Dead End

by Susan Sleeman

  Reed felt like the odd man out again, and he didn’t like it, but even wanting to know what was going on, he kept his mouth shut and waited out the laughter.

  Maya smiled at Sierra. “Sierra is the most competitive woman you could ever meet. Issue her a challenge and you’re bound to lose.”

  Reed looked at her. “Is that so?”

  She shrugged, and a sweet innocent smile beamed back at him.

  “Don’t believe her innocent act for one minute,” Maya said. “She’s going to give you a run for your money.”

  He met and held Sierra’s gaze. “I don’t like to lose either.”

  Emory clapped her hands and smiled in delight. “Things are starting to get interesting here.”

  “Remember,” Maya added. “Sierra has all of us to help her win.”

  Reed liked their comradery, but he didn’t like it pointed at him like a weapon. “We should keep our focus on the investigation.”

  Sierra’s eyebrow went up higher, and he felt like she was calling him out on moving on, but he didn’t care. It was six against one here, and he would never come out on top of any argument.

  “The ledger might be a strong lead,” Reed said. “Sierra can process it, and we can all review the details, but from my quick look at the book, we’ll need a forensic accountant to compare it to Barnes’s other records. That could take some time.”

  “Or not,” Blake said. “I have someone I can call in.” He looked around the group. “He’s not cheap, and we’ll have to eat the cost, but he’ll turn things around fast.”

  “Of course we’ll do it,” Maya said. “If it finds Eddie for Sierra, then every dollar spent is worth it.”

  The others enthusiastically nodded their agreement.

  “Then I’ll give him a call when we land.” Blake shifted his focus to Reed. “We’ll need Barnes’s financial records.”

  Reed nodded. “I can get them to you tomorrow when our analysts are in the office.”

  Grady yawned and stretched. “Now that we got that settled, we should grab some sleep. We need to hit the ground running the minute we land.”

  The partners mumbled their agreement and settled back, eyes closing. Reed looked at Sierra, and she’d rested her head on the wall, her long lashes laying against her skin. Reed closed his eyes, too, and listened to the whomp, whomp, whomp of the helicopter’s blades, hoping the rhythm would help him relax.

  But try as he might, sleep wouldn’t come. He was about to open his eyes when Sierra’s head came to rest on his shoulder, her soft hair brushing against his cheek. He took a long breath, inhaling her fresh scent and was even more thankful that the team had given him time to shower and change at their rental place after their all-nighter.

  He loved the feel of her—the closeness—but she would be mortified if she knew what was happening. She shifted even closer, snuggling in. He loved the way her touch lit a fire inside of him that he hadn’t found with other women, and if he was truthful with himself, he totally wanted to ask this woman out on a date.

  She intrigued him in so many ways. Her looks for sure, but it was more than that. She was confident, and yet, humble. Talented, and yet, unassuming. Gorgeous and totally unaware of it. He wanted to delve into her life and find out everything about her. Like what made her so competitive. Could be from having so many brothers. With the way she stood up to him in Barnes’s office, he could totally imagine her holding her own with all of those brothers.

  Was that why he was so interested in her? She stood up to him when people often shrank back under an FBI agent’s questioning. Or was it just her looks, and he wanted to think it was more? She was pretty, that was for sure. More than pretty, but he’d dated beautiful women before, and when they didn’t connect, he had no problem saying goodbye. Maybe it was because she told him she didn’t want to date, didn’t want a husband or family, and he took it as another challenge.

  Yeah. That was likely it. He liked a good challenge, and when one was presented in such an amazing package, it was hard to refuse.

  He opened his eyes to look at her. To get a better sense of his feelings. He found Grady watching him. Grady didn’t look away but gave a pointed look at Sierra. Reed lifted his hands in a What are you going to do question. Grady’s mouth tightened, but Sierra shifted on his shoulder, and his attention went back to her, his thoughts still on Grady’s response.

