Читать книгу Tactical Advantage - Julie Miller - Страница 12

Chapter Two

“What’s your problem, Hermann?” Nick Fensom’s deep-pitched voice teased her from above. “I’ve already canvassed apartments on both sides of the street, and you’re still in the same spot where I left you.”

Annie glanced up from the alley where she was working and glared at the stocky, dark-haired detective casting a shadow over her open evidence kit and work space. The tarp tenting over their heads from one wall of the alley to the other snapped with the wind and strained against the ropes she’d tied off like full sails on a seagoing schooner. She was knee-deep in trash bags, blood spatter and blowing snow—her cold fingers shaking as she struggled to open a paper evidence bag so she could drop the beaded evening purse she’d found beneath the nearby Dumpster inside. She pulled the flashlight she held between her teeth out of her mouth to answer.

“Well, let’s see, Detective Smart Mouth. It’s cold. It’s windy. It’s snowing. Can you piece together the clues and figure out why this is taking so long?” She could do sarcasm, too. “You got the easy gig, spending a couple of hours inside where it’s warm and dry.”

“And crashing parties or waking up surly, annoyed building supers and frightened tenants.”

Annie scoffed at his trials and tribulations. “It’s not my fault if you showing up ruins a party and scares little old ladies.”

He deflected the zinger with a smug grin. “Actually, I was invited to join a couple of New Year’s celebrations. I was also asked to arrest the noisy neighbors on the floor above one apartment. And there was a nice Mrs. O’Halloran who invited me in for champagne and cookies if I was interested. I had to tell her I was still on the clock and, regrettably, turned her down.”

Point to Fensom. Annie bristled. Her only invitation tonight had come from the lecherous drunk neighbor across the hall. “No one’s stopping you from leaving. I bet Mrs. O’Halloran’s cookies are still toasty warm if you want to go sample them.”

“She was older than my grandmother, Hermann. You know, anybody overhearing our conversation might think you don’t like me.”

“There’s no one listening in, so I don’t have to pretend to make nice.”

Point to Hermann. The teasing grin vanished, and for a split second, Annie was tempted to apologize. But a man with that much self-confidence couldn’t really be offended by the quips they routinely traded each time they were forced to work together, could he? Rather than explore the possibility that there might be a sensitive human being beneath that cocky charm, Annie opted to change the topic.

The idea that she and Nick Fensom truly were alone in the middle of this wintry night in a place where a dead body had lain only hours earlier sent a little shiver of unease down her spine. It merged with the chill that vibrated her grip, and she swung her light toward the yellow crime scene tape at the end of the alley. “Where did the two uniformed guys go?”

“Relax, Hermann, I’ve got your back for a few minutes.” He tilted his head toward the cross street at the end of the block. “The Shamrock Bar is just around the corner. They started serving free coffee and snacks after 1:00 a.m. in case anyone’s been partying too hard tonight. I sent the officers to get four coffees and give them some time out of the cold.”

She’d like to dive into a bath-sized pot of hot coffee right about now. Including her in the drink run was an unexpected consideration that took the edge off the defensive hackles Nick’s presence inevitably raised in her. “I suppose they’ve been out here longer than either one of us. They’ve earned the break.”

Still, sterile plastic gloves were no match for hours of working in the wintry night, photographing potential evidence, digging through bags of garbage and cataloguing everything she’d found thus far. The bag she’d been fighting with refused to open for her stiff fingers. The knees of her jeans where she kneeled had soaked through to the skin, and the tendrils of hair sticking out from beneath her stocking cap had kinked around her face and stuck to her cheeks with the precipitation in the air.

Meanwhile, other than the puffs of warm breath that clouded the air around his head, Detective Fensom looked solid and warm and vexingly unaffected by the dropping temperature.

As if reading her condemning thoughts, Nick turned the banter back to the job. The beam of his flashlight joined hers to better illuminate her work. “What do you have there?”

“I found the victim’s purse.” Giving up on the paper sack for now, Annie lifted the camera hanging from her neck and snapped a picture of the beaded evening bag wedged between the rear wheel of the Dumpster and the alley’s brick wall. Then she picked up the bag and opened it. “Clearly, this wasn’t a robbery.” She pulled out three neatly folded twenties and a credit card. A driver’s license, five business cards, a comb and lipstick rounded out the contents. Annie read the name on the license and business cards. “Rachel Dunbar. Twenty-seven years old. She was an investment analyst.”

