Tactical Advantage

by Julie Miller

  Correction. Someone was out there making out.

  “Party on, dude.” Annie lifted her glass in a wry toast and drank the last swallow of merlot before pushing to her feet and carrying the goblet and the wet paper towels to the kitchen sink.

  Okay, so maybe she was absolutely and utterly alone on New Year’s Eve. But she took heart in knowing it was

  better than being with the wrong person. She might still be with Adam, fighting to make something that wasn’t meant to be work. He’d still be trying to fix her and she’d still be coming up short if they’d gone ahead with their marriage plans. So what if she was a little eccentric, a little unsuitable for his well-connected family? Her summa cum laudes and her fellowships had gotten their attention, but ultimately, it wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough. Her lack of a pedigreed reputation and her desire to work for the crime lab instead of a revered research facility had trumped love. Adam Matuszak had left her.

  Just like every other boyfriend of any duration had left her. Just as her parents had left. She was alone. She was really, truly, freaking, horribly—

  The chirping ring of her telephone from the kitchen wall thankfully interrupted the negative spiral of her thoughts. Holidays were always the worst for her. Three-hundred-fifty-some-odd days of the year she coped just fine on her own. But on Independence Day and Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s, she longed to be a part of something—a part of someone else’s life without feeling like a charity case or an imposition.

  She tossed the wadded-up towels in the trash beneath the sink and picked up the portable phone from its wall-mounted cradle and answering machine.

  Recognizing the number of the KCPD task force commander she worked for, Annie took a deep breath to clear her thoughts and tamp down on the nervous spark of anticipation that made her stand up as straight and tall as five feet two inches of height allowed. She inhaled a second time before pushing the talk button and answering. “Happy New Year, Detective Montgomery.”

  “What? Oh, right. Happy New Year.” The veteran detective offered the greeting without altering his no-nonsense tone. “Am I catching you in the middle of a big party?”

  The amorous couple bumped against her door again. A quick glance across her quiet apartment revealed one cat creeping out from his hiding place to sample the spilled popcorn, and the other staring daggers at her as though she’d been the one to light those firecrackers outside. Some party.

  “No, sir. I’m...enjoying a quiet evening at home.” She shooed G.B. away from the free food and stooped down to toss the kernels back into the bowl. “Did you need something?”

  “Yeah, a favor.”

  Annie checked the big-faced watch on her wrist. At 12:03 a.m. on New Year’s Day?

  That spark of anticipation fired through her blood again with a sense of purpose this time, chasing away her nerves. Something bad had happened. Something that made her regret her little pity party. The only favors a senior detective would ask of her would involve her science and someone else’s tragedy.

  Annie left the popcorn where it had fallen and hurried back to her messenger-style purse on the counter to retrieve her case notebook. She flipped open the pink paisley flap and dug through the catch-all of contents, seeking an elusive pen. “What is it, sir?”

  “I know most of the crime lab has the holiday off, but I have a crime scene I need processed ASAP—before the weather gets any worse and destroys what little evidence we might find.”

  Annie’s purse was upside down, the contents tumbling across the quartz countertop when the import of what he was asking registered. “There’s been another rape?”

  Detective Spencer Montgomery led a group of investigators, public-safety specialists, criminal profilers and uniformed officers in a task force dedicated to solving a string of violent abductions and sexual assaults that had been terrorizing the professional women of Kansas City for several months now. Priority one for the team was to identify and apprehend the unknown subject, or unsub.

  “Yes,” Spencer Montgomery answered. “Partygoers taking a shortcut through the alley over by the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop found her in the snow.” The wind created static over the connection, giving her a better picture of how the elements were deteriorating outside. But the detective’s grim pronouncement came through loud and clear. “It’s our man. The Rose Red Rapist has struck again.”

  Annie was the CSI from the crime lab assigned to the elite task force. Although she still did work on other cases, the bulk of her time in the lab was now dedicated to this investigation. She grabbed her boots from beneath the coatrack beside the front door and pulled them on over her jeans.

  With a renewed sense of urgency that drove away any lingering mope to her attitude, Annie snatched a pen from the pocket of her coat and jotted down the particulars with one hand while she zipped up her boots with the other. “What hospital did they take her to? I’ve got a spare kit in my car. I can leave right now and process her.”

