Touch of Red

by Laura Griffin

  “Sean.” She scraped her fingers through his hair. “Sean, please. I need you up here.”

  He moved up her body and lowered himself onto her, and she gasped at the hard pressure.

  “Wait.” He grabbed a condom from the table and quickly pulled it on, then he was inside her again, moving against her, and everything felt so full and perfect she couldn’t stand it even a minute more.

  She clutched him against her, sinking her teeth into his shoulder to keep from screaming this time, and he reared back and came into her with a fierce push that sent them both into oblivion at the same moment. Then once again she was shaking beneath him as she clung to his shoulders and gasped for air.

  When she could breathe, she let her eyes drift open, and he was propped on his elbows, gazing down at her. She let her arms fall limply at her sides.

  “Mmm . . . namaste.”

  He kissed her. “Better than yoga?”

  “Hmm. Much better. I’m so relaxed I don’t think I can move.”

  “In that case, it’s probably easier if you stay tonight.”

  She sighed. “You’re probably right.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Brooke awoke to an annoying buzz.

  Sean’s phone.

  The bed shifted as he got up, and she turned her face into the pillow, shutting out reality for just a few more minutes of sleep. . . .

  “Brooke.”

  The mattress sank, and she opened her eyes. She was in Sean’s bedroom, surrounded by deliciously cool sheets that smelled like him.

  “Brooke, honey, wake up.”

  She lifted her head. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in jeans. No shirt. Yellow light spilled in from the bathroom.

  “What is it?” She sat up and pulled the sheet with her.

  “I’ve got a callout. I need to run you home.”

  She processed the words as she glanced around the room. Where the hell were her clothes?

  He stood, fastening his jeans. Then he reached for a shirt draped over a chair in the corner.

  She spied a pile of her clothes on the end of the bed. He must have brought them in here while she was dozing. She grabbed her sweatshirt and dragged it on. “What time is it?”

  “Six fifteen. Can you be ready in five minutes? We have to hit it.”

  “Yeah.” She stood up and winced.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was like a hangover, but different. She felt stiff and groggy, as though she’d slept for days, but it had only been a few hours. Her knees were bruised from tackling Cameron Spence to the ground, and the cut on her elbow burned.

  She spent several minutes in the bathroom, trying unsuccessfully to avoid the mirror. She looked horrid, and she wished she had a ponytail holder to do something with her hair. She twisted it into a knot and returned to the bedroom to look for her boots. She found them in the living room, along with her socks.

  Brooke sank onto the sofa to put them on as Sean stood by the fireplace, talking on his phone and watching her.

  He ended the call as she stood and grabbed her purse. “Ready.”

  Sean led her out to the driveway. The air was cool and damp, but the rain had stopped and the sky was beginning to lighten.

  They rode in silence as Brooke’s brain clicked into gear. From Sean’s end of the conversation, it sounded like a homicide. Something near the lake. Brooke checked her phone. She hadn’t received anything yet, but the detectives often got the call first. Anyway, it might not involve the Delphi Center.

  She stared out the window at the slick pavement that shimmered purple and pink as the sky brightened.

  “Sorry to wake you.”

  “No problem.”

  She glanced at him. He looked remarkably alert for having been asleep ten minutes ago. Brooke had developed the same skill over the years, but this morning she felt off.

  He turned onto her street, and her stomach twisted. Casual. No pressure. But what did that mean in the light of day? She’d spent the night naked in his arms, and she felt a wave of panic as she remembered everything they’d done together.

  He swung into her driveway, and she had the door open before he came to a halt.

  “Hang on.”

  “You don’t need to—”

  But he was out and coming around to her side before she could finish the sentence.

  “Sean, I’m fine. Don’t make yourself late.”

  He ignored her and walked her to the door. She saw his gaze skimming over her hedges, her windows, her porch. She unlocked the door and turned to face him.

  He glanced over her shoulder into the house. “Everything look okay here?”

  “Everything’s fine. Go.”

  He kissed her forehead. “I’m going to be tied up today.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ll see you when I see you.”

  • • •

  Sean drove across the dam and hooked a right onto Ridge View. Two point three miles, according to Ric’s directions. Sean skimmed his gaze over the roadside, looking for anything unusual leading up to the crime scene. He didn’t see anything, but the shadows this time of morning played tricks.

  Would Brooke and her crew show up here? Sean didn’t know. With it being a homicide, there was a fair chance Delphi would ultimately get involved.

  He thought about the way she’d looked standing on her porch a few minutes ago. Last night had been a breakthrough. And not just the sex, all of it. He pictured her on his sofa in the dimness. He’d done everything he knew to get her to relax with him and let her guard down, and it had worked. Mostly.

  Convincing her to spend the night—without her realizing how desperately he wanted her to—had been a challenge. And he had more challenges ahead of him, if this morning’s drop-off was any indication.

  When Sean rolled out of bed, everything had been fine. He’d taken Ric’s call, no problem. Then he’d stepped back into his room, and the sight of Brooke asleep on his pillow had hit him right in the solar plexus. But no sooner had he registered the punch of emotion than everything changed. Within seconds of her waking up and realizing where she was, Sean had seen the walls start to go up again. It had gotten worse on the ride home, until she’d actually flinched when he kissed her good-bye.

