At Close Range

“Have you ever seen a dead woman in an alley covered with her own blood?” he asked, and his voice sounded as though it was being ripped out of him. “Have you ever gotten there just in time to hear her last words, her last breath?” There was something in his eyes, something bleak that tore at Cassie even as fear quivered in her chest. She started to answer, but he cut her off with a shake. “I have,” he choked out. “I know how it feels, damn it! I…”

He broke off and abruptly released his hold on her jacket, dropping her to the ground. He stood there, looking down at her for a moment, and the pain was gone from his eyes, leaving only a cool, pale green stare.

“Varitek?” she said, her brain grappling with what had just happened. When he didn’t respond, she drew breath to demand an explanation, a response, anything, but before she could speak, a siren’s whoop drew their attention and a BCCPD four-wheel drive vehicle nosed into the narrow street.

Chief Parry emerged. “You two okay?” he asked, eyes cutting between them with piercing intensity.

“We’re good,” Varitek answered in his trademark deep voice, showing no evidence of what had just happened between them. “Did you get the guy?”

“No,” Parry replied, disgust written plain on his weathered features. “Damn it all. He dumped the hat and the jacket and blended.”

“I’ll want the clothing,” Varitek said, not even bothering to glance at Cassie. “It’ll give us DNA at the very least. You never know. Punk like that might pop up in one of the databanks.”

Feeling excluded and angry, Cassie stepped forward. “What did he do to my truck?”

The men stared at her, reminding her that she’d been the only one to see the dark figure crouched down by her tire. She quickly sketched in the events leading up to the chase.

The more she talked, the harder Varitek scowled. He shot a glance at the chief, who nodded and said, “I’ll get the bomb squad boys on it.”

A quick shiver of fear reminded Cassie that they had never actually connected Bradford Croft to the bombings during the kidnapping case. Though he’d checked into a few Web reference sites on explosives, he had no formal training, and their bomb expert, Sawyer, had deemed two of the devices fairly sophisticated.

“You two coming?” the chief called, indicating his vehicle.

Varitek nodded for Cassie to precede him, but once ahead, she turned to face him, stalling them out of Parry’s earshot. “What the hell happened back there?”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand, just growled, “Nothing you need to know about. It won’t happen again.” Then he brushed past her, climbed into the SUV and yanked the door shut with a final slam that sounded gunshot-loud.

Conversation closed.

CASSIE’S QUESTION reverberated in Seth’s head an hour later as Chief Parry stood at the front of a BCCPD conference room and walked through a summary of the Canyon kidnappings.

What the hell had happened back there?

A flashback, maybe, or a memory. He didn’t know. Whatever it was, he’d suddenly been back in a different, darker alley while a brown-haired woman bled out in his arms. Her eyes had focused on his face just before she died.

The thought of it, the guilt and the rage of it, closed a fist around his heart.

“The evidence showed that Bradford Croft killed his mother,” Chief Parry said, drawing Seth’s attention out of the past, to the current case, which refused to behave cleanly. The chief said, “And he admitted his guilt of the kidnappings to Officer Wyatt. However, he died of his injuries before we were able to clear up a number of discrepancies, including his original alibis, which collapsed under scrutiny, and whether the skeleton found at the scene of the first explosion was tied to the case.”

“Which makes all this pretty darned speculative,” Tracy Mendoza interrupted, then tacked on a belated, “Sir.” When the chief nodded for her to continue, the homicide detective said, “The missing finger seems to connect the older skeleton with today’s murder, but our only evidence tying the skeleton to the kidnappings is location. It could be a coincidence.”

The chief nodded. “That’s possible, but we’re not ruling out anything until the evidence tells us to. Until that time, we’ll remain open to the possibility that the older skeleton is connected to today’s body and both are related to the Canyon kidnappings.” Parry’s eyes hardened to flint. “There’s a murderer on the loose in Bear Claw. Let’s get him.”

He got nods and murmurs of agreement until Mendoza’s partner, an older, harder detective named Piedmont, said, “It would’ve helped if the crime lab had reconstructed the old skull.” He curled his lip at Cassie, who was sitting alone at the far edge of the room, over near the wall. “Too bad they lost it.”

Cassie shot to her feet and snarled at Piedmont. “We didn’t lose the skull. The kidnapper blew it up along with my lab. And let’s not forget that it was your sloppy security that let the guy into the police department in the first place.”

The Bear Claw cops grumbled, but she had a point. The forensics lab was located in the basement of the P.D. Nobody should have been able to walk in past the front desk and make it to the stairs without authorization.

Nobody but a cop, Seth had thought at the time, but none of the other evidence backed up that possibility.