  The ominous crackle of wind stilled her frantic multitasking. “We’re taking her to the morgue, Annie.”

  Her phone tumbled from between her jaw and shoulder. She caught it and set it firmly against her ear. “He’s a rapist, not a killer. We determined his last victim had been killed by a jealous boyfriend, not our unsub. Are you sure it’s the same guy?”

  “The rose I’m looking at says yes.”

  Annie scooted the cats aside and sank down into her chair. She wasn’t sure if she was feeling shock or sorrow or frustration that after three different attacks, they were no closer to being able to identify the rapist than they’d been eight months ago. They’d figured out what type of woman he preyed on. They knew the neighborhood where the Rose Red Rapist chose those women. They knew he abducted them from one location and assaulted them in another, and that he sterilized the victims afterward to remove any trace of DNA. But thus far, the man himself had proved untraceable. “It’s bad enough that he’s hurting those women, but now he’s killing them?”

  “Looks that way.” She heard the slam of a car door and the windy static on the line suddenly cleared. She didn’t have to be a scientist to deduce that the detective had gotten inside his vehicle. “I’m calling all the task force members who are still in town for the holidays. Can you come?”

  “Of course.” Annie was on her feet again, crossing to the kitchen and tossing everything back into her purse. Work was one place where the loneliness didn’t get to her—probably because her science demanded facts, not intuition. Plus, most of the cold, hard truths she dealt with required her to be able to turn off her emotions, whether they stemmed from her lack of a personal life or her empathy for the victims she processed. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I’m leaving a couple of uniformed officers here with a tarp,” Detective Montgomery went on. “I’m going to follow the body to the morgue to see if I can get a preliminary report from the M.E.’s office.”

  Annie hooked the flap of her bag shut and carried it to the coatrack beside her door. The giggles and smooches from the couple on the landing had faded to inconsequential white noise. Her focus now was solely on the task at hand. “Have the M.E. check for trace as soon as possible and send it upstairs to my office at the lab. The cold air should preserve anything that’s on the victim, but once she gets inside and the snow on her starts to melt, the water could wash away or compromise anything useful.”

  “Will do. I’ll send Nick over to the crime scene with you until I can get back.”

  “Nick?” The scarf she was wrapping around her neck suddenly strangled like a vise. She hoped her mental groan hadn’t been audible. “Nick Fensom?”

  Detective Montgomery’s partner and fellow task force member, Nick Fensom, was the sour to Annie’s sweet, the oil to her water, the four-wheel-drive Jeep in her energy-efficient green car of a world. Nick Fensom got under her skin like no other man since Adam had—and not necessarily in a good way.

  He thought he was funny. He teased, he taunted, he spo
ke his mind the way most people breathed air—without thinking. And even after working with him on the task force for several months now, Annie still had no clue how to tell when the man was being serious and when he was making a joke. Either way, for some reason, it usually felt like the laugh was on her.

  She knew his dark brown hair, deep blue eyes and what was probably supposed to be streetwise charm captivated some women. But she didn’t see it. He was probably compensating for his relatively short height—maybe five-nine if he was lucky. Okay, so she had no room to fault him there; he still towered over her petite height.

  But Annie felt no empathy. She clung to whatever predictability and balance she could hold on to in her life, or else she’d sink into those lost little funks like the one she’d been in at the stroke of midnight. She didn’t understand Nick Fensom. She had to be on guard against the chaos he brought to her world. And that made him more of a distraction than a teammate, even if they did both work for KCPD and the task force.

  “Is there a problem, Annie?” Detective Montgomery reminded her that she’d been silent for too long.

  “Um, no.” Not nearly as snappy a comeback as Nick Fensom would have come up with. She could do better. She would not let the man get to her, especially when he wasn’t even here. “I can manage the scene by myself, sir. You don’t need to bother anyone else from the task force. I’m sure Detective Fensom is out on a date tonight.”

  “He won’t be,” her commander assured her, much to Annie’s chagrin. “Holidays mean family for Nick. Besides, I need as many good eyes here as possible. The snow is coming down harder, and my crime scene is disappearing as we speak.”