“A successful professional woman. That fits the victim profile of the women the Rose Red Rapist targets.”

Annie returned the contents to the purse and picked up the evidence bag again. Juggling the purse, the bag and her flashlight with her frozen hands proved to be a challenge, but it didn’t stop her mind from speculating. “Why is there no phone here? I wonder if she had a cell phone in her coat or if the killer took it from her. I can’t imagine a woman going out at night on her own without a cell.”

“When I check in with Spencer, I can ask if the phone was on the body. I’m guessing her attacker took it from her, though,” Nick speculated. “It keeps her helpless, at his mercy. Our unsub is all about control and dominance over the women he assaults. He obviously can’t have her calling 9-1-1.”

Frowning, Annie nodded toward the bag already tucked into her evidence kit. “So he takes the phone, but leaves the brick he killed her with? I always thought our guy was smarter than that. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Let’s gather the evidence first and analyze it later.” Nick knelt beside her, the bulk of his shoulders and chest blocking the wind as he plucked the sack from her fingers and opened it for her. Annie’s fingers were still shaking as she jotted down the time and date and signed the sealed bag. He dropped the sack inside her kit and reached for her hands. “I need to get you out of the cold, too. How much more do you have to do?”

Annie’s mouth opened in surprise as he tucked her flashlight into the CSI vest she wore over her coat, and pulled off his leather gloves to capture her fingers between his palms. “What are you doing?”

He peeled off her latex gloves next. “What does it look like?”

Gasping at his firm, yet light, touch, Annie was stunned into silence. Nick Fensom had never touched her before, other than an accidental brush of contact as they passed each other in a crowded room or handed off a file folder at a meeting. And now he was holding her hands and instilling warmth as if he had some proprietary claim to do so.

The gentle massage of Nick’s bigger fingers over hers was almost painful as the blood began to warm her heat-deprived extremities. A little hiss of pain brought his gaze up to hers. “Easy, slugger. You’re okay.”

“Slugger?” A baseball reference?

He glanced up at the blue-and-white KC on the cuff of her stocking cap. “Looks like you’re a Royals fan.”

“I am.”

“Me, too. Who’d have thought you and I had something in common?”

“Yeah.” Witty comeback. But her thoughts were shifting from shock into the critical observations that usually filled her mind.

Sensation returned to her hands and Annie began to feel every supple movement of his fingertips, every callus that marked his broad palm. She could feel the heat radiating from his body, from his skin into hers.

Nick Fensom was being nice? On purpose? Where were the wisecracks that forced her to stay on her mental toes? The annoying arguments that threatened to undermine her investigative expertise? The heat he rubbed into her once-numb hands was blossoming elsewhere inside her, too. Her cheeks began to thaw with the traitorous flush of her physical response.

Up close like this, Annie noticed just how blue Nick’s eyes were. Their dark cobalt color was emphasized by the shadows between them, yet there was a sparkle of energy there, a light that gave them a sharp contrast to the coffee-brown darkness of his hair. And maybe it was just the close proximity she wasn’t accustomed to—or the thickness of his insulated leather jacket—that distorted the dimensions of his body. She knew he hadn’t grown any taller, and yet his shoulders and chest were broader than she remembered. They were wide enough to block the worst of the wind and snow and allow the air between them to warm and fill with the scents of the sterile solutions she used, along with the leather and faint garlicky deliciousness emanating from him.

“You’re like a furnace,” she noted, drawing her focus back to the reviving heat of his fingers around hers. Was he feeling this unexpected jolt of awareness, too? “Why are you doing this?”

“Speeding the process so I can get out of here before dawn. Your hands are like ice.”

“Oh.” So she’d been analyzing the color of his eyes and wondering if the dark stubble dusting the angles of his face would be sandpapery or soft to the touch while he’d simply wanted to get out of here sooner. Awkward. He probably had a hot date he’d left in a snug apartment somewhere, and Annie’s poky thoroughness was keeping him from getting back to her. With plenty of embarrassment to infuse her blood and keep her warm now, Annie jerked her hands from his and grabbed a fresh pair of gloves from her kit. “I’m fine. You can stop.”