  That brief moment had sucked, big-time, especially after she’d been so into him last night.

  So something had changed, but Sean didn’t know what. The sex had been hot—that he knew for sure—but now she had regrets. Sean didn’t know what was wrong, but he guessed it had to do with everything she’d told him back at the diner.

  Sean clenched his teeth. Matt Jorgensen. The first thing he’d done after learning the guy’s name was check out his record. He was twenty-eight, the same age as Brooke. He’d been with the sheriff’s department six years and spent four as a volunteer firefighter. He had a clean record—on the surface, at least—and had built a solid career.

  The man himself was solid, too. According to his DPS record, Jorgensen was six-three, 230 pounds.

  He was a head taller than Brooke, and the thought of him yelling and getting in her face made Sean livid. The thought of him laying a hand on her made Sean want to rip the guy’s head off.

  Sean rounded a bend and spotted a police cruiser parked on the shoulder. He shoved his thoughts aside for later as he passed the cruiser and pulled over on the opposite side of the road by Ric’s truck. No sign of the ME yet.

  Sean got out and grabbed an SMPD Windbreaker from the back of the cab. Zipping into it, he stuffed a pair of latex gloves in his pocket and crossed the road, following the distant squelch of police radios. The terrain was steep and muddy, and Sean used branches to brace himself as he picked his way down to the river’s edge where Ric was standing beside a uniformed officer.

  Ric saw him and tromped over.

  “What do we have?”

  “Caucasian female. A utility worker spotted the body from the dam.” Ric turned and nodded at the brown river churnin
g behind him. The water level was up from all the rain they’d been having. “She’s tangled in the tree over there.”

  “Age?”

  “Hard to say. She’s in bad shape.”

  Sean muttered a curse. Anyone who’d spent any time in the water was liable to be unrecognizable, which made it tougher to get a positive ID.

  “By the clothing and jewelry, I’d guess maybe twenties,” Ric added.

  Ric led him through the tangle of mesquite and sagebrush along the shoreline. Sean glanced up at the dam, where a cluster of people in hard hats had stopped their work to watch the action.

  Another uniformed officer stood beside a clump of trees where someone had strung up yellow crime-scene tape.

  “We’re going to need some divers to cut her loose,” Ric said. “And probably a forensic anthropologist to make an ID.”

  Sean picked his way around a cypress tree and stopped. The body was trapped between two tree trunks. A black jacket seemed to have gotten hung up on one of the branches. Ric followed right behind as Sean trekked closer and caught a glimpse of blond hair tangled with leaves and twigs. Dread filled Sean’s stomach as he pushed aside some bushes to get a better look at the jacket, the lifeless arm, the pale hand.

  The rings.

  Sean’s breath whooshed out. “Holy hell.”

  “What is it?”

  “I know her.”

  • • •

  Callie nursed her coffee as she stared through the tall windows of the Delphi Center lobby. The rain had cleared overnight, and the rolling hills basked in the rosy light of morning. It was a nice place to work. Beautiful, even, if you could forget that the building sat in the middle of a body farm. Callie watched as a vulture swooped down over a clump of trees, probably checking out one of the anthro department’s research projects.

  Decomposing remains. Ick. Working here was definitely not for the faint of heart.

  “Calista McLean?”

  She whirled around, and her pulse jumped at the sight of the impossibly attractive man standing there. How had she not heard him approach?

  “Hi.” The word came out as a squeak. She thrust her hand out to offer him a handshake, but ended up offering him her coffee cup.

  He gave her a puzzled look, but didn’t move to touch her. “I’m Travis Cullen.”

  He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short dark hair that hinted at a military background. He wore a black golf shirt with the Delphi Center logo on the pocket, tan tactical pants, and tan A.T.A.C. boots—which probably explained his stealth approach.

  “Good to meet you. Everyone calls me Callie.”

  He nodded. “Follow me.”

  The command sent a warm ripple through her, and she followed him to a bank of elevators. He stepped on and jabbed a button. Callie’s stomach dropped as they whisked down a few levels. The doors slid open and she stepped off first so she could walk beside him, not behind.

  “So. You’re the knife guy.”

  He cast her a sideways look as they walked down a corridor with cinder-block walls. “Who told you that?”

  “The evidence clerk who checked in my package the other day. Why? You’re not a knife expert?”

  “Technically, I’m a tool-marks expert. Knives, hammers, bolt cutters, axes. Anything that leaves a mark.”

  She stifled a shudder.

  He glanced at her, apparently reading her mind. “Not all of my cases are homicides.”

  “That’s . . . comforting to know, I guess.”

  He opened a door and ushered her into a room with a worktable in the center. Atop it sat a crowbar and a piece of white wood, about two feet long.

  She halted beside the table.

  “That came in this morning. The detective wants to know whether that tool they recovered from a suspect’s car is responsible for the gouges on the windowsill.”

  “So . . . a burglary?”

  “Home invasion and sexual assault. That’s why it jumped to the front of my line.”

