At Close Range

Well forget him. She wasn’t looking to stay safe at the expense of the job.

She scowled. “I’m not jumping to conclusions, I’m using my version of the razor theorem—the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. We’ve got a body tied to a crime scene from the kidnappings. The kidnapper is dead, so we know he didn’t kill this guy. Other lines of evidence have already suggested Croft had an accomplice. Ergo, we’re looking at a partner.”

“We’re not looking at anything but the evidence,” Varitek said bluntly. He turned away and reached for his bigger, meaner-looking crime-scene kit, which Cassie knew from experience contained everything hers did, and then some. He said, “Let’s get to work. The sooner we release the body to the ME, the better. We’re going to need a cause of death, time of death, ID…anything we can get. The chief said that based on our findings, he’ll decide whether to recall the task force.”

And that quickly, that easily, he took over her crime scene.

Again.

Cassie fisted her hands at her sides, so tightly that her blunt nails dug into her palms. She thought about going for her weapon. Instead, she said, “Agent Varitek?”

He didn’t even turn around when he answered, “Technically, it’s Special Agent.”

“Yeah, you’re special all right,” she muttered loud enough that he could damn well hear. Then she raised her voice, but fought to keep it level. Businesslike. “Until the task force has been officially reopened and your assistance has been requested by the proper channels, I consider this my crime scene. I’d like you out of it.”

“We don’t always get what we want,” he said, and his voice held a thread of something she couldn’t quite interpret. He glanced back at her, pale green eyes unreadable. “Your boss called my boss—that’s proper channels. You don’t like me being here? Take it up with the chief. If you’re not going to do that, then suit up. We’ve got a scene to work.”

FOUR HOURS LATER, with the body long gone and the empty, dismal-feeling room nearly processed, Seth straightened to his full height and stretched, groaning when his joints popped in protest. His knees still ached from time to time, a legacy of his younger days when he’d gone from catcher’s mitt to goalie’s mask and back again, depending on the season. Not quite good enough to go pro as either, he’d slid sideways into law and then law enforcement, gotten married and then—

Irritated, he slammed the lid on that train of thought. Ancient history had no place on the job. But still, the dark memories soured his already bleak mood as he turned to make the last few notations and pack up his kit.

He was aware of Cassie watching him, aware of the tension humming between them, a mix of professional antagonism and something more complicated. She’d made it obvious that she didn’t like him from the first moment they’d met. She wanted the crime scene to herself and resented his every breath. It annoyed her that he had better equipment, better contacts.

Normally, he wouldn’t have wasted five minutes on a local cop who didn’t want his help, but something about her drew him. Intrigued him. She was an evidence specialist who had to force herself to touch a corpse, a prickly woman with shadows of sadness in her eyes.

And those legs. He couldn’t help noticing her legs. She wore tan pants cut more for field work than fashion, but they did little to disguise the long length of her calves, the sassy curve of her rear and the aggressive swagger of her hips as she moved around the room, shoulders stiff with resentment.

But even as those legs strutted through his mind, he focused on the rest of her, on the prickles, the defensiveness and the bloody-minded territoriality. All things he had no patience with, especially when they interfered with his ability to do his job.

“You ready to go?” Cassie asked. She stood near the door holding her evidence kit, which held their photographs, notes and measurements, as well as a rough sketch of the scene.

He nodded. “Sure. Let’s get out of here.” He hefted his own kit, which contained fiber evidence, prints and other trace samples. Ninety-some percent of the evidence—maybe even all of it—would prove useless, either unrelated to the case or too generic to be of any help.

But it was those last few percentages, those moments of discovery, that made it all worthwhile.

He just hoped to God he’d have an “aha” moment this time. He and Cassie hadn’t talked about it—hell, they hadn’t talked about anything—but the knowledge hung in the tense air between them.

This was no act of passion or rage, no accidental death or manslaughter. It was premeditated. Posed. Practiced.

If they didn’t find this guy quickly, it was a sure bet he’d strike again.

As they left the dismal room and sealed it behind them, Seth couldn’t shake the feeling that he was missing something. He didn’t even try, because it was like that at every crime scene. That was part of what kept him sharp.

Cassie jerked her head toward the stairs. “I’ll meet you back at the station. When I called, the chief said the task force would meet in a half hour.”

Seth told himself not to watch her walk away, not to admire how her long legs ate up the hallway with an aggressive swing that was all Cassie—in a hurry and full of attitude. When she’d disappeared into the stairwell, he cast a final look back toward the sealed door, aware of something tickling the back of his brain. A connection maybe, or a suspicion.

He concentrated for a moment, but it didn’t gel, so he turned for the stairs knowing the detail would surface eventually. When he reached the ground floor he saw the door swing shut, evidence of Cassie’s passing. Figuring she’d left her truck in one of the visitors’ slots in the back lot, he shoved open the rear exit.

And heard Cassie’s voice shout, “Halt! Police!”

A weapon fired.

Then there was silence.

Chapter Two

Gun clutched in her hand, Cassie sprinted in pursuit of a dark figure nearly half a block ahead of her. She’d been stupid to shout, stupid to identify herself. Procedure be damned, she should’ve shot the guy the moment she saw him crouched near the back tire of her truck.

But she’d been caught up in thoughts of Varitek, thoughts of cop-shop politics. So she’d shouted and her shot had gone wide.

And now she was chasing some guy down the damn street.

Could her day get any worse?