  Sierra said her teammates were like family, but they knew when to back down. That wasn’t the vibe he got from Grady. Nah, the guy’s warning said, “Mess with Sierra and you’ll have me to deal with.” Reed already knew that Grady was a worthy adversary. If he wasn’t already fighting his interest in Sierra, he would start now. No way he’d come up against the former Scout Sniper without sustaining injuries he didn’t need.

  9

  Reed shifted his go bag on his shoulder and cupped his briefcase handle then looked up at the Veritas Center. The buildings were super modern with glass everywhere and had a skybridge running between them that likely had a great view of the city of Portland. He could easily imagine standing on the bridge at sunset watching the city sink into darkness. Did Sierra do that? Or maybe she watched from her condo. He didn’t know which floor her condo was located on. She might not have a view from there. Her comment about working long hours probably said she didn’t spend a lot of time gazing out at the sunset or the stars.

  He shrugged off his wayward thoughts and followed the team to the main entrance. A stocky security guard that Reed put in his early sixties and had a thick head of silver hair met them at the door. His name tag read Pete Vincent.

  “Back so soon?” Vincent asked. “And I see you have a ton of evidence to process.” He pointed a stubby finger at the cart loaded with equipment and evidence that Blake pulled into the lobby.

  “Pete! What are you doing here during the day?” Sierra asked. “I thought you melted in the sunlight.”

  The man laughed, a full throaty chuckle of true enjoyment. “Traded shifts with Carlisle. His wife wanted him to go with her to a matinee ballet performance.”

  “Danny Carlisle at the ballet?” Maya wrinkled her nose. “I can’t see that tough guy interested in it.”

  “Oh, he’s not.” Vincent grinned. “Which is why when he asked me to change, I said yes when he wanted me to say no.”

  Sierra’s forehead furrowed. “I don’t get it.”

  “I figured he should go on this date with his wife. The older you get, the more you realize it’s not what you’re doing with someone you love, it’s being with them that’s important.”

  Sierra squeezed Vincent’s hand. “You old softie.”

  “That’s me. A big old teddy bear.” He rolled his eyes then looked at Reed and held out his hand. “You must be Agent Rice. I’m Pete.”

  “Call me Reed.” He shook Pete’s hand.

  “I pegged you for a fed the minute I saw you,” Pete said.

  “How’s that?” Reed lifted an eyebrow.

  “You have the intensity of a law enforcement officer, but the suit and briefcase say fed.”

  Reed got that often with local LEOs. “Retired LEO, am I right?”

  “Yep, PPB.”

  Reed nodded his understanding of the abbreviation for Portland Police Bureau. “Washington County Deputy for three years before joining the FBI.”

  Pete’s gaze softened to approving. Reed wouldn’t trade his years as a deputy for any reason, and as a bonus, it often made local law enforcement let go of their fed stigma, and he appreciated the change in Pete’s attitude.

  “Even if I wasn’t super observant,” Pete smirked, “another agent dropped off files for you and keys to a car that he left out front.”

  “Now that the two of you are done sizing each other up,” Nick said, “mind if we get to work?”

  “You go ahead.” Pete waved a hand. “I’ll need to get Agent Reed signed in, so whoever he belongs to stay behind.”

  “That would be me,” Sierra said, but she didn’t sound enthusiastic
about her connection to him.

  Still, Reed liked Pete’s comment about belonging to her.

  Blake looked at Sierra. “I’ll distribute the evidence on my way up.”

  “Thanks,” Sierra said.

  At the time she’d packed up the evidence, Reed had thought her order seemed odd, but now he understood that she’d done so for ease of distribution among her colleagues.

  The team trudged toward a door in the back of the large, coolly decorated lobby, and Reed took a look at the space. Leading to the second floor, a curving staircase with open risers seemed to float above a seating area with plush leather furniture. “Connecting Loved Ones Around the World” was painted in bright red letters circling a black globe on the wall above photos of smiling people. Must be their logo. And he also figured the lab helped reunite the people in the pictures through their DNA testing. Maybe through other tools as well.