At least none that they’d found.

Chief Parry stepped in before the grumbles could degenerate. He raised his hands. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to work. I’m breaking the task force up into three teams. Team one is going to investigate the canyon skeleton. Use the ME’s notes and whatever forensics can tell you and go from there. Team two is going to work the new murder. Team three, composed of the forensics department and Special Agent Varitek, will act in a support capacity for the other teams.”

The chief read off the names on teams one and two, but before he could dismiss the task force, Seth stood, knowing there was one thing left to say, knowing it wouldn’t make him popular. “Chief? May I have a moment?”

Parry acknowledged him. “Of course.”

Seth cleared his throat. “We need to consider one more aspect of this—the safety of our officers, particularly the women.” Saying it aloud brought the dark memories closer. “I’m not trying to be sexist here—” well, maybe he was, but he had a damn good reason for it “—but don’t forget what happened during the kidnappings. Croft focused his attentions on Alissa Wyatt and nearly killed her. If this is connected, then the pattern could repeat.”

Cassie frowned and spoke up. “If it’s connected, then he’s already broken pattern. All the other victims, including the skeleton, were women under twenty. The murder victim was a man in his mid-twenties.”

Seth countered, “The bomb squad didn’t find any charges under your truck, but the brake lines were severed and reconnected with a thermolabile polymer.” Anger flared in his chest at the thought, and at the fact that she didn’t seem nearly worried enough. The lines would’ve given out with heat and use—like once she was on the highway, or maybe one of the mountain roads. “Face it. You’re already a target.”

She lifted her chin and stared him down. “Don’t try to protect me. I can take care of myself.”

The words echoed through memory to another woman, another time. Seth growled, stepped around the podium and—

“Thank you, Special Agent Varitek.” The chief got between them and diverted Seth to his chair with a warning look. “Based on that evidence, I think we need to assume that the female officers are at higher risk, and Officer Dumont in particular.” He scanned the room and made two partner changes, breaking up a pair of male detectives and a pair of female detectives and switching them. “That leaves everyone protected except Officer Dumont.” The chief looked at Seth. “You’ll keep an eye on her?”

“Yeah,” Seth said, though he wished there was another option. “I’ll watch her back.”

At that, Cassie shot to her feet and stalked from the room, shoulders tight, body language just this side of aggressive.

The door slammed behind her.

CASSIE POUNDED DOWN to the basement crime lab, nearly vibrating with fury.

Maybe she should be used to being underestimated by now, but it still stung. How long would she have to fight the fragile female stereotype? How many heads did she have to bite off, how many testosterone-laden men was she going to have to chase away from her territory before they’d believe that she was smart enough, tough enough and street-savvy enough to do the job she’d been hired to do?

In all honesty, Varitek probably wasn’t trying to be a jerk. There was some logic to his words. It had been a tense, ugly situation when Croft had targeted Alissa. But she wasn’t Alissa, and this wasn’t the same situation. Cassie couldn’t afford to be coddled, and she’d be damned if he shoved her to the side of another investigation.

She glared around the lab, part of her wishing for someone to fight with, part of her glad to be alone in the one space that made her feel truly welcome. The banks of machines didn’t care what she looked like or whether she peed sitting down. They answered the questions she asked, using the information she gave them. She could load in two DNA samples and be confident that the next morning, the fluorescent peaks and valleys on the computer printout would tell her whether she had a match or not. Whether she had a mixed sample or not.

The evidence didn’t care who she was.

She let her fingertips drift over the stereomicroscope she used to examine fiber, hair and dirt samples. She glanced at the logged evidence from the apartment murder scene, the jacket and hat from the bastard who’d rigged her truck. But though she was tempted to dive in, she knew better.

She was too ticked off to work effectively, too distracted. Her thoughts were jammed with Seth Varitek. She was all tangled up with the sound of his deep, masculine voice, and the feel of being pressed up against the wall of a crummy apartment building. He’d invaded her senses until she swore she could taste him on her lips, which was impossible.

Cursing, she strode out of the lab and into her small office, where she threw herself into her desk chair and slapped her computer mouse to wake the machine from its screen saver.

Then she stared blankly at the glowing icons.

“Stop taking this so personally,” she said aloud, hoping the words would help put the scene upstairs into perspective. “He wasn’t saying you couldn’t take care of yourself. He was just saying to watch out.”

Only he’d said more than that. He’d agreed to “watch her back,” which she translated as “keep her in the lab while I work the field.” He was an excellent evidence tech, but so was she. And she was the one who’d be staying in Bear Claw once this was over. She was the one who lost status in her coworkers’ eyes every time she let the FBI take over a crime scene.