look through old files now?” he asked, driven by the need to find out just who this guy was. The sooner they had a suspect, the sooner they could slap cuffs on him and drag him into custody. “We can also review the known assailants of women who you’ve recently taken to the shelter, see if anyone looks at all familiar.”
She hesitated, then shrugged. “Sure. Why not? I probably won’t get much sleep anyway.”
He caught a glimpse of the open scratches on her hand. “Wait a minute. What did those come from?”
She glanced down at her hand and smirked. “I managed to catch him in the mouth with my fist. Too bad—I was aiming for his nose.”
Griff almost smiled at her wry sense of humor. Jenna was tough; he knew that better than anyone. But it still bothered him to see her get hurt. “That settles it. We need to go to the hospital, see if there’s any DNA evidence we can use.”
She nodded, adjusting the frozen peas against her jaw. “You’re right. It’s worth a shot.”
“Wrap your hand in a brown paper bag to preserve the evidence, and I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he said, glad to take some sort of action. He was determined to find this jerk, no matter what it took.
“Okay, okay, give me a sec.” She turned and set down the peas to rifle through a junk drawer, finally coming up with a badly wrinkled brown lunch bag and a roll of tape. She stuck her hand inside the bag and awkwardly wrapped the tape around her wrist to hold the bag in place. Then she grabbed her makeshift ice pack with her free hand. “Okay, I’m ready.”
He nodded and stepped to the side so she could precede him out of the kitchen. He followed her to the front door, where she stopped abruptly.
“Hang on a sec,” she said, removing the frozen peas from her jaw to reach out for the light switch. She flipped one lever on and off several times, then pushed past him to head outside.
“What’s wrong?” he asked when she craned her neck in an attempt to see something overhead.
“I need to see inside the light fixture.” She glanced back at him. “Aim the screen of your phone up there.”
He did as she asked, as understanding dawned. “Something wrong with the light?”
“I noticed my porch light was out when I drove up,” she confessed. “Looks as if someone removed the lightbulb.”
It took a minute for her statement to sink into his brain. “You mean on purpose?”
She nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess you were right. This obviously wasn’t a random event. This was a premeditated, personal attack.”
The hint of fear in her blue eyes stabbed deep. This was one time he wished his instincts hadn’t been right.
Maybe they’d catch a break with the DNA, but he wasn’t banking on it. The real problem would be trying to find a way to keep Jenna safe while she continued to do her job as a SWAT team member.
An impossible task, at best.
“Wait a minute. What’s that?” Jenna asked with a frown. She bent down next to the porch, tucking the peas under her arm so she could lift something out of the dirt. She stood and held up what looked to be a shiny bracelet.
“Is that yours?” he asked, when she simply stared at it with a troubled expression in her eyes.
“Shine your phone on it,” she said in a hoarse tone.
He did as she asked. She peered at the item of jewelry. From what he could tell, it was a silver chain with a small heart-shaped charm dangling from it.
“That’s odd,” Jenna muttered.
A warning tingle skated down his spine. “What’s odd?”
“This looks like mine, but it’s not.”
“Well, maybe it belongs to a neighbor?” Griff wasn’t sure why she was so unnerved about a piece of jewelry. “Some kids might have been running around the neighborhood and accidentally dropped it.”
“No, you don’t understand. The letter C is engraved on the heart, see?” She lifted her head to look at him. “I have the exact same bracelet with the letter J engraved on the heart-shaped charm. It was a gift from my mother.”
The warning tingle became a full-fledged wave of apprehension. He couldn’t help turning and sweeping a cautious gaze around her front yard, searching for anything else out of the ordinary.
After being a cop for the past ten years, he didn’t much believe in coincidences.
His instincts were screaming at him that this bracelet was somehow connected to the mysterious attack on Jenna.
As Griff drove to the hospital, Jenna stared at the bracelet that he’d tucked into a clear plastic bag. Weird that it was identical to hers in every way, except for the engraved initial.
Offhand, she couldn’t think of anyone who lived nearby whose first name started with a C.
There was no reason to believe the bracelet was an indication of something sinister. It didn’t look especially unique or rare. There were likely dozens sold every month. Every year. But she couldn’t seem to shake off the prickle of warning that danced along her nape.
Was the attack connected to it? And if so, how? Why?
There were no answers, so she tucked the bracelet into the front pocket of her jeans and tried to shake off the remnants of the attack. Glancing at Griff, she tried to think of something to say. Idle chitchat wasn’t something that came naturally to her.
And apparently not to Griff, either, as he made no attempt to break the strained silence stretching endlessly between them. Everything seemed way more awkward than normal because he was her boss.
She forced herself to look away from his ruggedly attractive features and tried to think back over her most recent cases. There were literally dozens of them, but most of the criminals they’d apprehended were small-time crooks. For several long seconds, she’d assumed the attacker was her father, since he’d just been released from prison and was out on parole. But the guy who’d grabbed her was much larger than her father. She had the sense he was younger, too, although that was just a fleeting impression.
No, the attack had to be related to her work, either on the SWAT team or through the shelter. In the past month she’d helped Shelia and Janet get away from their exes by driving them personally to Ruth’s shelter. There was one major drug ring that she’d assisted her colleague Nate Freemont with right before Christmas. Was it possible this attack was related to that in some way?
She glanced over at Griff’s chiseled profile, wondering if she dared broach the possibility. Griff hadn’t been very happy with her—or with Nate, for that matter—because they hadn’t come to him at the first sign of trouble. Nate, in particular, had gone off on his own, determined to protect an innocent woman and her daughter. Because she’d agreed to help Nate and Melissa get the evidence they needed to expose a murderer, Griff had