  He noticed a vanilla scent, but Reed couldn’t find the source. Still, it was calming, and he assumed that was what the partners were going for.

  Pete stopped at a curved reception desk and handed Reed an iPad. “Fill in the form and sign.”

  Sierra lingered by the desk.

  “So he’s your guest, huh?” Pete asked.

  Reed looked up from the tablet and saw Sierra nod, but she didn’t provide any details. In fact, she looked a bit irritated at having Reed here. He figured they’d worked all of that out, but maybe it bugged her to see him in her personal space. He didn’t like the thought and quickly finished the form to move on.

  Pete handed Reed a badge. “Wear it at all times, and you’ll also need an escort while in the building.”

  Reed nodded.

  Pete lifted two storage boxes to the counter. “Your files.”

  “Thanks.” Reed set his briefcase on top of them and followed Sierra through the back doorway with print reader access only. The elevator had the same security.

  He rested the boxes on a handrail in the elevator. “This place is locked down tight.”

  “With the evidence and DNA samples we keep here, we need to maintain top-of-the-line security.” She punched the number four button. “Plus, we have a guard on premise because we need to protect ourselves at times. Clients or the people they match can get upset when their DNA results come back.”

  “I can see that. Kind of like how you felt when you found out about your dad.”

  “Exactly, except I internalize my stress while others lash out and can be dangerous.” She curled her hands into tight fists, and he wished he hadn’t upset her with his careless comment.

  The elevator door opened, and they stepped into a brightly lit hallway. Windows in the wall overlooked a large lab. A sign at the door read Trace Evidence and Fingerprint Analysis. She pressed her fingers on the reader. “Nick and Blake are on the floor below. Emory’s and Maya’s labs are on two, Grady on one, and Kelsey has the basement.”

  He thought to ask for a tour but figured as she processed evidence they would visit the other labs. “And your condo? What floor are you on?”

  Door in hand, she looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m not sure how that’s relevant.”

  “It’s not. Not really. But when I looked at the building I was thinking about the great view you all had from the bridge, but then if your condo is on a lower floor, not so much.”

  “I’m on five and so is Kelsey.” She stepped into the lab and the lights above automatically turned on.

  Of course they did. This team would have the best of the best and that meant automatic lighting that turned off when the sensors didn’t detect motion.

  A strong chemical smell greeted him as he took a look around the large room. One wall held lockers with secure locks much like other law enforcement offices and labs contained. Counters with upper and lower cabinets lined two walls with breaks in uppers every so often to house large equipment that he couldn’t identify. He visited the Quantico lab in his FBI training, but that was five years ago, and he didn’t remember half the details their tour guide had shared.

  Six tall lab tables with stools sat in the middle of the room along with a few desks. Commercial refrigerators took up the other end wall, and next to them was a large stainless steel sink like you might see in a restaurant’s kitchen.

  She went to one of the tables and dropped her backpack and phone.

  “Go ahead and set your boxes on a table,” she said, as she slipped into a white lab coat with knitted cuffs. “Would you like some water?”

  “Sure. That would be nice.” He set the boxes and his briefcase on the nearest table and dropped his go bag to the floor.

  She grabbed a couple of bottles from a small refrigerator by her desk and handed one to him before cracking hers open and taking a long drink. “I’ll start with processing the ledger so Chad can copy it when he returns.”

  Reed had to admit he was disappointed that he wouldn’t be alone with her. “He’ll be working today, too?”

  She nodded. “Something I’m happy about, as it’s a long and tedious task to log in all of this evidence and assign it to lockers for storage.”

  Now that he saw the size of her lab and the facility overall, he could only begin to imagine the amount of evidence that passed through her lab. “Does every piece of trace evidence come through you at first?”