  Fine. For the investigation, for Detective Montgomery and the sake of tonight’s unfortunate victim, she’d find a way to make spending time with the irritating, muscles-for-brains detective work.

  Bracing herself for the battle of wits and wills where she never quite felt like she was winning, Annie plucked the royal blue stocking cap from her coat pocket and pulled it on over her head. “I’m on my way. I’ll meet Detective Fensom there.”

  Annie had hung up the phone and bundled up in everything but her gloves when the couple in the hallway crashed against her door again. Clearly they were drunk and having a marvelous time getting intimately acquainted. But she had a crime scene to get to. She held her breath and turned the knob, praying she wouldn’t see anything too intimate.

  As soon as she peeked out, music and conversation blasted her from the open apartment across the landing. Annie shook her head and stepped out, locking her door behind her. “What are you doing, Roy?”

  Yes, there were some buttons undone, and the blonde woman’s long straight hair was definitely mussed. But her neighbor, Roy Carvello, and his girlfriend du jour had already imbibed too much alcohol to have much success with any personal fireworks tonight.

  “Annie!” Roy draped one arm around the blonde and pushed himself upright against the wall with the other. “Happy New Year!”

  He slurred the words and stumbled forward, bringing the tall blonde with him. Annie braced one foot behind her and caught him by the shoulders, pushing them both back against the wall. “Easy there, big guy. I don’t want either of you tumbling down the stairs.”

  “You’re so nice.” Roy’s stale beer breath curled the hairs in Annie’s nose. He clamped a big hand around her arm and hugged the other woman closer. “S’isn’t she nice, Bets-shy?”

  Extricating herself from the awkward embrace, Annie smiled up at the drunken couple. “I don’t want to see you behind the wheel of a car tonight, okay?” She included the taller blonde in the friendly warning. “You either, Betsy.”

  “Un-uh,” the blonde promised, crossing her finger over the swell of a voluptuous breast.

  “’Kay. Happy New Year.” Repeating himself, Roy leaned down and planted a stale kiss on Annie’s mouth.

  Startled, Annie pushed him firmly away. “Oh, gee. You’ve still got some of those left to go around, hmm?”

  “Hey,” Betsy protested. “I thought those lips were for me.”

  “They are, baby.” When he turned to capture the other woman’s pouty mouth in a kiss, Annie used the directional momentum to guide them back across the landing. But her husky neighbor planted his feet in the open doorway, showing an unexpected bit of focus in his bleary eyes when he looked down at her. “Annie’s my friend. My good friend.” He flipped up the collar of her coat, tending to her as though he cared. “You headin’ out to a party? I wondered why you didn’t show up at mine.”

  Possibly because drunk and loud weren’t her favorite things? Or maybe because the first Carvello party she’d gone to had ended up with Roy putting the same moves on her that he was putting on Blondie tonight? Only Annie had been too sober and not nearly as interested in exploring the possibilities as Betsy apparently was.

  But he’d proven too nice a neighbor—when he wasn’t in party mode—for Annie to hurt his feelings. “Yeah, Roy. I’ve got someone waiting for me.” So maybe that someone was a detective she wasn’t really looking forward to seeing. But at least she wasn’t lying. “Be safe.” She nudged them both into Roy’s apartment. She even had a smile for Betsy. “You, too. Remember, no driving.”

  “Not to worry,” Roy promised. “We’ll be spending the night right here. Together.”

  “Oooh, Roy,” the woman cooed, sliding her fingers into Roy’s dusty-brown hair and pulling him into his apartment.

  Feeling grossly uncomfortable, unwelcome and unnecessary as the giggles and kissing resumed, Annie shut the door and hurried down the stairs. After looping the pink strap of her bag over her neck and shoulder, she pushed open the outside door and the shock of the wintry night air nearly stole the breath from her lungs. She pulled on her gloves and waved to the neighbors who were now writing their names in the air with sparklers.

  Hunching her shoulders against the bracing wind, she set out across the snow-dusted courtyard toward the fenced-in lot across the street where her car was parked.

  She was alone and dateless on yet another holiday, babysitting the grown man next door. