A Tracers Trilogy

by Laura Griffin

  “Okay, don’t look now, but there’s a very hot guy checking you out, about two o’clock.”

  Mia’s gaze shot up.

  “I said don’t look!”

  She jerked her attention back to Alex, but not before getting a brief flash of the man staring at her from across the room.

  “Dark hair, leather jacket?”

  “Yup.”

  “He’s probably looking at you,” Mia said.

  “Uh, no. Trust me. That high-intensity stare is directed at you, babe.”

  Mia stirred her drink and flicked another glance at the man. Alex was right. He sat at a table with three other men and a pitcher of beer, but he wasn’t paying attention to any of them. His black-eyed gaze was focused squarely on her.

  Mia tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and wished she’d done something more tonight than pull her strawberry-blond mop into a ponytail. “I think I know him from somewhere.” She took a casual sip of her drink.

  “You know him?” Alex sounded surprised.

  “I don’t know his name, but I recognize the eyes.”

  “Well, he’s definitely not a lab rat,” Alex said, and Mia shot her a glare. “What? I’m just saying. No way he works at the Delphi Center.”

  “He doesn’t,” Mia said. She didn’t know all of her coworkers, but she wouldn’t have missed this one.

  And Alex was right. He didn’t look like the men in her orbit.

  “Fifty bucks he’s a cop.” Alex plucked the plastic sword from her drink and nibbled off the cherry.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “A leather jacket in June? And check out his buddies. Every one of them’s packing.”

  Mia forced herself to look at Alex, but from the corner of her eye she saw the man get up and move toward their table.

  “Crap, he’s walking over here,” Mia said. “Quick, what were we talking about?”

  “Your job.”

  “Anything but that.”

  “Your trip. Lito Island. How are the beaches down there? I’ve never been, but I’ve heard—”

  “Hi.” A shadow fell over the table, and both Mia and Alex glanced up.

  His eyes locked on Mia’s. They were so dark, she couldn’t tell where the pupils ended and the irises began.

  “Caramia Voss, right?”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Alex kicked her under the table.

  “Hi.” Mia cleared her throat. “I… Do I know you from somewhere?”

  Alex’s phone hummed.

  “No. But I know you. Ric Santos.”

  “Sorry, have to take this.” Alex stood up with her phone pressed to her ear. Mia watched in dismay as she headed for the door leading to the bar’s patio.

  “Mind?” Ric nodded at the chair beside her.

  “Not at all.”

  He sank into the seat and rested his beer glass on the table. Alex’s departure didn’t seem to bother him.

  “So.” Mia cleared her throat. “How exactly do you know me?”

  “Heard you give a talk about a year ago at the Delphi Center.”

  “You’re a scientist?”

  The corner of his mouth curled up. “I’m a cop. San Marcos PD.”

  Mia stirred her drink but didn’t take a sip. She didn’t want to get loopy with some guy she barely knew. Last time she’d done that, she’d woken up with a brutal hangover and a crush on Troy Stockton that had taken her years to shake loose.

  She pushed the drink away. “It must have been a riveting speech. What’d I talk about?”

  He smiled. “Deoxyribonucleic acid.”

  “I’m impressed. I have coworkers who can’t even pronounce it right.”

  “Hey, I was paying attention.” He leaned forward on his elbow and turned his glass. His gaze met hers. “And it was.”

  “Was what?”

  “Riveting.”

  Yeah, right. She searched his face, looking for signs that he was joking. But she didn’t see any. He was a good actor. Or maybe charmer was a better word. Yes, Mia worked at one of the world’s most elite forensic laboratories, but she had yet to meet a man who considered it much of a turn-on. In fact—with the exception of homicide detectives, who were constantly asking her for favors—most guys avoided the subject of her job altogether. They found it intimidating.

  Ric eased closer, and she felt herself doing the same. “So, Caramia—”

  “Only my grandmother ever calls me that.” She smiled. “It’s Mia.”

  He nodded. “I bet you stay pretty busy, huh? Woman with your expertise?”

  “Too busy for my own good.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She rolled her eyes. “My supervisor just loaded me down with work so he could go on vacation.” She shrugged. “I put in a lot of overtime, so I guess he figured I could handle it. But honestly? I’m feeling pretty burned out at the moment. The lab’s been flooded lately.”

  “You guys have, what, a hundred scientists over there? Can’t you get a hand with anything?”

  “Sure, some of it,” she said. “It’s just, there’s this specialty area. It’s called miniSTR analysis?”

  “Never heard of it. What’s miniSTR?”

  “Short Tandem Repeats are markers on the DNA strand. Anyway, miniSTR analysis is a somewhat new technique that enables us to get a full DNA profile from a very small or highly degraded sample. I have more experience with it than anyone else in our group, so a lot of that work falls to me. I’ve been swamped.”

  He leaned back in his chair and watched her, and she felt a wave of nervousness. Why was she telling him all this? Probably not what he’d had in mind when he dropped into this bar on a Saturday night.

  “So.” She forced a smile. “What about you? I guess things are quiet around town until fall semester starts up?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Got a lot of campgrounds in the area. Hiking trails. Tourists getting into trouble.”