“I don’t mind.” She flexed her fingers and reached up to extricate her flashlight from the net pocket in her CSI vest where Nick had stuck it. But her hands were chilling again and he’d jammed it in there good and why the heck couldn’t she manage her own equipment? Nick plucked the flashlight from her vest and pressed it into her palm. “Here. We’re part of a team, right? We have to help each other out.”

“Right.” Go ahead and be practical and coordinated and temptingly warm, she accused him silently, pushing to her feet and feeling about as graceful and misguided as a teenage girl who’d just had a run-in with her high school crush. She must be suffering from hypothermia to have hallucinated any sort of fascination with Nick Fensom. “I’m almost done. The path of blood droplets I was following has tapered off considerably.”

“O...kay.” He drawled out the word, clearly questioning her abrupt retreat. Nick pulled on his black leather gloves and straightened beside her. “By the way, you’re welcome.”

Annie lifted her gaze from the void of snow on the bricks behind the Dumpster. “Sorry.” Rubbing her hands truly had been a nice gesture, which was certainly more observant of her discomfort and more considerate than she’d given the burly detective credit for being. “You didn’t have to do that, but I appreciate it. I’ll do my best to get done before daylight, so we can both get someplace warm.”

And so she could find some time to herself to remember that Nick was just a cop she worked with, a streetwise pain in the posterior she frequently butted heads with—not the man who had suddenly blipped onto her sexual-awareness radar with his big shoulders and blue eyes and surprising consideration.

“Sounds like a temporary truce to me.”

Annie nodded her agreement, savoring the cold slap of wind on her face that brought her thoughts back into focus. She bent closer to the bricks as the bare spot took shape. It was a handprint, dotted with a few weeping trickles of blood. There was another handprint, another smear of red, climbing up the wall to where the falling snow clung to the bricks above the Dumpster and covered up the rest of the pattern. “This has been moved. Our vic got to her feet and pulled herself up along the wall here. And...something else.”

Nick waited for Annie’s nod before putting his shoulder to the Dumpster and shoving it aside a couple of feet. Then the beam from his flashlight joined hers. “That second handprint’s bigger. Looks like a scuffle to me. Two people fell against the wall—caught themselves. But this can’t be where she was killed. There isn’t enough blood.”

“That blood pool is farther back in the alley. She had her head bashed in back by where the alleys cross, beyond any line of sight from the street—with the brick I bagged up in my kit, I’m guessing. These are something different.” With her sterile gloves still in place, she tested one crimson spot with her fingertip. “The drops here aren’t as tacky. They’ve been here longer. This may be the initial attack site.”

“Where he first abducted her and hauled her away to a secondary location to rape her.” Nick’s shoulder nudged hers as he came in for a closer look. “Maybe this one got a look at her attacker, and they struggled. Could that be our perp’s handprint?”

Nudging him back out of her way, Annie focused the camera hanging around her neck and snapped a photograph. “I doubt we’ll get any fingerprints from our unsub—the lines are blurred enough that I’m sure both were wearing gloves. Wait a minute.”

“Did you see something?”

Before Nick could finish his question, Annie grabbed his wrist and pulled his hand in front of the prints on the wall. “Hold that right there.”

Before he could voice another question, she’d snapped another picture.

“Now take your glove off and hold it up there.”

She didn’t miss the dubious arching of his brow, but Nick did as she asked. “And my hand is photogenic because?”

“It’s a comparison shot.” Next, she photographed her own hand in front of the bloody prints on the wall before stooping down to pull a tape measure from her kit. “The smaller prints are about the size of my hand, so I’m guessing they belong to the victim. We can verify that once I talk with the medical examiner. But the other print is considerably larger.”

“Man-size hands.” Nick regloved and stepped to the side, clearing out of her work space. “The rapist’s?”

“Possibly.” She recorded the exact measurements in her notebook and stuffed it back into her coat pocket. “It’s something we can compare if we find handprints at other locations, or we bring a suspect into custody.”

“That’s not much.”

Annie refused to be so pessimistic. “It’s more than we had a few minutes ago.”

“So why bring Rachel Dunbar back here to kill her? He could have done it in the privacy of whatever hellhole he takes his victims to.” The beam of Nick’s flashlight followed her as Annie pulled a swab and Luminol from her kit to verify that the spatter and smears on the wall were blood. “Leaving the body here feels like he’s showing off what he can do. Rubbing it in our faces that KCPD hasn’t been able to break the case yet.”

