe liked it when people did that, especially when he could smirk right back. He calmly shuffled through the papers in the folder, extracted his own questionnaire and passed it to her.

Her eyes widened and skimmed over the first page. “You filled this out the same day I did?”

Let the smirking begin. “Yes.”

She hissed out a breath. “Need I remind you that you just accused me of jumping the gun by going to the agency?”

“The difference is—I was on this case, and you weren’t.” Joe held out his hands to emphasize the space. “Big difference. I’m talking huge.”

The temperature went down another notch, and her eyes narrowed to slits.

“Which brings us up-to-date, I believe,” Brayden interjected. Good timing, Joe thought, since Katelyn looked ready to implode. “We have to act fast. There are only five days until Saturday. Five days until a whole host of weddings are scheduled to take place all over the city. Five days to stop a killer from striking again.”

Joe was well aware of that. Those five days were already breathing down his neck. “I’ve learned the florist in question is doing the flower arrangements for two weddings this weekend, one Saturday, another Sunday night. But neither couple met through the Perfect Match Agency. If fact, I haven’t been able to connect any of the upcoming marriages to a matchmaking agency.”

“Neither have I.” Katelyn pulled out her own set of notes from a leather briefcase that was leaning against her chair. “And therein lies our problem. Perfect Match doesn’t release all the names of their former customers who’ve made wedding plans. So it becomes a needle-in-a-haystack approach.”

“It’s the only approach we have right now,” Joe fired back. “We could stake out all the weddings in San Antonio, but it’ll eat up a ton of manpower and cause people to ask too many questions and maybe even panic. Plus, there are the other ceremonies, the ones that aren’t listed in the paper. We wouldn’t be able to cover those. So our best bet is to go back to the source of the connection—the Perfect Match Agency. They require matched couples to meet there first for an icebreaker, and there’s one every Tuesday night, including tomorrow night.”

“It starts at seven-thirty,” Katelyn provided. “We don’t need an invitation. We just need to be computer matched…somehow.”

It didn’t surprise Joe that she knew those details. She’d probably already picked out the clothes she was going to wear. And she’d done all of that before even being officially assigned to the team.

His team.

He hoped like the devil that she didn’t wear those sexy stilettos and the little green outfit. He’d have enough distractions as it was.

“Detective O’Malley and I’ll do this intro thing tomorrow night at Perfect Match,” Joe continued, making sure he sounded like the boss. Because after the minifantasy involving her choice of fashion, he needed the reminder in the worst sort of way. “We’ll pretend we were high school sweethearts and that we’re surprised but happy to be reunited.”

She nodded. “Good idea. And that’ll explain a hasty engagement and equally hasty marriage.”

“Well, hopefully.” It might also make the wrong person suspicious, but he’d deal with that when and if it happened. “While we’re there, we’ll have a good look around the place. Without breaking the law, of course.”

Another you-think? huff from Katelyn.

Joe ignored her and continued. “In the meantime, I’ll keep going through the background checks I’ve been doing on the employees and the owners of Perfect Match and the florist.”

“I’ve done backgrounds checks, as well,” Katelyn informed him.

Joe bobbed his head. “Of course you have.”

The woman had an incredibly effective scalpel-sharp glare. “I’m not an idiot. I did them discretely.”

Joe might have questioned her on what she considered discrete, but the lieutenant spoke first. “Sounds as if you have everything under control.”

Not even close.

Joe kept that sentiment to himself.

“Good.” Brayden stood and reached for the jacket draped over the back of his chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with the chief. Feel free to use my office to hash out the rest of the details. Oh, and it goes without saying—keep me informed.”

“Wait,” Katelyn called out when her brother headed for the door. “You’re both missing a key point. Yes, Sergeant Rico and I filled out these questionnaires, but that in itself doesn’t give us a computer match. I hate to state the obvious here, but the computer does that. In fact, it generates a list of matches so the candidates can meet the people at the icebreaker. What if neither of us has any matches? What then? We can’t just show up.”

“I’d planned to have one of the techs go into the system and arrange for the questionnaires to be matched,” Joe explained.

Katelyn shook her head. “That sounds risky. Someone at the agency might figure out—”

“A match isn’t a problem,” Brayden assured them. “It’s all in the folder.”

There was something about the lieutenant’s strange, almost self-satisfied expression that sent Joe thumbing through the rest of the papers in the file. Katelyn must have had the same feeling, because she leaned closer so she could see the documents, as well.

It didn’t take Joe long to find it. There it was. The dozen or so men listed as “dream date” matches for client 6341B, Kate Kennedy. His own alias, Joe Farrell, was the first name on the list.

He felt as if someone had slugged him in the solar plexus.

“You already had the tech rig the system?” Joe asked. But he didn’t think that’s what had generated the look on the lieutenant’s face.

“No. The two of you matched without any tech interference.” Brayden’s eyebrows flexed. “For once, Murphy’s Law worked in our favor. Let’s hope that luck continues.”

And with that little scud missile attack, the lieutenant left them sitting there in somewhat stunned silence.

“It had to be the chili,” Joe mumbled under his breath.

Or maybe Katelyn just jotted down a whole bunch of lies while filling out the questionnaire. He hadn’t, that was for sure. Unnecessary lies were just too hard to keep track of, so with the exception of his name, address and occupation, everything else was true.

Yet, they’d matched.

Even if she’d lied, that was an unsettling coincidence because it meant her lies matched his truths.

Joe quietly pushed that coincidence aside and moved on to the mission at hand.

“I’ll see you at the Perfect Match tomorrow night.” He stood and tucked the folder beneath his arm. “Until then, we keep doing these background checks and hope we find a smoking gun. Oh, and by the way, I insist the officers on my team follow the rules. My rules,” he emphasized. “If you jeopardize this assignment again—”

“I won’t.”

“If you do, I’ll have your butt and your badge.”

She nodded, after a contemplative moment.

Joe almost decided to leave it at that, but there was something he couldn’t leave unsaid. “I hope it’s occurred to you that this plan is designed to send a killer after us.”

No hesitation this time. “It has.”

Good. At least underneath all that wisecracking talk, Katelyn O’Malley was smart enough to know what they were up against.

And what they were up against was a killer.

Even more, the moment they stepped inside Perfect Match, they would become the ultimate bait.