“Not ‘Baby’ or ‘Hot Stuff’?” Mark joked.
Connor sent them both a scowl. “Billy also said she asked me to look into a case.”
“One of our cases?” Mark pulled his gun from his shoulder holster and put it in his drawer.
“No. It’s not a cold case, but it might as well be. It’s gone untouched for months. It’s a missing person.” Connor turned the page of the file. “I just opened it. I’ve been studying Billy’s bodycam.”
“And you don’t recognize her?”
“I might if the quality was better. Even the sound is fuzzy.” Connor clicked on the video to watch it again. “They’re sending it off to see if they can clean it up.”
Juan and Mark moved behind Connor’s chair to watch it. “It is bad,” Mark chimed in.
Connor exhaled. “We never get a good shot of her face.”
“Email it to me.” Juan moved back to his chair. “I have a program that might clean it up.”
“Do you have anything on the stolen car?” Mark asked. “Where was it taken from?”
“Billy’s supposed to talk to the owner.” Connor rotated his sore shoulders. “He’d reported it stolen from the Waffle House. Then the guy came in an hour later, and said it was Denny’s. Poor guy can’t keep his lie straight.”
“So, maybe he was at his girlfriend’s house,” Juan said in his speculating tone. “Doesn’t want his wife to know.”
They all looked back at the screen while it processed the video. “What you want to bet you dated her?” Juan tapped a pencil on his desk.
“Even slept with her.” Mark chuckled.
Connor suddenly felt mocked by both his partners’ grins. “Since you two got into relationships, you act like my dating life is a joke.” As soon as those words had left his lips, he wanted them back. Why?
It couldn’t be that he was jealous or wanted anything different. That dream had gone down in flames at the same time as his career. He could still hear his wife’s words as he’d signed the divorce papers. You suck at being a husband.
Ever since she’d had her second miscarriage, he’d been fighting for their marriage, for a love he thought would last forever. Then he lost his partner, shot a kid, and he didn’t have any more fight in him.
“You mean it isn’t a joke?” Juan asked. “Don’t you remember calling me when you were hiding in a bush, half-naked?”
Connor’s frown deepened. “That’s enough!”
The seriousness in his tone sucked all the levity from the room. Giving each other hell was status quo, but damn, Connor was just tired.
“Sorry. Didn’t sleep last night.”
Juan’s screen flickered as he started playing a cleaner version of the video.
The image hadn’t really improved, but the audio had. “Turn it up and play that again,” Connor said when it stopped. “I know that voice.”
“I was thinking the same thing.” Juan hit replay.
“This has to be someone from an old case.” Connor stared at the screen even though it was mostly a blur.
“And recent,” Mark muttered. “I don’t think we’d all recognize it if it wasn’t.”
They went silent. “I’m sorry about this.”
“She’s a polite car thief.” Mark chuckled.
“What case involved a redhead?” Juan asked.
“It doesn’t have to be a redhead,” Connor said. “Women dye their hair willy-nilly.”
“True,” Juan said. “Her accent doesn’t sound Texan.”
“Yeah, she’s got a drawl,” Connor said. “Mississippi, maybe.”
“I swear I remember hearing that voice,” Juan added.
“Shit!” Connor said. “I know who it is.”
Chapter Three
Who?” Mark straightened.
“The waitress at the Black Diamond. Her name was Star…something. We interviewed her and she gave us information concerning the Noel case. Blond with pink streaks, too young.”
“Star Colton?” Juan asked.
“Her?” Doubt surrounded Mark’s one word. “The accent might be right, but she’s not much over five feet and can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. How could she take out Billy?”
“Look at Vicki. She got the best of me,” Juan said.
“But Vicki trained for a triathlon. Star’s a waitress,” Mark said.
Mark’s argument played in Connor’s mind. He mentally measured up the woman in his mind. “But I remember her looking…fit.”
“You mean hot?” Juan grinned.
“That too.” Connor grinned.
“But she didn’t come across as a car thief.” Juan looked back at Connor. “Wait. She took my card, not yours.”
“I gave her mine when I went there and questioned a few of the Black Diamond employees. She even said something about wanting to have a friend in the department.”
Juan gave the pencil another tap, tap. “She said that to me, too.”
“Yeah, but I’m sure she really meant it with me,” Connor joked.
“So you slept with her?” Mark asked Connor.
“No!” Connor said. “I don’t sleep with women who might still believe in Santa Claus.”
Laughter filled the small office.
“Seriously,” Connor added, “the younger they are, the clingier they are. I don’t do clingy. I don’t do—”
“Women with kids or women who might actually want a second date,” Mark added. “I’m shocked you ever get a first.”
“I get very few complaints.” Connor grinned.
Juan cut off the video. “Well, you screwed the pooch on this one. When I met her, I didn’t think she was old enough to serve drinks, so I checked. Her license put her at twenty-nine.”
“Damn,” Connor said with sarcasm. “Then again, I don’t do car thieves either.” He looked back at Juan. “But you’re right. I didn’t peg her as that type.”