Shuddering at the disturbingly blunt commentary, Annie suggested an explanation of her own. “From the account of Bailey Austin, the first victim the task force worked with, she was raped at a building that was either being built or remodeled—where there were signs of construction. She remembered a clear plastic drop cloth that covered everything. He’s keeping that location clean—traceless.”

So why be less cautious about the evidence here?

“If it’s a construction zone, he’d have work crews coming and going who might find the body—or at least recognize that something violent happened there.” Nick snapped his nimble fingers as an idea hit him. “Plus, the walls and layout could be changing daily. My dad’s a contractor. I’ve seen empty lots become complete houses in a week. It’d be damn near impossible for a witness to give an accurate description—the whole layout might change before we could follow up on it.”

“It has to be someplace that’s familiar to him. Or maybe the location is someplace he created specifically for these assaults.” Two drops of Luminol turned the cotton swab a telltale purple. Definitely blood.

“You think the rape is part of some kind of ritual?” Nick’s gaze narrowed. “That there’s a special significance to where the Rose Red Rapist takes his victims?” He turned the beam of light into the depths of the alley, swinging the flashlight from one strip of yellow crime scene tape to the strip blocking the front sidewalk. “So what’s all this then, Sherlock? A bloody coincidence? Our guy hasn’t made mistakes or left this much evidence behind before.”

Sherlock? Annie glanced up. Nick’s dark hair and the charcoal-gray heather scarf he wore were getting dusted with the snow coming in at the edge of the tarp. She prided herself on noticing the details of her surroundings, but those keen senses were supposed to be focusing on a murder scene, not the detective demanding answers from her. The frigid temps must really be addling her brain. She forced herself to look away and point out the bags labeled and stowed in her kit. “I don’t know. This is different from the other crimes scenes I’ve investigated. I’ve never had this much trace before. It’s almost as if...”

“As if what?”

Annie shook her head. “I don’t like to speculate.”

“Humor me.”

“It’s as if we’ve got two crime scenes in one location. The abduction, which could account for the handprints on the wall here, and the murder...” She turned her own light toward the darkness at the back of the alley, where a second tarp did what it could to protect the evidence there. “Which happened back there.”

“And all the blood is the vic’s?”

“I don’t know yet. There’s an awful lot. I’d have to—”

“—analyze it.” Nick muttered the end of the sentence as though he was impatient to move on to a new topic. He brushed the snowflakes off the top of his hair, leaving shiny dark spikes in their wake. To her surprise, he seemed to give her idea some merit. “Dr. Kilpatrick believes there’s more than one unsub we should be looking for.”

Annie recalled the conclusion reached by the forensic psychologist assigned to the task force when she’d been investigating the Rose Red Rapist’s last attack before tonight’s grim events. “She thinks there are two different profiles to these attacks, indicating more than one man is involved in the crimes—the rapist and someone who cleans up after him. This could be trace from the initial abduction. And if Rachel Dunbar struggled—meaning he didn’t knock her out with one blow the way he usually subdues his victims—then it could have been a messy confrontation, giving the cleaner more impetus to silence the one woman who could possibly identify the rapist.”

“The Cleaner?” Nick’s blue eyes glowed with something that looked like derision. “You’ve given our accomplice a nickname? Better not let the press get wind of that.” He thumbed over his shoulder toward the dark storefront across the street. “They’ve already given our perp a cutesy name because the first rape happened outside the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop.”

Annie pulled up to every centimeter of her five feet two inches of height. She hadn’t been trying to glorify the perp’s cleverness or give the press any more fodder for sensational headlines. She had simply been stating facts. “Like I said. It’s just speculation. I’m trying to figure out what the evidence says.”

“And it’s telling you we have two crime scenes at one location.” Maybe that skeptical gleam was Nick’s deep-thought expression because it sounded like he was actually agreeing with her theory. “One from the Rose Red Rapist and one from an accomplice in some freaky sort of tag team. Could be a crazy fan who wants a taste of that violence, too.”

Annie stooped down to replace the Luminol bottle in her kit and take out unopened swabs in sterile cases to obtain fresh samples of the blood smears for typing and DNA analysis. “It sounds kind of sick, but it looks to me like we’ve got a rape addict and some sort of enabler.”

