popcorn, and the other staring daggers at her as though she’d been the one to light those firecrackers outside. Some party.
“No, sir. I’m...enjoying a quiet evening at home.” She shooed G.B. away from the free food and stooped down to toss the kernels back into the bowl. “Did you need something?”
“Yeah, a favor.”
Annie checked the big-faced watch on her wrist. At 12:03 a.m. on New Year’s Day?
That spark of anticipation fired through her blood again with a sense of purpose this time, chasing away her nerves. Something bad had happened. Something that made her regret her little pity party. The only favors a senior detective would ask of her would involve her science and someone else’s tragedy.
Annie left the popcorn where it had fallen and hurried back to her messenger-style purse on the counter to retrieve her case notebook. She flipped open the pink paisley flap and dug through the catch-all of contents, seeking an elusive pen. “What is it, sir?”
“I know most of the crime lab has the holiday off, but I have a crime scene I need processed ASAP—before the weather gets any worse and destroys what little evidence we might find.”
Annie’s purse was upside down, the contents tumbling across the quartz countertop when the import of what he was asking registered. “There’s been another rape?”
Detective Spencer Montgomery led a group of investigators, public-safety specialists, criminal profilers and uniformed officers in a task force dedicated to solving a string of violent abductions and sexual assaults that had been terrorizing the professional women of Kansas City for several months now. Priority one for the team was to identify and apprehend the unknown subject, or unsub.
“Yes,” Spencer Montgomery answered. “Partygoers taking a shortcut through the alley over by the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop found her in the snow.” The wind created static over the connection, giving her a better picture of how the elements were deteriorating outside. But the detective’s grim pronouncement came through loud and clear. “It’s our man. The Rose Red Rapist has struck again.”
Annie was the CSI from the crime lab assigned to the elite task force. Although she still did work on other cases, the bulk of her time in the lab was now dedicated 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,