“So why is she wanting you to look into the Ronan case?” Mark walked back to his desk, dropped into his chair, then turned to face them. “We need to find her.”
“Yeah.” Connor glanced at Juan. “I remember she called you. Do you still have her number?”
Juan scrubbed his palm over his chin. “I think I jotted her number down in the file.”
* * *
“What’s wrong, Brie?” Eliot asked, his voice coming in extra loud over the line.
All she’d said was hey, but obviously he’d heard the emotion in her voice. Seeing Carlos had been hell. His face had been beaten beyond recognition, and there was a tube down his throat forcing air into his lungs.
“Brie?” Eliot repeated. Since she was eight, Eliot had been there for her. Scraped knees, broken hearts, attempted kidnappings. The whole shebang. As the stepdaughter of one of the most popular international political writers, she’d lived in countries some Americans wouldn’t visit.
Eliot had kept her safe. Oh, for the first few months after he’d been hired as her bodyguard, he’d tried to keep his heart out of the job, playing tough. But with her parents too busy to care, she’d needed him. And even as young and oblivious as she’d been, she knew he’d needed her.
A knot formed in her throat. “Carlos has been shot.”
“What happened?”
She told him the high points, which included coming clean about what she’d been doing these last four months.
“I should’ve known you weren’t just taking a break,” he growled. “I told you a thousand times that your sister’s death wasn’t your fault.”
And a thousand times she hadn’t believed him. “If I’d just called her back—”
“You barely knew her.”
Only partially true.
“She didn’t even say why she was calling. For all you knew, she wanted to borrow money.”
Logically, Brie knew he was right. Emotionally, it didn’t matter. “My father said he’d told her to call me because she was worried about something bad going down.”
“And if you’d known th
at, you’d have called her back.”
Would she have? Or was her grudge more important? She swallowed. “I still wish…”
“Wish all you want. Just don’t blame yourself.” Taking a deep breath, he asked, “So, your father called you again?”
“No. I called him when I heard that her body had been found. He had a right to know.” Before this, Brie hadn’t spoken to her father since she was seven. That was when he’d left her and her mother to go live with his second family, whom he’d kept a secret. And when she’d learned he had another daughter her age, it made the abandonment worse. He hadn’t just left her—he’d chosen someone over her.
“How did it go?” Eliot asked.
“How do you expect?”
“So no apology for walking out of your life?”
“He blamed Mom.” She looked at the door leading into the ICU, keeping tabs on anyone going in or out.
“I should’ve killed him when I had the chance,” Eliot snapped.
“He wasn’t worth it.”
The line went silent. Eliot spoke first. “So, Carlos was helping you? Why didn’t you call me? You know I would’ve been there.”
“Carlos came only to collect Armand’s prints. Otherwise, I was handling it.”
“Obviously, things weren’t being handled if Carlos got shot. You can’t do this alone.”
“I know…that’s why I’m calling.” She told him what Tory had said about the Sala case.
“Fudge!” His creative cursing came out. “You told me you blamed the ATF.” He paused. “Do you believe this?”
She hesitated, collecting her thoughts. “I want to say no. But Carlos isn’t one to toss out something like that if he didn’t have some proof.”
“Do you think Tory could have gotten it wrong?”
“No.” Brie nipped at her lip with worry. “He was sure.”
“Have you talked with anyone from the FBI?”
“Yeah, with Agent Calvin a little while ago.”
“Did you tell him?”
“About what Tory said, yes.”
“What did he say about the leak being internal?”
“He said he’d look into it, but he thinks Tory misunderstood. He doesn’t believe it’s possible.”
Eliot got quiet. “You don’t think it might be Agent Calvin?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’ve met him. You went to his house for that barbeque. He’s a good guy.”
“Good people sometimes do bad things, Brie.”
“I know that.”
“Who else worked the case?”
“Agents Bara and Miles.”
“You trust them?”
“If you’d asked me that yesterday, I would have said, yes. But honestly, I don’t know them that well. Problem is that’s who Calvin is sending to look into Carlos’s attack. And if Carlos was right and one of them is behind this? I need someone at the hospital, so I can work the case. Is there any way you could come here? Just until I know who I can trust.”
“You know I can. Why don’t I see if Sam can come, too? We can take shifts.”
Sam had served in the Special Forces with Eliot. And since Sam lost his wife last year, they’d spent a lot of time together. “That’d be great.”
“I’ll be on the next plane, Brie.”
Her phone beeped with an incoming call. She frowned when she saw it was from the Anniston Police Department.
Dang it. The officer she’d cuffed to the light post must have gotten word to Connor Pierce. Earlier, she’d been prepared to face the music. But that was when she’d assumed Carlos would take her lead back to Calvin and open a case. That would’ve gone a long way in getting any charges dismissed.
She remembered Eliot was still on the line. “Call me when you have a flight.”
“I will. Brie, be careful. Whoever did this to Carlos could—”
“You know I can take care of myself.”
“So could Carlos,” Eliot said.
They hung up. Her phone beeped with a voice mail.
She hit play to see just how much trouble she was in.