“Now there’s a dysfunctional relationship.” Nick swore. “I liked it better when we were after just one nutcase.”

“It’s only a theory,” Annie hastened to clarify, dabbing at the bricks. “I can’t prove the identity of the second attacker or what his motives might be yet. I can’t even confirm that there was a second man in this alley tonight.”

“But your gut tells you Dr. Kilpatrick is right—that there are two attackers?”

Annie snapped the vials shut and pulled the marker from her pocket to label them. She slipped them all into her pocket, exhaling a sigh that clouded the air between them. “The evidence seems to indicate that.”

Nick nodded, apparently satisfied with her assessment of the crime scene. “Finish up here. I’m going to call Spencer and see if he convinced an M.E. to come in early and look at the body yet. I’ll ask for a quick measurement of the victim’s hand size so we can speed the identification of those prints.” He pulled his cell phone off his belt, giving her a glimpse of the weapon holstered beneath his jacket. “When the uniformed officers get back, I’ve got some more doors to knock on. Will you be okay if I leave you here for a few minutes to make a couple of calls?”

Being left to fend for herself felt all too familiar. She’d had a lot of practice over the years putting on an equally familiar brave smile. “I’m okay on my own.”

But he was already backing toward the sidewalk at the front end of the alley. “I won’t go too far. Holler if you need me.”

“Don’t scare anybody while you’re out there.” The teasing remark felt much more normal than the memory of friendly conversation and his warm touch still moving through her veins.

“Don’t freeze your nuggets.” He gave it right back with a wink and a grin, flipping open his cell phone as he disappeared around the corner. “Yo. Hey, can you connect me to...”

More certain of her actions as a criminologist than of her reactions to Detective Fensom, Annie stepped back to snap another picture of the blood spatter and snowy handprints on the brick wall.

The camera’s mechanical noises and the pop and snap of the blowing tarps covered the soft staccato of something shuffling around in the back of the alley where it bisected another throughway between buildings. Somewhere in the darkness beyond the T-shaped intersection, a lid got knocked off a trash can and hit the snow-packed pavement. Startled by the noise, her pulse picked up speed as the metal disk spun around and around until it stilled into silence. Only then did she release the breath she’d been holding.

“Wind must have caught it,” she hypothesized on a whisper.

Annie lowered her camera and peered into the black hole at the end of the alley. Several seconds of answering stillness tempered her initial alarm and she relaxed and returned to her work. Backing up, she adjusted her camera to take a wide shot of the handprints on the brick wall. A soft whirring sound brought the image into focus. A click snapped the picture.

Muffled footsteps, crunching over the snow, scurried across the back of the alley. Tensing at the new disturbance, Annie swung her gaze around into the darkness. “Hello?” She wracked her brain to come up with the names of the two officers she’d met earlier, blocking off the alley. “Officer Galbreath?” She couldn’t come up with the second name. “I hope you brought coffee.”

No answer.

No sound besides the wind and tarp, either. She should have been able to breathe easier. But that wary uneasiness wouldn’t leave her.

Because she’d had no luck spotting the unwanted company with her flashlight, Annie raised her camera and snapped a photograph. She glanced down at the small digital screen. Shadowy blobs darker than the middle of the picture lined either side of the alley. Trash cans and power poles most likely.

Probably nothing to worry about.

But there was something else, farther back, its shape distorted by the ruffling tarp, framed in the tee where the two alleys connected. The hair at her nape pricked to attention. She raised her gaze from the camera to the tunnel of shadows leading down to the dim light at the crossroads.

Someone was moving in the other alley.

“Officer Galbreath?” The second name popped into her head. “Foster?”

It made sense for the two officers to take a shortcut coming back from the Shamrock Bar, as cold as it was. No one else would cross the yellow crime scene tape blocking each end of the alley, would they?

No one she wanted to run into, at any rate.

Screw independence.

“Detective Fensom?” She retreated a step toward the sidewalk and called over her shoulder. She wondered if he was still on his phone to his partner. Had he been a rat and gotten inside his Jeep to warm up while he made the call? “Nick?”

