LITMIR.BIZ

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tugged on his gun belt. “This isn’t Chicago. We don’t have the manpower to waste on an ambulance run.”

      Jarek held on to his temper. “I don’t see a shortage of manpower here. I want an officer with the victim at the hospital.”

      She needed police protection. Jarek frowned. Unless she needed protection from the police.

      He did a rapid mental review of his department. Who could he trust? Who the hell did he know, really?

      “Call Larsen in,” he ordered. “Tell him to make sure that they do a rape kit in the E.R. And I want all nonessential personnel cleared off this scene. Have you called the state police yet for crime lab support?”

      Sweet scowled. “We work with the county.”

      “Not on a possible homicide,” Jarek pronounced. “Call. Johnson and White, I want you to move all vehicles out of here. See my car? I don’t want anything parked closer than that. And recordon the crime scene, divert traffic to—what’s the nearest parallel road?”

      “Green’s just west of here,” Clark volunteered.

      Jarek turned back to the rookie patrolman. “Right. Green it is. You found the victim?”

      “Yes, sir. I—” The young officer swallowed hard. “She didn’t want to talk. I tried to get a description of her assailant, but… Anyway, I finally just wrapped her in a blanket and left her alone.”

      A compassionate action that had effectively wiped any trace of the son of the bitch who attacked her from her skin. Hell.

      “All right,” Jarek said. “Did she give you her name?”

      “No, sir.”

      “How about her purse? Do we have an ID?”

      “Her wallet’s missing. I ran the plates,” Bud Sweet said. “Car’s registered to a Mr. and Mrs. Richard Logan of Evanston. So the car could be stolen.”

      “Or she could be their daughter,” Jarek said grimly. “Find out. And find out what she was doing up here.”

      “She was a student at Bloomington,” Tess said from behind him, her voice flat. “Taking a break from exams.”

      His gut tightened like a fist. He turned. Tess had moved to this side of the crime tape, but he couldn’t object to her presence now. He wanted to protect her from the ugliness of the scene. He needed to protect his department from the force of her determination, from those wide golden eyes that saw too much. But this wasn’t Chicago, where he could canvass half-a-dozen surrounding buildings for witnesses. If Tess knew something, he had to talk to her.

      “You know the victim?”

      Tess’s slightly crooked teeth caught her lower lip. “Her name is Logan? Carolyn Logan?”

      “I don’t have a first name. Can you describe her?”

      “Oh…” Tess frowned in concentration. “Medium height, nineteen years old. Blond, shoulder-length hair. Her eyes were blue. Or maybe gray?” She shook her head. “Light, anyway.”

      Okay, so her being a reporter wasn’t a total loss, Jarek thought. It was a good description. And, for good or bad, it fit the battered girl in the ambulance.

      “How do you know her?”

      “I don’t know her,” Tess corrected him. “I met her last night.”

      “Tell me.”

      She fidgeted with her purse strap again. “My story for yours?”

      His jaw set. He didn’t make deals. But he knew how to get what he wanted from an interview. “It could work that way.”

      She snorted. “Oh, now, that’s something I can stop the presses for.”

      She wasn’t as tough as she made herself out to be. He waited.

      “Oh, all right,” she said crossly. “What do you want from me?”

      Too much. He shoved the thought away.

      “I want you to wait for me over there,” he said quietly, “while I finish talking with the investigating team. And then I’d like it if you’d go with me to the station house so I can take your statement.”

      “You can’t take it here?”

      He could, of course. But he wanted her away from the crime scene. A vicious sexual assault might be news in sleepy Eden. But to a town that depended on tourism, it could also be a public relations disaster. And to the new police chief, the attack at the beginning of his watch was a personal and professional spit-in-the-eye.

      Especially if his own department was implicated.

      He met her gaze steadily. “No point in being uncomfortable. You want to give the station house coffee a shot?”

      The memory of her words trembled between them. Offering you coffee is what got me into trouble in the first place.

      Tess hugged her arms across her waist. Lifted her chin. “Maybe I’ll let you buy me a drink instead.”

      “It’s a little early for that.”

      “Why don’t we see how long this takes? I’ll just get my butt back on the other side of your police tape until you’re ready for me.”

      Jarek watched as she walked away and bent back under the yellow crime scene tape. Her butt. Yes.

      Sweet coughed. “Looks like you’ve got yourself a hot one, Chief.”

      Jarek stiffened. “Excuse me?”

      “Hot lead,” the lieutenant said. “If DeLucca really knows anything worthwhile, that is.”

      Sweet was a jackass. Tess was a complication. And Jarek had never felt more like an outsider in his life.

      “We won’t know that until I take her statement,” he said calmly, and turned back to the scene of the crime.

      Chapter 4

      Tess slid into the dark booth at the back of the Blue Moon and pushed a coffee mug toward Jarek Denko. Her own stomach cramped with hunger and nerves. She should never have skipped breakfast.

      “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” she said.

      The creases deepened on either side of his hard mouth. “Over coffee?”

      “In bars.”

      Denko looked around at the empty tables. Sunlight slanted through the shutters, gleaming on the bottles, dimming the neon beer signs along the walls. “I didn’t know this place even opened at ten.”

      “Depends on who you know,” Tess said smugly.

      He blew on his coffee before sipping it. Cautious, she thought.

      “And you know everybody,” he said.

      “Pretty much.”

      “Convenient,” he remarked.

      She shrugged. “As long as you don’t mind everybody thinking that they know you.”

      “Is that a problem for you?”

      Tess wondered if the gloomy booth was dark enough to hide her wince. She flashed him a smile, in case it wasn’t. “It’s a problem for anyone growing up in a small town.”

      “Don’t tell me that,” he complained mildly. “I just moved here.”

      “I think you’ll be okay. You look pretty grown-up to me.”

      Grown-up. Yes. Hard and assured and competent. Tess had enjoyed watching him take command away from Bud Sweet, admired his immediate concern for poor Carolyn Logan.

      Jarek set down his mug. “Honey, I’m past the age of worrying

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