  His gaze flicked over her shoulder, and she knew he was looking at his buddies. She sipped some piña colada and scanned the bar for Alex. Her friend wouldn’t leave her here, but she’d definitely make herself scarce for a while so that Mia could soak up some male attention. It wasn’t going anywhere, though, because Mia had made the mistake of lapsing into geek-speak.

  But then Ric leaned in again, and his dark eyes pinned her. “Listen, Mia. I want to ask you something.”

  She got a warm little flutter in her stomach. “Yes?”

  “Just tell me straight out if you’re not up for it.” His voice was low and serious, and Mia’s imagination took off.

  “Okay.”

  “You watch any news lately?”

  “Not really. I don’t have a lot of time, so—”

  “You heard the media talking about the Paradise Killer? Down on the coast? I’ve got this cold case,” he said, “and I think it might be related.”

  Mia looked into those intense eyes and heard the faint sound of her ego cracking into a dozen pieces.

  “That talk you gave,” he continued, “about touch DNA. I think that might really help us out here. You handle some of that at your lab, don’t you?”

  “We do, yes.”

  “And some of it’s pro bono, right? Cases where there’s no budget? Maybe smaller departments?”

  “About ten percent of our cases are privately subsidized. We’ve got grants. And people who donate their time.”

  Alex appeared at the table, thank goodness, saving her from having to recite the rest.

  “Hi,” Alex said, smiling.

  Mia smiled back and gave her the tiniest shake of the head.

  “Did you want to head out soon or… ?” Alex glanced at her watch.

  “Yes, we should go.” Mia jumped up and snatched her purse off the back of the chair. She dug out a business card and handed it to the most attractive man to hit on her in a very long time.

  Only he hadn’t been hitting on her.

  “Call me at the l
ab,” she said cheerfully. “We can talk more about your case.”

  Elaina tried to ignore the sculpted seat, the cool feel of leather against the back of her thighs. She felt like she was in a cockpit. She glanced out the window as they zoomed down the highway toward the marina. They were much too close to the ground, and she fought the urge to pick up her feet.

  “Relax. It’s just a car.”

  Just a car. Right. This man must be very, very wealthy.

  But she sensed he hadn’t always been. She stole a glance at him. There was something elemental about him—in his speech, his dress, his mannerisms. If she had to guess, she’d say he came from a blue-collar background and had earned what he had.

  She needed to find out. He was a source in her investigation. She needed to learn more about him in order to weigh his credibility.

  Yeah, that’s why she was interested.

  He shifted gears again, and she glanced at his thigh in those jeans.

  This was ridiculous. His car was having just the effect it was intended to have on women. And she had no doubt that was why she was here.

  Elaina looked out her window and took a deep breath. She needed to go running. She needed to exorcise some of this restlessness she’d been feeling the past few days. She’d had sex on the brain lately, and it was Troy’s fault. But she was here to work, not socialize.

  And he was here to pump her for information he could use in his book. She needed to keep that in mind. Behind all this helpfulness, he had an agenda.

  Troy cut a glance at her. “What’s wrong?”

  She cleared her throat. “Your car. It doesn’t smell like smoke.”

  “So?”

  “So, you’re a smoker. You were smoking Marlboro Reds at the marina.”

  He downshifted. “I don’t smoke much.”

  “When do you smoke?”

  “When I feel like it.”

  He whipped into the marina parking lot and slid into a space beside a sheriff’s unit. He got out and came around to open her door. She would have refused his help, but she was fairly sure she’d look like an idiot trying to climb out gracefully.

  “We’ll take the Supra.”

  “What’s a Supra?”

  “Speedboat.” He led her down a different pier than the one she’d been on earlier today and stopped at a slip. It was another black boat, but this one had Salt Shaker scripted across the side. A lyric from “Margaritaville” popped into her head.

  Troy braced a foot on the boat and one on the dock and offered her a hand getting aboard. Then he untied the bowline and hopped in. He checked some gauges at the helm while she surveyed the boat with relief. This one was small and aerodynamic. It had two padded vinyl seats, so she wouldn’t have to stand, clutching his chair the whole time. She made herself comfortable in the passenger seat while he backed out of the slip.

  Elaina glanced over her shoulder at the darkened marina. The bait shop was shut down for the night, and the only light came from the red glow of the Coke machine. A number of boat slips were empty—people probably out fishing or spending the night on the water.

  “Why aren’t you using running lights?” she asked over the hum of the engine.

  “Don’t need ’em.” He tapped the control panel, where she saw another high-tech navigation system.

  “But what if people don’t see us?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  She pretended to understand, but she didn’t, really. What good would it do to be invisible if someone could hear them?

  “This thing’s fast,” Troy said. “We can outpace anything on this bay.”

  They reached the mouth of the cove and he paused to fiddle with the GPS.

  She watched him with frustration. She’d never driven a motorboat. She doubted she could even captain a Sunfish by herself. Her father had always manned the rudder of their catamaran while she’d simply followed orders.