Speaking of rats, maybe that’s all this was. Even though she didn’t particularly want to meet a swarm of those either, it would be a plausible explanation for the sounds—rats tunneling beneath trash bags, rifling through Dumpsters and knocking things over.

She almost hoped that she’d step on a rat or some other critter to prove to herself that any threat she felt was only in her imagination. But a rat would still be moving. And the only thing she was hearing now was her own pulse throbbing in her ears.

“Nick?” A shadow darted around the corner and rushed toward her. Way too big to be a rat. “Nick!”

Annie was in full retreat as the figure dressed in black charged. She raised her flashlight, the only weapon she had on hand as the black coat and dark eyes behind a stocking mask took shape. One arm swung her way, but she deflected it. Another arm knocked the flashlight from Annie’s cold fingers. She screamed.

Two big hands locked around her shoulders and threw her against the Dumpster. Ignoring the bruising pain, she shoved backward against her attacker, ramming her elbow into his gut. “Stop fighting,” he muttered on a voiceless rasp.

“Nick!” she screamed.

But the man, much larger, much stronger, palmed the back of her head and shoved her forward. Her forehead connected with immovable steel, splitting open skin, numbing the point of impact. Annie collapsed to her knees as the darkness swirled around her and the snow rushed up to meet her. More scuffling noises buzzed through her foggy senses. The corner of the tarp broke free of its mooring and whipped against her.

And then she was jerked upward by the camera strap looped around her neck.

“No!” The thick strap strangled her and she instinctively scratched at the choking vise. The strap loosened for an instant and she latched on tight, holding on as he yanked her to her feet, trying to pull the camera from her neck.

“You crazy—”

“Hey. Hey!” Another voice was shouting, a man’s voice. There was no mistaking the drum beat of running footsteps now. Or the deep shout of Nick Fensom’s voice. “KCPD!”

All at once, the tension left the camera strap and Annie tumbled backward. She rolled onto her hands and knees and pushed herself up, snatching the swinging camera against her stomach as the dark figure ran toward the back of the alley.

“Stop where you— Damn it, Annie, get down!”

By the time she focused in on Nick’s gun and realized she was in the line of fire, Nick had rushed past her. He charged through the alley like a linebacker chasing down the quarterback and disappeared around the corner into the darkness. Both the attacker and her savior were gone.

Clear thoughts were still trying to work their way into her jumbled brain as Annie untangled the plastic tarp from her legs and staggered to her feet. A man had been hiding in the shadows, waiting to attack. How long had he been watching to make sure she was alone? Who was he? Why her? She was going to have plenty of bruises on her body, along with a crazy headache. She hugged her camera tightly to her chest.

The squeal of car tires spinning to find traction and shouts in the distance diverted her thoughts to a different question. Had Nick Fensom really come to her rescue?

She was leaning against a brick wall, still puzzling out that last observation, when the detective in question came jogging back around the corner. The stocky shadow became a leather jacket and dark hair, blue eyes and stiff-lipped concern as he approached.

He tucked his gun into the back of his jeans as he spoke into the phone at his ear. “Track down those two cops and tell them to get their butts back here now. We’ve got a trespasser on the scene. Fensom out. Annie?” He stuffed the phone into his pocket and closed his hand around her arm. “CSI Hermann?”

“I’m okay.”

But when he pulled her away from the wall and turned her, Annie’s knees wobbled. Nick’s face swirled out of focus and suddenly her feet left the ground. “Easy, slugger. I’ve got you.”

She identified soft cold leather beneath her cheek before she realized that Nick had scooped her up in his arms and was carrying her out of the alley and along the sidewalk toward his silver Jeep. Annie’s focus bounced along with every step, making her dizzy, and she squeezed her eyes shut. But other nerve endings were working just fine. The solid chest didn’t move when she pushed against it. The muscular arms were locked firmly around her shoulders and knees.

“What are you doing? Where are you taking me?” What was happening to her? Nick Fensom couldn’t annoy the hell out of her and then haul her around without some kind of explanation. She slitted her eyes open when the movement stopped. “You know, you’ve never once touched me before tonight, and now this is the second time you’ve gotten personal without my permis—”

Her butt hit the passenger seat of his Jeep as he set her inside. He reached across her lap and pointed to the radio on his dashboard. “Call it in to Dispatch. Lock the doors.”

He hadn’t even acknowledged her protest. Instead, he was pulling his gun again, retreating.