“Ms. Colton. This is Detective Pierce.” Yeah, she recognized his voice. Deep, kind of sultry. An image of him flashed in her mind. Tall, blond, broad shoulders. A bad-boy smile, with maybe a hint of bad-boy attitude.
She’d met all three of the cold case detectives. Dubbed by the press as the Three Musketeers, they were touted as officers who played by their own rules. But from everything she’d read about them, their rules came with a moral code and it got scum off the streets. Brie respected that.
“We met a few months ago,” Detective Pierce continued. “You helped APD out on a cold case. We need to talk. Can you please call me back?” He ran off his cell number. “It’s imperative we speak.”
“Yeah, I get that,” she muttered to herself. “But you’re going to have to wait.”
* * *
Connor wasn’t going to sit by and do nothing while waiting for Star to return his call. He called the Black Diamond, but no one answered. So he called Star three more times. When she didn’t answer the fourth time, he ran her through the database. No priors. No warrants. No tickets.
No shit!
She’d gotten a California license a year ago, then applied for a Texas license four months ago. The fact that there was no record of her identity before that made him skeptical. The fact that she had no priors and now had stolen a car made him suspicious.
He copied her address down. He knew the complex from some busts when he’d worked the Drug and Gang Unit. The place seemed to have cleaned up its act but was still a bit dodgy.
Finding her apartment, he pounded on the door, but got nothing. Almost ready to walk, he saw the front curtain flutter. He knocked harder. “I’m not going away!”
A gray longhaired tabby cat jumped up into the window, but when the cat saw him, it bolted.
“Stop. For God’s sake, she’s not home.” A woman stuck her head out from next door.
He flashed his badge and she disappeared as quickly as the cat.
After searching the parking lot, and not finding her silver Chevy Cruze, he headed to the office. A woman in her late fifties, who looked like someone’s grandmother, sat behind a desk.
“Hi,” she offered with a looking-for-a-sucker smile. “Hope you’re in the market for an apartment. I have three freshly painted units that are move-in ready.”
“Sorry.” He showed his badge and asked about Star Colton.
The apartment manager’s smile diminished. “I don’t know what to say. She pays her rent on time—which is a rarity around here—keeps to herself, and never causes trouble.”
Connor handed the woman his card. “Keep an eye out and when you see she’s home, call me.”
The woman’s mouth thinned. “Has she done something wrong? Is she dangerous?”
Billy might think so, but Connor couldn’t say dangerous fit. Then he remembered her in her short-shorts and low-cut tank top when she was serving drinks, and well, yeah, dangerous fit. “We just need to talk to her.”
Heading to his car, he decided to leave his card under Star’s door. Maybe if she realized he knew where she lived, it would convince her to return his call.
When he was only a few feet from her door, he noticed it stood slightly ajar. Another step and he saw the wood splinters on the concrete by a green welcome mat.
Had someone just broken in?
Reaching inside his shirt, he pulled his Glock from his shoulder holster. His heart bounced around his chest as he pressed himself against the outside wall. Counting to three, he leaned over until he could see inside. The living room appeared empty, but an oversized sofa was large enough to hide behind.
Grip firm on his weapon, he eased open the door a bit and cut his eyes to the small kitchen area. Empty. He quickly moved inside and positioned himself against a wall, so he could see behind the sofa and the hallway. Was the perp gone or hiding in the back of the apartment?
“Polic
e,” he called out. “Come out with your hands up.”
He heard a noise, as if someone had knocked something over.
“I said come out!”
He inched down the hall, his gun tight in his palm. His finger pressed against the side of his weapon, while a memory pressed against his conscience. For a fraction of a second, he was no longer in the apartment, but in that dark alley where he’d lost his partner. He shook it off.
He heard another clatter. The bedroom door inched open. His finger eased onto the trigger, then the gray feline hauled ass down the hall.
His heart slammed against his sternum as he tore through the door.
The window over the bed was open and the drapes hung half off the curtain rod. He bolted to the window. The alley was empty.
Why had someone broken into Star Colton’s apartment?
His gaze caught on the bed, or rather the white comforter, with dirty shoe prints on it. Large shoe prints. Definitely male.
Before he left, he took pictures of the prints, and because the front door didn’t close all the way, he put the cat and its litter box in the bathroom. He ended up getting a damn six-inch scratch up his arm for his trouble. He and cats never got along. Maybe he’d add that to his list of deal breakers. Never date a woman with cats.
He called in the break-in, and when a black-and-white arrived, he used the I’m-just-a-cold-case-detective card and managed to hand it over. He was too exhausted to deal with paperwork, but he did warn the guy that the demon cat was locked in the bathroom.
Before leaving, he knocked on the neighbor’s door to see if she’d seen the perp.
“I thought it was you again. I ignored the noise.”
Frustrated, he went back to his office. Mark and Juan were still thumbing through old files, looking for their next case.
Juan stretched back in his chair. “Find her?”
“No. But I found out I’m not the only one looking for her.” Connor’s sleep deprivation sounded in his voice.
“What?” Mark looked up.
“Her apartment was broken into.”
“No shit?” Mark said.
“Did you call it in?” Juan sat back up.
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