LITMIR.BIZ

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face was obscured by a brightly colored hat and muff combo, but she could see his eyes, which were hard, hazel chips gleaming with deadly sanity. He licked his lips. “You’re a blonde. My favorite.”

      “Get your hands up,” she ordered. “Hands up and face the wall!”

      She was too slow, or he was too fast—in the moment it took her to level her weapon, he lunged and swung something glittering and metallic at her head. She ducked and the blow glanced off her shoulder. Her arm went instantly numb. She fell to the side and her gun clattered to the pavement.

      The gun, she had to get the gun! She saw it under the trash bin and lunged for it just as her attacker swung again. She dodged to the side, felt road muck soak through her pants and kicked out at his ankle.

      Too little, too late. He scooped up the gun, stood, turned to her—

      And his eyes went beyond her, to the alleyway opening. He saluted her with her own gun, and said, “I’ll be seeing you soon, beautiful.” And he turned and ran.

      “Cassie!” Varitek pounded up to her, grabbed her arms and dragged her to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

      “Let go of me!” She tried to shake him off but he wouldn’t shake, so she kicked at him. “He’s getting away!”

      But Varitek was as immovable as granite. He held onto her with one hand and waved as two panting uniformed officers ran past. “He went out the back. About five-ten, male, jeans and a dark jacket. Red hat.”

      As the officers bolted past, Cassie recognized the men who’d been watching the rear exit when she’d entered the crime-scene building. But where the hell had they been when red hat was messing with her truck?

      When Varitek’s grip on her arm slackened, she yanked away. Then she got in his face and poked him in the chest. “Why didn’t you chase him? I was fine!”

      At the moment her brain reported the feel of his rock-hard chest beneath her fingertip, he seemed to grow bigger, looming over her, dark brows furrowed, light green eyes nearly shooting sparks. “You were not fine! The bastard knocked you down and roughed you up. And where the hell’s your gun?” When she didn’t answer, he cursed. “He got it. Great. Nothing like paperwork to round out the night, never mind the idea of arming another criminal.”

      She refused to back away, refused to back down even when the angry heat radiating from his body snuck through the chilled layers of shock and set up a vibration in her core. She held onto her anger when a sneaky little voice tried to tell her that he was right, maybe she should’ve waited for backup.

      “What’s your problem?” she snapped. “I’m a cop just like you. Hell, I’ve probably got more street time logged in the past few years and I can bloody well handle myself. Don’t you get it? I’m not your problem!”

      In a flash, he grabbed her by the front of her jacket and lifted her clean off her feet to press her against the rough wall of a nearby apartment building. Her heart jammed into her throat at the physical shock of his strength and his nearness.

      She started to struggle, to curse him, to knee him where it hurt if that was what it took, but the look in his eyes stopped her. There was no rage, no irritation, not even a hint of the heat she’d seen moments before.

      There was nothing. Complete, utter blankness.

      “Have you ever seen a dead woman in an alley covered with her own blood?” he asked, and his voice sounded as though it was being ripped out of him. “Have you ever gotten there just in time to hear her last words, her last breath?” There was something in his eyes, something bleak that tore at Cassie even as fear quivered in her chest. She started to answer, but he cut her off with a shake. “I have,” he choked out. “I know how it feels, damn it! I…”

      He broke off and abruptly released his hold on her jacket, dropping her to the ground. He stood there, looking down at her for a moment, and the pain was gone from his eyes, leaving only a cool, pale green stare.

      “Varitek?” she said, her brain grappling with what had just happened. When he didn’t respond, she drew breath to demand an explanation, a response, anything, but before she could speak, a siren’s whoop drew their attention and a BCCPD four-wheel drive vehicle nosed into the narrow street.

      Chief Parry emerged. “You two okay?” he asked, eyes cutting between them with piercing intensity.

      “We’re good,” Varitek answered in his trademark deep voice, showing no evidence of what had just happened between them. “Did you get the guy?”

      “No,” Parry replied, disgust written plain on his weathered features. “Damn it all. He dumped the hat and the jacket and blended.”

      “I’ll want the clothing,” Varitek said, not even bothering to glance at Cassie. “It’ll give us DNA at the very least. You never know. Punk like that might pop up in one of the databanks.”

      Feeling excluded and angry, Cassie stepped forward. “What did he do to my truck?”

      The men stared at her, reminding her that she’d been the only one to see the dark figure crouched down by her tire. She quickly sketched in the events leading up to the chase.

      The more she talked, the harder Varitek scowled. He shot a glance at the chief, who nodded and said, “I’ll get the bomb squad boys on it.”

      A quick shiver of fear reminded Cassie that they had never actually connected Bradford Croft to the bombings during the kidnapping case. Though he’d checked into a few Web reference sites on explosives, he had no formal training, and their bomb expert, Sawyer, had deemed two of the devices fairly sophisticated.

      “You two coming?” the chief called, indicating his vehicle.

      Varitek nodded for Cassie to precede him, but once ahead, she turned to face him, stalling them out of Parry’s earshot. “What the hell happened back there?”

      He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, just growled, “Nothing you need to know about. It won’t happen again.” Then he brushed past her, climbed into the SUV and yanked the door shut with a final slam that sounded gunshot-loud.

      Conversation closed.

      CASSIE’S QUESTION reverberated in Seth’s head an hour later as Chief Parry stood at the front of a BCCPD conference room and walked through a summary of the Canyon kidnappings.

      What the hell had happened back there?

      A flashback, maybe, or a memory. He didn’t know. Whatever it was, he’d suddenly been back in a different, darker alley while a brown-haired woman bled out in his arms. Her eyes had focused on his face just before she died.

      The thought of it, the guilt and the rage of it, closed a fist around his heart.

      “The evidence showed that Bradford Croft killed his mother,” Chief Parry said, drawing Seth’s attention out of the past, to the current case, which refused to behave cleanly. The chief said, “And he admitted his guilt of the kidnappings to Officer Wyatt. However, he died of his injuries before we were able to clear up a number of discrepancies, including his original alibis, which collapsed under scrutiny, and whether the skeleton found at the scene of the first explosion was tied to the case.”

      “Which makes all this pretty darned speculative,” Tracy Mendoza interrupted, then tacked on a belated, “Sir.” When the chief nodded for her to continue, the homicide detective said, “The missing finger seems to connect the older skeleton with today’s murder, but our only evidence tying the skeleton to the kidnappings is location. It could be a coincidence.”

      The chief nodded. “That’s possible, but we’re not ruling out anything until the evidence tells us to. Until that time, we’ll remain open to the possibility that the older skeleton is connected to today’s body and both are related to the Canyon kidnappings.” Parry’s eyes hardened to flint. “There’s a murderer on the loose in Bear Claw. Let’s get him.”

      He

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