Annie grabbed a fistful of his jacket. “You’re leaving me?”

“You said you were all right on your own.” She’d lied. Yes, she knew how to be self-sufficient. Didn’t mean she liked it. Especially when shadows came to life and attacked her. He laid his gloved hand over hers and gently pried it free. “Sit tight. I’ll be back. I’m going to find out what the hell just happened.”

“Nick—” But the door closed and he darted into the alley again. Falling snow and loneliness swallowed Annie up.

* * *

“WHERE DID GALBREATH AND Foster go?” Nick muttered out loud as he retraced the footprints he’d run past earlier before they disappeared beneath a fluffy layer of snow in the alley. Two sets besides his own went out, but only one came back into the alley. The perp who’d gone after Annie had waited there, by that trash can. Why hadn’t the two uniformed officers gotten back to the scene ASAP? Or called him if they’d been delayed?

Nick stood at the edge of the curb where the north/south alley came out onto the street and looked up and down the block. With his gun still drawn and hanging down at his side, he took note of the green neon shamrock hanging in the bar window across the street a little ways down the block.

His instincts were to go over there and see if the missing officers had decided to ignore his emergency call and have an extra cup of coffee. He didn’t know either man personally, but the only reasons a cop wouldn’t answer a call for backup was because he was a lazy dumbass, he’d been disabled or he was on the take—and Nick wasn’t comfortable with any of those options.

Nick’s breathing quieted, but his suspicions mounted with every passing second. Something about this picture was all wrong. The street was too quiet. The hour might be late, but New Year’s was a holiday that was about staying up all night and partying, especially in a trendy area like this downtown neighborhood. Yet there was not one person on the street besides him. No one waiting for a bus or cab or scraping off a windshield or darting through the shadows.

The man who’d attacked Annie was gone. And the two uniformed cops assigned to the crime scene weren’t coming back.

Nick didn’t like the answer he got from Dispatch when he called in to get the officers’ location. “Relieved of duty? What do you mean they were relieved? By whom?”

“Officer Galbreath said Officer Gobel met them at the Shamrock Bar. Gobel and an Officer Ramirez were taking over the crime scene detail.”

Nick swore. “Then put me through to Gobel and Ramirez.”

A couple of minutes passed before the Dispatch operator came back on the line. Her apology was a bad, bad sign. “I’m sorry, Detective. Apparently, Officer Gobel is out of town on vacation. I have three Ramirezes on the personnel list—do you have a first name for me to contact?”

“No, forget it.” If one cop was a fake, then he was guessing both men were impostors. He’d bet his next paycheck that one of them had come back to attack Annie while the other had waited close by to drive the getaway car. “Wait, do you have a twenty on Galbreath and Foster?”

“Yes, they’re back at Fourth Precinct HQ.”

“Good. Tell them to stay put until I call them.” He had a traumatized CSI waiting for him back in his Jeep. He’d made a promise to his partner that he’d keep an eye on Annie Hermann and the crime scene—that he’d protect the task force and the work they were doing. He’d better turn around and do just that. With one last glance at the empty street, Nick headed back into the alley. “Call in a sketch artist, too. I want them to give me a good description of what this fake Officer Gobel looked like.”

“I’ll let them know. Dispatch out.”

How had the two men gotten access to KCPD uniforms and IDs to look authentic enough to waltz into a cop bar and convince two legitimate officers to head back to HQ? How did they find out about the crime scene in the first place? Or were they after Annie? And why?

Nick wasn’t going to find his answers here. His best bet was to get a description from the real officers and then run a facial recognition check through criminal databases and hope to get a hit on some real names. All that would take time. But right now, he needed to get back to Annie.

Decision made, Nick traded his gun for a flashlight and headed south toward the east/west alley. Because his gut was telling him he wasn’t catching the perp in the black parka and ski mask tonight, he let his thoughts stray from the doorways and trash bins where he automatically checked for anyone hiding there. What was it about men in black parkas? First, Jordan Garza had put his paws all over his baby sister, and now one had assaulted Annie. Or maybe it was the New Year that had brought out all the creepies and tilted Nick’s world on its edge.

