interested, but he wanted to know the answer, too. The details they’d been given about her were sparse.
“Besides being first on the scene when the victims’ bodies were discovered along the Brighton Mountain Bike Trail, I guess it’s my voice.”
Tony’s back teeth clenched before he could stop them, but at least the others weren’t looking his way.
“Oh, that’s right,” Eric said. “That was Special Agent Dawson’s idea. Something to sweeten the deal while we’re trolling for online predators. Special Agent Lazzaro wasn’t a fan of the plan.”
Her gaze shifted to Tony, and she seemed to dare him to look away first.
“Most suspects prefer the anonymity of text-only chats.”
“You do kind of sound like a kid, though,” Eric said.
“Thanks, I think. I’ve never been hired for my voice before.”
She laughed then, a sound like the smoothest whiskey pouring on ice, and the sensation that sluiced over Tony and headed south couldn’t have been more different from the jab he’d felt earlier. With a laugh like that she could have worked as a phone-sex operator. He was tempted to tell her so, but the door opening again cut them off. Good thing for that.
Special Agent Dawson entered the way he always did, coffee in one hand, a plate with a Danish in the other and a collapsible umbrella handle strap looped over his wrist.
“I see you’ve already met,” he said as he introduced himself.
“We’re old friends now,” Eric answered for all of them.
“Well, let’s get this done.” Dawson dropped his Danish off in his own cubicle and continued toward them. “The sooner we close this case, the sooner my wife and girls can sleep again. The trail’s already going cold.”
“You’re sure we’re headed in the right direction?” Tony asked.
“I’m not sure of anything. But we already know that one of the young women was computer savvy and was hanging out in chat rooms. I don’t think this was the adventure she was looking for.”
Two other team members had followed him into the office, and Dawson asked them to introduce themselves.
“Robert Golden, Homeland Security,” the graying one with the paunch told her.
The guy with a crew cut and a gym body lifted his hand in a wave. “Don Strickland, Detroit Police.”
“Trooper, tell the team a little bit about yourself,” Dawson said.
Kelly shifted her feet. “I’ve worked with the state police for three years, assigned to the Brighton Post. I’m usually alone in my own patrol car, so you’ll need to give me a few days to get used to working in an office.”
She might have said something else after that, but Tony couldn’t get past the thought that she’d been a police officer that long. She wasn’t a rookie, though nothing could prepare someone to work on this task force.
“One more thing. I’ll do whatever it takes to get this guy. It’s personal for me. I mean, I live in Brighton.”
Dawson’s gaze narrowed. “Are you sure you’re not too close to this?”
“No, I’m fine.”
Tony wasn’t certain of many things. He definitely wasn’t sure this officer’s voice would help them locate the suspect who’d murdered these victims or even if they’d met online before the attack. But he was convinced of two things at that moment. The first was that he wanted to get this guy—and in statistical likelihood the suspect was male—as much as the trooper did.
His second certainty concerned him more, though. With that gut sense law-enforcement officers hone over time, he knew that the state trooper who’d just marched in there to mess up the task force’s equilibrium had also just lied to the team. What he didn’t know was why.
Kelly slid her chair closer to the edge of her cubicle, so she could see the office door. She could shoot out and be back on Interstate 96 on her way to the Spencer Road exit and the Brighton Post in ten minutes flat.
At least she was wanted there.
A report lay open on her desk, but the words and the grisly crime scene photographs swam on the pages in front of her. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t be there, and it went beyond the special agent who clearly agreed with her on at least that.
She’d believed she could do this. That eighteen years was enough time. Enough distance from those bicycles. That creepy smile. She’d been wrong. Shame filled her, heavy and familiar. The uniform that she wasn’t supposed to be wearing seemed to be the only thing preventing her from splintering into thousands of pieces.
But she had to keep it together, for Emily’s sake. She took several deep breaths and focused on a pushpin on her bare bulletin board instead of the file. Finally, her rapid heartbeat slowed.
She’d hoped for an opportunity to make up for the mistakes she’d made following her friend’s abduction, and now she was balking. Yes, it would require her to work with someone who clearly didn’t want her there, but atonement wasn’t supposed to be easy.
What was Special Agent Lazzaro’s problem with her, anyway? He must have thought that those Italian good looks of his—the kind that a sculptor’s knife would have loved and a sonnet or two had already mentioned—gave him an excuse to be a jerk. Not that she’d noticed the olive skin, that strong jaw, the dimple in his chin or those blue-gray eyes, anyway, but none of those things made the way he’d spoken to her okay. What had she ever done to him?
Eric had said the agent was always hard on new team members, but she couldn’t help thinking it might be something more. That she was a woman? Well, tough crap. She’d proven herself to her fellow troopers by working harder than any of them. If he thought rudeness from one curmudgeonly FBI agent would be enough to scare her off, then he was about to find out how wrong he was.
“You about ready?”
She nearly jumped out of her seat as Tony leaned in to speak to her. The cubicle’s walls had prevented her from seeing his approach, but he’d caught her thinking about him. She didn’t have time to worry about him or anyone else when they had a double murder to investigate.
“Uh. Ready?” Could she have sounded any less like she was about to prove something to him? And why did his eyes have to smile like that, before his lips even moved?
“I just wanted to know if you’re finally up to speed on the case so we can get started. You know, on the voice recordings.”
“For the record, I was already well informed about this case. I was first on the scene, remember?” She took a breath so she wouldn’t tell him where he could shove all his assumptions. “Now what did you say about recordings?”
“You didn’t think you were going to do all of this live, did you?”
