LITMIR.BIZ

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was deep enough to need stitches. “I don’t suppose your chivalry extends to carrying a handkerchief, does it?”

      He smirked, reaching behind him to pull a palmful of folded white cotton from the rear pocket of his jeans. Gabe shook it open and pressed it against the wound with a wince. “You’re welcome.”

      “For what?” Olivia took over rolling up the handkerchief and wrapping it around his forearm. “I’m going to have bruises on my tailbone and elbows, thanks to you.”

      “Me?” he scoffed. “That guy attacked you. He had a gun. You didn’t have any backup.”

      “I didn’t need any backup.” She’d been half joking when she’d asked for the hanky. The old-fashioned habit of carrying one reminded Olivia of her Grandpa Seamus, touching a mushy place inside her...for about two seconds. Gabriel Knight was certainly no sweet, old grandfather. With a determined shrug of her shoulders, Olivia denied any softening in the animosity she felt toward this man and pulled the knot tight, drawing the skin on either side of the cut together and stemming the ooze of blood. “He was running, not fighting. I had him.”

      “You were on the floor.”

      Unlike her vocal brothers, a tightening of his lips was the only complaint Gabe made about her nursing technique. As soon as he started to lower his arm, Olivia pushed it back up. “I had the vantage point to retrieve my weapon. But you got in the way and I couldn’t use my gun. Now a potential killer, or a possible witness, at the very least, is on the loose and we’ve got no way to track him.”

      “That was no innocent bystander.” Gabe curled his fingers into a claw in front of her face. “My hand was on the knife with his. I’ve got his DNA under my nails.”

      Olivia released him and backed away a step. “Is that why you jumped into a situation I had under control? Just so you could swipe some DNA from a suspect?”

      “Call a CSI and find out if he’s in the system. At the very least, I can give a description. White male. Late twenties, early thirties. About five-nine, wiry build, receding hairline.” The intensity around those cobalt eyes relaxed and he grinned at her dubious glare. “I’m a professional observer. I’ve got an excellent eye for detail.”

      The leather of her jacket creaked as she crossed her arms in front of her. He thought he’d one-upped her? Solving crimes was her job, not his. And she was damn good at it. “Yeah, well did your eye for detail notice the perp didn’t have any blood on him until you got cut? Bashing in somebody’s head creates a lot of spatter. If he killed Ron Kober upstairs, then he changed his clothes and stashed them somewhere. That’s probably why he was opening and closing doors.” Olivia’s gaze dropped to the buttons on Gabriel Knight’s shirt as her thoughts took a left turn into facts that made less sense. “Why club the victim over the head when he already had two weapons on him?”

      Although it had been a rhetorical question, Mr. Thought-he-knew-better-than-she-did answered, “Weap-on of opportunity? Were there signs of a struggle up there?”

      More like signs of a good clean-up job. Not exactly the kind of painstaking task she’d associate with their panicked, high-speed attacker. Olivia pulled her phone from her pocket. “I’m calling Detective Kincaid to give him a description of the intruder, and let him know to search the building and vehicles in the area for soiled clothes.”

      Fully in detective mode now, Olivia glanced around the alley, poking inside trash bags and around a stack of discarded office furniture while she reported the incident to Sawyer Kincaid. Once she hung up, she went to the nearby Dumpster to look inside. But Gabriel Knight had eavesdropped on every word; his eyes had watched every move. Now he came up beside her, lifting the lid from her hand and holding it open while she searched.

      “This is a police investigation, Mr. Knight. Your services are not needed, nor are they welcome.” She pointed to the stain on his coat. “You’d better go have a doctor look at that.”

      “If solving Kober’s murder leads me to solving Danielle’s, I’m not going anywhere.”

      A drop of blood fell from the crimson moisture soaking his sleeve into the stinky remnants of office lunches and cleaning supplies. Groaning in resignation, she palmed his shoulder and pushed him back, catching the lid and closing it.

      “You’re contaminating another potential crime scene.” She moved between him and the Dumpster, forcing him to retreat one more step. “Along with any DNA you might have picked up from your attacker.”

      “Your attacker, too.”

      Shaking her head, Olivia pulled her radio off her belt and made another call to Sawyer Kincaid and the other officers in and around the building. “This is Detective Watson. I was searching the trash in the alley behind the building. But I’ve got an injured civilian in need of medical attention I have to see to. I’ll leave the gun the perp dropped with one of the CSI’s out front, but you’ll have to get somebody else to comb the area back here.” She shivered beneath the unblinking intensity of Mr. Knight’s piercing blue eyes. Didn’t the man have business of his own to tend to besides insinuating himself into hers? “By the way, your eye for detail missed the jimmy marks on the door. That’s why he had the knife, and most likely how he got inside. Still can’t explain the gun, though. What I saw upstairs was a crime of passion, of opportunity. Why get your hands dirty when you can kill someone from a distance?” That probing gaze never wavered from her face, even when she drifted into her thoughts and back again. “What, you’ve got nothing to say for once?”

      “You’re not getting rid of me, Olivia.” He leaned in, refusing to back down. “Either I’m part of this investigation, or I’m a long, tall shadow dogging your every move.”

      Feeling the chill of his real shadow falling over her upturned face, a proximity alert went off inside her. An unexpected urge tingled through the tips of her fingers. Shaking her head, Olivia stepped to the side before she forgot she was a cop and did something stupid like slap that arrogant taunt off his face...or touch his chest to see if his heart was thumping as wildly against his rib cage as hers suddenly was.

      Every self-preserving instinct she had warned her to leave Gabriel Knight and those annoying shivers he triggered right here in the alley. But Olivia had a badge and responsibilities and a hardwired sense of right and wrong she had to answer to that made her feel obligated to drive him to the ER to get his wound stitched up. “Come on. My car’s out front. Keep it elevated.” She took his elbow and pushed his injured forearm up and helped him hold it above the tempting location of his heart. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”

       Chapter Three

      Olivia sat on a metal stool outside the curtain of one of the ER bays at the Truman Medical Center and texted a preliminary report about the events that had transpired in the stairwell and back alley of Ron Kober’s office building to her work email while the facts were still clear in her head. Although her shift was officially over, the long hours had become a habit. She’d be in before roll call meeting in the morning, too, to type her notes into a formal report for the case file.

      Annoying reporter trespassed on crime scene and interfered with officer in pursuit of suspect. Recommend citing him for being a PITA.

      She listened in on the more professional exchange of medical information from the other side of the curtain.

      “That should do it, Mr. Knight,” the lady doctor who’d introduced herself as Emilia Rodriguez-Grant intoned in a soft but succinct voice. Olivia breathed in, waiting for the words of dismissal that would signify an end to this obligation to the man who’d gotten hurt while in her custody. She heard the clank of a medical instrument being set onto a metal tray as Dr. Rodriguez-Grant continued. “Try not to get it wet for twenty-four hours. It’ll leave a scar, but the stitches will keep the mark thin and less noticeable—and certainly reduce your chances of the wound becoming infected.”

      “Thanks, Doctor,” Gabe’s

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