  She shook her head. “We have lockers downstairs where officers can drop evidence off. And then we have clerks who empty the lockers, log in the evidence, and store it in a central room. Each morning we look at the inventory and ask for files to be delivered. At the end of the day we return all items we’ve finished working on.”

  “And do the files stay here until an investigation closes?”

  “Depends on the investigation. If we’re handling all of the evidence, it remains here. If not, it usually goes back to the agency. Today Chad will log everything in and lock it up here because our techs are off—he knows I’ll want to work on all of this as soon as possible.”

  For some reason, her connection to Chad kept bothering Reed. “He knows that without you telling him?”

  “We’ve worked together for years, so yeah, he can predict my actions pretty well.” She stepped back and lifted her thick hair into a ponytail and used an elastic band from around her wrist to secure it. “This is going to take a while. You might want to have a seat.”

  He did his very best to ignore the slender column of her neck, but he wondered if her skin was as soft as it looked.

  Focus, man.

  She covered the table with white paper and opened one of the tubs that Blake had dropped off. She lifted out the journal, and after putting on latex gloves, she removed it from the bag and laid it on the paper.

  He took a long pull on the water bottle. “Anything I can do to help?”

  “I assume you have Eddie’s prints in your report.” She looked at him questioningly. “If so, it would be great if I had them for comparison.”

  He went to his boxes. “You analyze your own prints? You don’t send them off?”

  She looked up. “That’s right. I’m fully trained in print examination.”

  “I have his prints in here.” He grabbed a binder and started toward her.

  She held up a hand. “Don’t bring your files over here. I don’t want you to contaminate the paper. Just pull out the print page and leave it there for now.”

  He stopped and set down the binder. She got out her camera and took several photos of the ledger before grabbing a packaged swab and ripping it open to reveal a plastic tube containing a swab. She ran the tip of the swab over the entire surface of the book.

  He continued to watch her. “DNA?”

  She nodded.

  “Couldn’t taking a sample like that from the entire book give you more than one person’s DNA?”

  “Yes, it’s very likely we’ll have a mixed sample.” She put the swab into a plastic tube. “The person processing it has to separate out the samples and quantify them. That’s one of the reasons it takes s
o long to run DNA.”

  He flipped through the binder, keeping an eye on the pages, but also glancing up at her. “But what about those instant DNA machines you hear about?”

  “They’re only approved for buccal cheek swabs where there’s little chance of mixed DNA.”

  “Interesting.”

  She met his gaze as she capped the tube. “Emory can tell you far more than I can. Maybe you’d like to go hang out with her as she works, and she can explain the process.”

  He hated how enthusiastic she sounded about getting rid of him. “I’m good.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said and labeled the tube. She bagged it, recorded it on a log, then crossed the room to one of those big machines.

  Reed snapped the binder open to take out Barnes’s prints and laid the page on the table before joining her. He peered over her shoulder at the hooded machine.

  “It’s a fingerprint powder station.” She pointed to the stainless steel work surface that looked like a flat colander. “It has a downdraft to take fumes and particulates away.”

  She poured a small quantity of black powder in a tray and loaded her brush like she’d done at Barnes’s office. As she swirled the brush over the ledger’s cover, her tongue poked out of her mouth just like he expected, and he found the quirk endearing.

  She revealed several nice prints, but continued to twirl the brush over them. “This eliminates as much powder as possible, allowing me to get the best ridge detail.”

  “It’s amazing to see the prints appear,” he said, admiring her work instead of her for once.

  “It’s one of my favorite things to see on the job. It provides instant affirmation.” She took pictures of the prints, then lifted them with the wide tape and affixed them to cards that she filled out with the information of where she’d located them.

  She flipped the book and followed the same procedure on the back and the spine. “Mind grabbing Eddie’s prints now?”

  “Glad to.” He quickly got the page and handed it to her. She flipped on a lighted magnifying glass and studied the page, then gave the prints she lifted from the journal the same careful examination. “Level one details say these are all Eddie’s prints.”