LITMIR.BIZ

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to this investigation. She grabbed her boots from beneath the coatrack beside the front door and pulled them on over her jeans.

      With a renewed sense of urgency that drove away any lingering mope to her attitude, Annie snatched a pen from the pocket of her coat and jotted down the particulars with one hand while she zipped up her boots with the other. “What hospital did they take her to? I’ve got a spare kit in my car. I can leave right now and process her.”

      The ominous crackle of wind stilled her frantic multitasking. “We’re taking her to the morgue, Annie.”

      Her phone tumbled from between her jaw and shoulder. She caught it and set it firmly against her ear. “He’s a rapist, not a killer. We determined his last victim had been killed by a jealous boyfriend, not our unsub. Are you sure it’s the same guy?”

      “The rose I’m looking at says yes.”

      Annie scooted the cats aside and sank down into her chair. She wasn’t sure if she was feeling shock or sorrow or frustration that after three different attacks, they were no closer to being able to identify the rapist than they’d been eight months ago. They’d figured out what type of woman he preyed on. They knew the neighborhood where the Rose Red Rapist chose those women. They knew he abducted them from one location and assaulted them in another, and that he sterilized the victims afterward to remove any trace of DNA. But thus far, the man himself had proved untraceable. “It’s bad enough that he’s hurting those women, but now he’s killing them?”

      “Looks that way.” She heard the slam of a car door and the windy static on the line suddenly cleared. She didn’t have to be a scientist to deduce that the detective had gotten inside his vehicle. “I’m calling all the task force members who are still in town for the holidays. Can you come?”

      “Of course.” Annie was on her feet again, crossing to the kitchen and tossing everything back into her purse. Work was one place where the loneliness didn’t get to her—probably because her science demanded facts, not intuition. Plus, most of the cold, hard truths she dealt with required her to be able to turn off her emotions, whether they stemmed from her lack of a personal life or her empathy for the victims she processed. “I’ll be right there.”

      “I’m leaving a couple of uniformed officers here with a tarp,” Detective Montgomery went on. “I’m going to follow the body to the morgue to see if I can get a preliminary report from the M.E.’s office.”

      Annie hooked the flap of her bag shut and carried it to the coatrack beside her door. The giggles and smooches from the couple on the landing had faded to inconsequential white noise. Her focus now was solely on the task at hand. “Have the M.E. check for trace as soon as possible and send it upstairs to my office at the lab. The cold air should preserve anything that’s on the victim, but once she gets inside and the snow on her starts to melt, the water could wash away or compromise anything useful.”

      “Will do. I’ll send Nick over to the crime scene with you until I can get back.”

      “Nick?” The scarf she was wrapping around her neck suddenly strangled like a vise. She hoped her mental groan hadn’t been audible. “Nick Fensom?”

      Detective Montgomery’s partner and fellow task force member, Nick Fensom, was the sour to Annie’s sweet, the oil to her water, the four-wheel-drive Jeep in her energy-efficient green car of a world. Nick Fensom got under her skin like no other man since Adam had—and not necessarily in a good way.

      He thought he was funny. He teased, he taunted, he spoke his mind the way most people breathed air—without thinking. And even after working with him on the task force for several months now, Annie still had no clue how to tell when the man was being serious and when he was making a joke. Either way, for some reason, it usually felt like the laugh was on her.

      She knew his dark brown hair, deep blue eyes and what was probably supposed to be streetwise charm captivated some women. But she didn’t see it. He was probably compensating for his relatively short height—maybe five-nine if he was lucky. Okay, so she had no room to fault him there; he still towered over her petite height.

      But Annie felt no empathy. She clung to whatever predictability and balance she could hold on to in her life, or else she’d sink into those lost little funks like the one she’d been in at the stroke of midnight. She didn’t understand Nick Fensom. She had to be on guard against the chaos he brought to her world. And that made him more of a distraction than a teammate, even if they did both work for KCPD and the task force.

      “Is there a problem, Annie?” Detective Montgomery reminded her that she’d been silent for too long.

      “Um, no.” Not nearly as snappy a comeback as Nick Fensom would have come up with. She could do better. She would not let the man get to her, especially when he wasn’t even here. “I can manage the scene by myself, sir. You don’t need to bother anyone else from the task force. I’m sure Detective Fensom is out on a date tonight.”

      “He won’t be,” her commander assured her, much to Annie’s chagrin. “Holidays mean family for Nick. Besides, I need as many good eyes here as possible. The snow is coming down harder, and my crime scene is disappearing as we speak.”

      Fine. For the investigation, for Detective Montgomery and the sake of tonight’s unfortunate victim, she’d find a way to make spending time with the irritating, muscles-for-brains detective work.

      Bracing herself for the battle of wits and wills where she never quite felt like she was winning, Annie plucked the royal blue stocking cap from her coat pocket and pulled it on over her head. “I’m on my way. I’ll meet Detective Fensom there.”

      Annie had hung up the phone and bundled up in everything but her gloves when the couple in the hallway crashed against her door again. Clearly they were drunk and having a marvelous time getting intimately acquainted. But she had a crime scene to get to. She held her breath and turned the knob, praying she wouldn’t see anything too intimate.

      As soon as she peeked out, music and conversation blasted her from the open apartment across the landing. Annie shook her head and stepped out, locking her door behind her. “What are you doing, Roy?”

      Yes, there were some buttons undone, and the blonde woman’s long straight hair was definitely mussed. But her neighbor, Roy Carvello, and his girlfriend du jour had already imbibed too much alcohol to have much success with any personal fireworks tonight.

      “Annie!” Roy draped one arm around the blonde and pushed himself upright against the wall with the other. “Happy New Year!”

      He slurred the words and stumbled forward, bringing the tall blonde with him. Annie braced one foot behind her and caught him by the shoulders, pushing them both back against the wall. “Easy there, big guy. I don’t want either of you tumbling down the stairs.”

      “You’re so nice.” Roy’s stale beer breath curled the hairs in Annie’s nose. He clamped a big hand around her arm and hugged the other woman closer. “S’isn’t she nice, Bets-shy?”

      Extricating herself from the awkward embrace, Annie smiled up at the drunken couple. “I don’t want to see you behind the wheel of a car tonight, okay?” She included the taller blonde in the friendly warning. “You either, Betsy.”

      “Un-uh,” the blonde promised, crossing her finger over the swell of a voluptuous breast.

      “’Kay. Happy New Year.” Repeating himself, Roy leaned down and planted a stale kiss on Annie’s mouth.

      Startled, Annie pushed him firmly away. “Oh, gee. You’ve still got some of those left to go around, hmm?”

      “Hey,” Betsy protested. “I thought those lips were for me.”

      “They are, baby.” When he turned to capture the other woman’s pouty mouth in a kiss, Annie used the directional momentum to guide them back across the landing. But her husky neighbor planted his feet in the open doorway, showing an unexpected bit of focus in his bleary eyes when he looked down at her. “Annie’s my friend. My good friend.”

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