  Elaina looked north, then south, trying to visualize the map she’d studied. To the north, the causeway lights formed an arc-shaped constellation against the night sky. To the south, the wildlife refuge was a shadowy void. The mainland lay due west, and she saw the flickering spires of the oil refinery in Bay Port, which never seemed to sleep.

  “Let’s go north,” she said. “The boat docks where Gina and Valerie’s cars were found are on that end of the island. Maybe he’d come from there.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  She stood up. “And it’s my turn to drive.”

  Elaina was a quick study, and it didn’t take her long to catch on to the navigation system. She had a knack for steering, too, and she kept the boat on course, despite the choppiness of the water. Troy had never let a woman drive his boat before, and he decided he liked it. Something about watching Special Agent Elaina McCord take control of all that horsepower really worked for him. He wanted to get her behind the wheel of his Ferrari, too, but that was probably a fantasy. She seemed to have a puritanical streak.

  “Is that depth finder broken, or is it really this shallow?” she asked.

  He glanced down at the digital display, which showed a mere three feet between the boat’s hull and the bottom. “It’s accurate. Fact, the average depth of this bay’s less than four feet. You could practically walk to the mainland if you had to.”

  Elaina shifted back some, bumping into him. His closeness seemed to make her edgy, a fact he was finding pretty entertaining.

  “And you said you’ve been boating around here most of your life? So you grew up in Lito?”

  “Bay Port,” he said. “But my mom worked at one of the hotels, so I spent a lot of time on the island.”

  “And your dad?”

  His dad was a steel-fisted son of a bitch. “He worked on the rigs offshore. You’re gonna want to ease left now,” he said, changing the subject. “See that channel marker?”

  “Not really.”

  “Just ahead. ’Bout eleven o’clock.” He put his hand over hers and turned the wheel.

  “I got it.”

  “That’ll take us right up to the causeway. There’re some boat docks up and down the coast there, maybe we’ll see something.”

  She followed the markers, which were vague black silhouettes against the moonlit water.

  “Almost there,” he said as she neared the bridge.

  She glanced around, and her ponytail blew against his arm. She smelled good. He’d been buried in work lately, and it had been much too long since he’d spent time around a woman.

  “Here, lemme take over a minute.” He nudged her aside, and she stepped into the space between the two seats. “You’re not bad for a first-timer.”

  She scanned the horizon. “Seems like we’re the only ones out here.”

  “We’re not.”

  He neared a large cove and slowed down. After cruising the shoreline for a few minutes, he found the spot he was looking for. It was deep enough that they wouldn’t run aground and far enough from the shore that they wouldn’t drift into the marsh. He cut the engine.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  She glanced around, clearly taken off guard by this plan. She didn’t strike him as someone who liked to sit still.

  “We just sit here?”

  “Relax. Pretend you’re on a stakeout.” Troy flipped up a seat cushion in back and snagged a frosty bottle from the refrigerated compartment underneath. He held it out for her. “Beer?”

  “No. Thank you. I shouldn’t drink on the job.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t ride in a sports car. Can’t drink.” He rested the beer on the side of the boat and fished out a water bottle. He stood over her with it, dripping icy condensation onto her bare thigh. “You sure make a lot of rules for yourself, Agent McCord.”

  She took the water and looked away. Instead of settling into his seat, he sat on the bench beside her, ratcheting up her tension level. He twisted the top off his beer.

  “So tell me how an agent who doesn’t spe
ak Spanish gets posted to a border town.” He watched her reaction carefully as he tipped back his beer. He couldn’t see her face well in the dimness, but her shoulders stiffened.

  “I don’t know, really.”

  “You didn’t request it?”

  “No.”

  “But don’t new agents get some input?”

  “Usually.” She took a sip.

  “And what did you request?”

  “D.C., Baltimore, New York. In that order.”

  She wanted to be near headquarters. She must be serious about this profiling stuff.

  She eased her knee away from his, and he smiled. Hell, maybe she’d be good at it. She had him nailed, obviously. But how hard was that? He was attracted to her, and he’d made no effort to hide it.

  “And now you’re stuck down here, huh? What do you think?”

  She watched him for a beat. Then she looked away. “I think it’s hot.”

  “That’s it?”

  She shrugged.

  “Oh, come on. You’ve been here, what? Six months?”

  “Seven.”

  “In seven months, all you’ve noticed is the weather?”

  He could tell he was pushing her buttons. Maybe she thought sharing an opinion would be like confiding in him. She seemed to prefer keeping people at a distance.

  Which was fine with him. He liked a challenge.

  She turned to look at him again. “You really want to know what I think?”

  “That’s why I asked.”

  “Okay. I think the men around here need an attitude adjustment.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Yes. They have one of three reactions to a woman with a badge: They ignore you, they talk down to you, or they try to get you into bed.”

  “Hmm,” he said, knowing he fell squarely into the last category. “Interesting. And which of those hacks you off most?”

  “The talking down,” she said immediately.

  “Well, I apologize,” he said. “On behalf of my idiot Texas brethren. The talking-down thing—I assume you mean Breck and Maynard?”

  “And my boss. And the guys I work with, and pretty much every man I’ve met since I set foot in this state. With maybe a few exceptions.”

  “Cinco.”