a multitasker. While he tossed out those leading questions and semireprimands, he looked through a report, scrawled his signature on it and tossed it into his out-box before he went onto the next one. But then, no one had ever accused this particular O’Malley of being inefficient. Just the opposite. The only accusation had been in the area of his preferential treatment.
“Concerns,” Joe volunteered.
Time to move on to point two. He had a lot of concerns, but the major one was the woman with the short, flame-red hair who was sitting next to him. Now the question was how to voice that concern without thoroughly riling Katelyn’s oldest brother, a man he had no desire to rile. Even under a cloud of suspicion, Brayden was formidable. Joe’s investigation into departmental favoritism would no doubt irritate the man enough without adding more to the mix.
“Sergeant Rico thinks this case is too personal for me,” Katelyn countered. “He believes I should step aside because I knew Gail.”
And with that totally accurate observation, she looked across the desk that separated them and met her brother’s gaze. In the next few seconds, at least a hundred or more words passed between them, even though neither spoke.
It was an interesting encounter to watch.
The lieutenant stared at her and lifted his eyebrow, just a fraction. That was it. No other change in his otherwise calm, authoritative expression. Yet the simple gesture caused Katelyn’s mouth to tighten, and her grip on the chair arm whitened her knuckles. Joe could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped by a full ten degrees. It was the most efficient warning he’d ever witnessed.
“Your sister has renegade tendencies,” Joe added, feeling that after what’d just happened, he was probably preaching to the choir. Still, a little choir preaching might go a long way to some changes in this mission proposal. “I’d prefer to work with another detective on this case.”
And Joe already had one in mind. Detective Dawn Davidson, a veteran officer who’d worked a serial killer case just the year before. She had the experience and from all accounts was levelheaded.
“Bringing in another detective might be a problem.” The lieutenant extracted a manila folder from a stack and slid it Joe’s way. “This’ll be an undercover assignment, and Katelyn already has her foot in the door.”
“What door?” Joe asked.
“At the matchmaking agency that might be connected to the two shootings.”
Judging from the soft groan that Katelyn made and the way she sank slightly lower in her chair, this would not please him. From the lieutenant’s elevated eyebrow, it didn’t please him much, either.
“I must have missed that foot-in-the-door part when reading the overview,” Joe commented.
Brayden pointed to the folder. “It’s all in there.”
Katelyn turned slightly away when he opened it and kept her attention focused on her brother. The top page in the folder was a rather lengthy questionnaire from the Perfect Match Agency, and it was dated a week earlier. It’d been filled out just two days after the first shooting.
And the name at the top?
Kate Kennedy.
Joe felt a groan coming on, as well.
“Is this your handiwork?” he asked her.
“Yes. But no one at Perfect Match has any idea that I’m a cop. No one. Kennedy is obviously an alias.” Katelyn directed the rest of her explanation to her brother. “I wanted to get a look at the people who worked there. I figured this was the fastest way to do it.”
“But not the smartest way,” Joe quickly let her know. “You could have jeopardized everything by going in there on your own.”
“But I didn’t.” Moving to the edge of her seat, she repeated it to her brother. “I can do whatever you need me to do to make this undercover assignment work.”
“I’m not the one you need to convince, Katelyn. The chief assigned Sergeant Rico as the lead for this case.” And the lieutenant sat back and left it at that.
The proverbial ball had just been tossed into Joe’s proverbial court.
Unfortunately, he also knew how these next few minutes were about to play out.
Hell.
Katelyn O’Malley had certainly put him in a hard place with her coloring-outside-the-lines attitude. Still, it’d only compound the problem if he let his personal feelings influence the most logical way to approach this. Well, it was the most logical approach considering she’d already tossed a monkey wrench or two into the scenario. “It wouldn’t be smart for me to use another detective at this point,” Joe concluded, speaking more to himself than the O’Malleys. He glanced at the questionnaire while he finished up his explanation. It figured. Katelyn had listed chili as her favorite food. “If the killer’s part of the Perfect Match Agency, then he or she might be suspicious of anyone registering so soon after the second shooting.”
“Guess that leaves you out then, huh?” Katelyn all but smirked at him.
Even though it was borderline petty, Joe liked it when people did that, especially when he could smirk right back. He calmly shuffled through the papers in the folder, extracted his own questionnaire and passed it to her.
Her eyes widened and skimmed over the first page. “You filled this out the same day I did?”
Let the smirking begin. “Yes.”
She hissed out a breath. “Need I remind you that you just accused me of jumping the gun by going to the agency?”
“The difference is—I was on this case, and you weren’t.” Joe held out his hands to emphasize the space. “Big difference. I’m talking huge.”
The temperature went down another notch, and her eyes narrowed to slits.
“Which brings us up-to-date, I believe,” Brayden interjected. Good timing, Joe thought, since Katelyn looked ready to implode. “We have to act fast. There are only five days until Saturday. Five days until a whole host of weddings are scheduled to take place all over the city. Five days to stop a killer from striking again.”
Joe was well aware of that. Those five days were already breathing down his neck. “I’ve learned the florist in question is doing the flower arrangements for two weddings this weekend, one Saturday, another Sunday night. But neither couple met through the Perfect Match Agency. If fact, I haven’t been able to connect any of the upcoming marriages to a matchmaking agency.”
“Neither have I.” Katelyn pulled out her own set of notes from a leather briefcase that was leaning against her chair. “And therein lies our problem. Perfect Match doesn’t release all the names of their former customers who’ve made wedding plans. So it becomes a needle-in-a-haystack approach.”
“It’s the only approach we have right now,” Joe fired back. “We could stake out all the weddings in San Antonio, but it’ll eat up a ton of manpower and cause people to ask too many questions and maybe even panic. Plus, there are the other ceremonies, the ones that aren’t listed in the paper. We wouldn’t be able to cover those. So our best bet is to go back