And what was the deal with Annie Hermann tonight anyway? Had he come to the crime scene with his concentration and emotions so out of whack over finding Nell making out with a gangbanger that he wasn’t thinking straight? His concerns for his family had distracted him from the role he needed to play here. KCPD detective. Task force member. Protector. Period.

The Annie he knew had always been big mouth and attitude, not shy glances and vulnerability. She was Ivy League education and absentminded professor to his working-class street smarts and willingness to take point on the front line of the action. He teased her the way he teased his sisters. He respected her skills, got frustrated with her stubbornness and argued her out-of-left-field ideas. So there was no call for noticing how perfectly her small, dexterous hands had fit between his, or how her plain brown eyes turned a deep, soulful amber when she tilted them up at him and questioned why he was so eager to touch her tonight.

Man, he should be asking himself that same question. He needed a stiff drink or a good lay or a smack on the back of the head to get this ill-timed and inappropriate awareness of the woman—of the fact Annie Hermann was a woman and not some girl playing with her chemistry set—out of his head.

Nick turned the corner and collided with the distraction herself.

“Did you find Galbreath and the other officer?” She was sharp elbows and flashing eyes and tripping over one of his feet.

“Damn it, Hermann, I told you to stay in the car.” He caught her by the arms to steady her and quickly release her, but she’d already latched on to the sleeve of his coat, denying him the clear-thinking distance he needed.

“It’s been ten minutes.”

“You’re timing me?”

“I didn’t know if something had happened to you.” Her other hand was clutching the front of his coat now. “I didn’t want to be alone. Even being with you is better than being alone right now.”

“What you don’t do for my ego.” Casting aside the humbling revelation, Nick freed the leather from her death grip to turn her back toward the Jeep. “Come on. I don’t think our perp’s coming back. Neither are Galbreath and Foster.”

He raised her fingers up to the illumination from his flashlight. She’d peeled off those sterile plastic gloves and replaced them with royal blue knit ones. But there was still blood on the fingers.

Her blood?

Nick swung the light up to her face, ignoring her squint as he brushed that wonderfully curly, dark brown hair off her forehead.

“What are you doing?” she protested, batting his hand away. “What happened to Galbreath and Foster? Are they okay?”

Nick pushed back the edge of her blue stocking cap and cursed at the weeping gash at her temple. Way to take care of people, Fensom. The thickness of the wool and Annie’s hair had probably saved her life. Answering the 9-1-1 pouring through his system, Nick mentally shifted gears. He hugged his arm around Annie’s shoulders and hurried her through the alley. “That needs stitches. I have to get you to the E.R.”

“But the officers—”

“Are gone. Some bogus cop calling himself Gobel met them at the Shamrock and sent them back to HQ.”

“Fake cops?”

Nick nodded. “I’m guessing one of them attacked you.”

“Why?”

“How the hell would I know? They didn’t wait around to chat.”

“And I never got a good look at him. All I saw were brown eyes. And he only spoke in a whisper. Nothing I could make out...” She kept pace with him for several yards. He gripped her arm tighter when they had to step over the flailing corner of a fallen tarp. When they reached the Dumpster where she’d found the victim’s purse, Annie stumbled. She swayed back a step. And then she stopped.

She’d lost too much blood. She was passing out.

Halting in his tracks, Nick quickly unzipped his coat and shucked out of it. He draped it around her slender shoulders to add some warmth and stave off shock. But like his sister earlier that night, she shrugged it off. “Of all the stubborn...”

He saw the focus of her eyes and understood it wasn’t stubbornness or bravado as much as something else had caught her attention. She lurched forward and Nick grabbed her arm to support her. She touched the pink, slushy smear on the brick wall where the blood had been. “He wiped away the handprints.” She brought her glove back to her nose and made a face. Even Nick could smell the bleach from where he stood. “He’s contaminated everything—cut the anchor ropes on the tarp. Snow’s getting into...” She pulled away and dived into the pile of trash. “Oh, no.” She tossed aside one bag, then two. “No, no, no, no.”

“Annie.” Nick slung his jacket around her again, looping his arm about her waist and lifting her away from the mess she was making. “We need to go. You’re not thinking straight. We need to get you to the hospital.”

“No.” She spun in his grasp, fisted her fingers in the front of his sweater. “My kit is gone. He took my spare kit.” She blinked away the snowflakes and blood from her upturned eyes. “Along with the evidence I’d gathered inside it.”