Her lungs burned and her thighs howled, but she pushed faster. Ahead, a jean-clad figure wearing a dark ski jacket slipped on a patch of slush and went down. He scrambled up with the flexibility of a young man and skidded around a corner into a narrow street between two more crummy apartment buildings.

Cassie rounded the corner and accelerated, thinking she had the guy trapped in the alley, thinking she had—

A hot, wiry body slammed into her side, driving the breath from her lungs, sending her to the wet, cracked pavement. She screeched, tucked and rolled until she hit a steel trash bin. Then she lunged to her feet and faced her attacker.

His face was obscured by a brightly colored hat and muff combo, but she could see his eyes, which were hard, hazel chips gleaming with deadly sanity. He licked his lips. “You’re a blonde. My favorite.”

“Get your hands up,” she ordered. “Hands up and face the wall!”

She was too slow, or he was too fast—in the moment it took her to level her weapon, he lunged and swung something glittering and metallic at her head. She ducked and the blow glanced off her shoulder. Her arm went instantly numb. She fell to the side and her gun clattered to the pavement.

The gun, she had to get the gun! She saw it under the trash bin and lunged for it just as her attacker swung again. She dodged to the side, felt road muck soak through her pants and kicked out at his ankle.

Too little, too late. He scooped up the gun, stood, turned to her—

And his eyes went beyond her, to the alleyway opening. He saluted her with her own gun, and said, “I’ll be seeing you soon, beautiful.” And he turned and ran.

“Cassie!” Varitek pounded up to her, grabbed her arms and dragged her to her feet. “Are you hurt?”

“Let go of me!” She tried to shake him off but he wouldn’t shake, so she kicked at him. “He’s getting away!”

But Varitek was as immovable as granite. He held onto her with one hand and waved as two panting uniformed officers ran past. “He went out the back. About five-ten, male, jeans and a dark jacket. Red hat.”

As the officers bolted past, Cassie recognized the men who’d been watching the rear exit when she’d entered the crime-scene building. But where the hell had they been when red hat was messing with her truck?

When Varitek’s grip on her arm slackened, she yanked away. Then she got in his face and poked him in the chest. “Why didn’t you chase him? I was fine!”

At the moment her brain reported the feel of his rock-hard chest beneath her fingertip, he seemed to grow bigger, looming over her, dark brows furrowed, light green eyes nearly shooting sparks. “You were not fine! The bastard knocked you down and roughed you up. And where the hell’s your gun?” When she didn’t answer, he cursed. “He got it. Great. Nothing like paperwork to round out the night, never mind the idea of arming another criminal.”

She refused to back away, refused to back down even when the angry heat radiating from his body snuck through the chilled layers of shock and set up a vibration in her core. She held onto her anger when a sneaky little voice tried to tell her that he was right, maybe she should’ve waited for backup.

“What’s your problem?” she snapped. “I’m a cop just like you. Hell, I’ve probably got more street time logged in the past few years and I can bloody well handle myself. Don’t you get it? I’m not your problem!”

In a flash, he grabbed her by the front of her jacket and lifted her clean off her feet to press her against the rough wall of a nearby apartment building. Her heart jammed into her throat at the physical shock of his strength and his nearness.

She started to struggle, to curse him, to knee him where it hurt if that was what it took, but the look in his eyes stopped her. There was no rage, no irritation, not even a hint of the heat she’d seen moments before.

There was nothing. Complete, utter blankness.

“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.

She lost. Not him.

So, yeah, it was personal. Maybe not to him, but it sure as hell was to her. With Alissa and Maya out of town, it was up to her to defend the value of the new forensics department. It was up to her to make herself indispensable to the BCCPD, so the other cops would finally realize that she was worth something to the department.

That she was worth something at all.

Lee’s voice whispered around the edges of her mind, telling her it wasn’t enough, that it would never be enough. Gritting her teeth against a press of anger, she clicked over to her favorite Web search engine. She typed two words into the query box.

Seth Varitek.

If this was going to be a battle for control of the Bear Claw Forensics Department, it made sense for her to know her enemy, to know his weak spots, if there were any. And though public records might not give her the insight she needed, the Web was a good place to start. She didn’t need to be a full detective to know that.

She avoided his public profile on the FBI field office Web site. She’d checked it out a few weeks after he’d left Bear Claw, just out of curiosity, and had been unsettled by the hot rush that had punched through her when she’d seen his official photo. In the picture, his dark hair was buzzed close to his skull and his pale green eyes seemed to stare directly at her. It was by no means a glamor shot, it was too rugged for that, too fierce. But it had encapsulated what she remembered of the man, and it had left her far warmer than she’d liked.

“So we’ll skip that site,” she muttered to herself. “We’ll stipulate that he’s relatively hot and move on to the important stuff—figuring out what makes him tick.”

She kept one eye on the door as she clicked through lists of the papers he’d authored in recent years. He’d come looking for her sooner or later—to gloat if nothing else—and it wouldn’t do for him to find her prying. Wouldn’t do for him to know that she was interested, if only in the context of defending her territory.

The search results were sorted by date, so it took her ten minutes or so to work through the past couple of years’ worth of information on Varitek, mostly notations of meetings he’d attended or spoken at, research he’d done on computer simulation models and methods for integrating the various criminology databases.

“No wonder he has all those cutting-edge programs to work with,” she said, impressed in spite of herself. “He developed some of them.”

That also explained why he was a generalized evidence guru when so many of the FBI forensics experts specialized in one field, whether it be hair or paint chips or DNA. But that didn’t really help her. She needed something more. Something personal. Then she clicked on the next screen worth of information and hit pay dirt.