  “It’s not ours, is it?”

  “The case is out of Williamson County. Here, come on back.”

  She followed him through the room and into a smaller one, this one lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  Callie stopped short. “Whoa.”

  Every shelf was filled with all the tools he’d mentioned before—and then some. Her gaze settled on the nearest section, which held a vast array of saws.

  “This is our collection.”

  “Collection? Seriously?”

  He nodded.

  “That sounds extremely creepy.”

  She walked up to a small table with a spotlight shining down on it. On a clean sheet of butcher paper was a knife with a long silver blade and a black handle. Callie stared down at it, at a loss for words. She glanced up to find him watching her. “This is it?”

  He stepped up beside her. “You hadn’t seen it before?”

  “One of our officers collected it. I was just the one who brought it in.”

  “This isn’t actually your knife. It’s a sample. I wanted you to see it intact before I show you what I did.”

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “What you’re looking at here is a fixed-blade hunting knife, full tang. It has a four-inch serrated stainless-steel blade and a polymer handle.”

  “And this is like the one I brought in?”

  He nodded. “Except this one’s straight from the factory, never been used. It’s part of our reference collection.”

  Collection. There was that word again, and it gave her the willies.

  She glanced around at all the various knives and axes and other lethal weapons. Travis Cullen towered over her, and she knew he, too, was a lethal weapon—she could tell simply from the way he moved.

  “You okay?”

  She glanced at him. “Yeah. You were saying? About the knife? Any chance it’s unique?”

  “No. Fact, far as hunting goes, it’s one of the most common knives out there. Sells for between forty-nine and fifty-nine dollars at sporting-goods stores across the country. Comes with a black plastic sheath.”

  “Damn. At least tell me you found some prints or some blood or something to help us out.”

  “No prints. That was the first thing we checked. Looks like it was wiped down.”

  “Perfect. No fingerprints and the blade was clean.”

  “I didn’t say ‘clean.’ Under the scope, you can see tiny white fibers from the material used to wipe it—most likely, a cotton T-shirt. You can also see faint traces of blood along the edge.”

  Callie’s pulse picked up.

  “We swabbed that, sent it up to our DNA lab.”

  “To Mia?”

  “What’s that?”

  “In the DNA lab,” Callie said. “She’s married to Ric Santos, one of our detectives on this thing.”

  “That explains the quick turnaround. I don’t know who ran the tests, but whoever it was found human and animal blood.”

  “Human?”

  “Yes, and it’s the victim’s. They confirmed it upstairs.”

  “You’re telling me we have our murder weapon. I want to see it. Is it upstairs?”

  “Nope, right here. Come have a look.”

  He led her across the room to another table. This one was the same height, but the black slate tabletop sat beneath a Plexiglas shield, like at a salad bar. Travis switched on a light, illuminating another sheet of butcher paper, this one with knife parts scattered across it.

  He pulled on a latex glove. “I disassembled the knife to examine the components.”

  Until this moment, Callie hadn’t thought of a knife as having components. “You just . . . unscrewed the handle?”

  “These are rivets.” He picked one up. “The black pieces are the handle slabs. Then you have the blade, the tang.”

  “Tang?”

  “The steel piece goes all the way to the butt of the knife, so it’s called a full tang. Makes it more durable. And the tang”—he pointed to i
t—“that’s where we found a second DNA profile, blood that had seeped through the crevices. Our lab tells me that profile matches the one found under the victim’s fingernails.”

  “No way.”

  He looked at her. “Way.”

  “So . . . you think he maybe nicked himself when he attacked her or—”

  “This blood was old and pretty degraded, from what I understand. So more likely, he nicked himself some other time when he was using the knife. Could have been cutting a rope or dressing a deer. This knife’s got some wear and tear on it, so it’s probably been used for at least a few years.”

  “But they were able to get a profile?”

  “It’s all in the report. They ran a bunch of tests, and the results check out.”

  “Wow.” Callie had been hopeful, but hadn’t dared to hope for anything this good. “This is big. Really big. I see now why you called me at midnight.”

  He leaned back against the counter and folded his arms over his big chest as he looked her over. “It was more like eleven.”

  “Whatever. I’m glad you did. My team is going to freak!”

  His mouth curved up in a barely there smile.

  “What? You’re laughing at me.” She pulled out her phone. “I’m excited, okay? We have our murder weapon. You totally made my day.”

  “I’m not laughing at all,” he said, although he was definitely smiling at her now. “Just glad I could help.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Sean pulled into the Delphi Center parking lot and scanned the cars. No sign of Brooke’s white Prius. He wondered what she was doing today and whether he’d get a chance to see her. Given the morning he’d had, he figured his odds weren’t good.

  Callie swung into the lot and slid into an empty space beside him.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” he said as she got out.

  “No problem. I was just out here a few hours ago. The guy manning the gate is getting sick of seeing me.”

  Sean looked at her as they trudged up the steps to the main entrance. “So, that mean you heard back about that knife?”

  “Jeez, Sean.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you listen to your voice mail? Yes, I heard back about the knife. I left you a message.”