Veiled Intentions

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 to the source of the connection—the Perfect Match Agency. They require matched couples to meet there first for an icebreaker, and there’s one every Tuesday night, including tomorrow night.”

“It starts at seven-thirty,” Katelyn provided. “We don’t need an invitation. We just need to be computer matched…somehow.”

It didn’t surprise Joe that she knew those details. She’d probably already picked out the clothes she was going to wear. And she’d done all of that before even being officially assigned to the team.

His team.

He hoped like the devil that she didn’t wear those sexy stilettos and the little green outfit. He’d have enough distractions as it was.

“Detective O’Malley and I’ll do this intro thing tomorrow night at Perfect Match,” Joe continued, making sure he sounded like the boss. Because after the minifantasy involving her choice of fashion, he needed the reminder in the worst sort of way. “We’ll pretend we were high school sweethearts and that we’re surprised but happy to be reunited.”

She nodded. “Good idea. And that’ll explain a hasty engagement and equally hasty marriage.”

“Well, hopefully.” It might also make the wrong person suspicious, but he’d deal with that when and if it happened. “While we’re there, we’ll have a good look around the place. Without breaking the law, of course.”

Another you-think? huff from Katelyn.

Joe ignored her and continued. “In the meantime, I’ll keep going through the background checks I’ve been doing on the employees and the owners of Perfect Match and the florist.”

“I’ve done backgrounds checks, as well,” Katelyn informed him.

Joe bobbed his head. “Of course you have.”

The woman had an incredibly effective scalpel-sharp glare. “I’m not an idiot. I did them discretely.”

Joe might have questioned her on what she considered discrete, but the lieutenant spoke first. “Sounds as if you have everything under control.”

Not even close.

Joe kept that sentiment to himself.

“Good.” Brayden stood and reached for the jacket draped over the back of his chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with the chief. Feel free to use my office to hash out the rest of the details. Oh, and it goes without saying—keep me informed.”

“Wait,” Katelyn called out when her brother headed for the door. “You’re both missing a key point. Yes, Sergeant Rico and I filled out these questionnaires, but that in itself doesn’t give us a computer match. I hate to state the obvious here, but the computer does that. In fact, it generates a list of matches so the candidates can meet the people at the icebreaker. What if neither of us has any matches? What then? We can’t just show up.”

“I’d planned to have one of the techs go into the system and arrange for the questionnaires to be matched,” Joe explained.

Katelyn shook her head. “That sounds risky. Someone at the agency might figure out—”

“A match isn’t a problem,” Brayden assured them. “It’s all in the folder.”

There was something about the lieutenant’s strange, almost self-satisfied expression that sent Joe thumbing through the rest of the papers in the file. Katelyn must have had the same feeling, because she leaned closer so she could see the documents, as well.

It didn’t take Joe long to find it. There it was. The dozen or so men listed as “dream date” matches for client 6341B, Kate Kennedy. His own alias, Joe Farrell, was the first name on the list.

He felt as if someone had slugged him in the solar plexus.

“You already had the tech rig the system?” Joe asked. But he didn’t think that’s what had generated the look on the lieutenant’s face.

“No. The two of you matched without any tech interference.” Brayden’s eyebrows flexed. “For once, Murphy’s Law worked in our favor. Let’s hope that luck continues.”

And with that little scud missile attack, the lieutenant left them sitting there in somewhat stunned silence.

“It had to be the chili,” Joe mumbled under his breath.

Or maybe Katelyn just jotted down a whole bunch of lies while filling out the questionnaire. He hadn’t, that was for sure. Unnecessary lies were just too hard to keep track of, so with the exception of his name, address and occupation, everything else was true.

Yet, they’d matched.

Even if she’d lied, that was an unsettling coincidence because it meant her lies matched his truths.

Joe quietly pushed that coincidence aside and moved on to the mission at hand.

“I’ll see you at the Perfect Match tomorrow night.” He stood and tucked the folder beneath his arm. “Until then, we keep doing these background checks and hope we find a smoking gun. Oh, and by the way, I insist the officers on my team follow the rules. My rules,” he emphasized. “If you jeopardize this assignment again—”

“I won’t.”

“If you do, I’ll have your butt and your badge.”

She nodded, after a contemplative moment.

Joe almost decided to leave it at that, but there was something he couldn’t leave unsaid. “I hope it’s occurred to you that this plan is designed to send a killer after us.”

No hesitation this time. “It has.”

Good. At least underneath all that wisecracking talk, Katelyn O’Malley was smart enough to know what they were up against.

And what they were up against was a killer.

Even more, the moment they stepped inside Perfect Match, they would become the ultimate bait.

Chapter Four

Katelyn fanned herself with the Perfect Match folder.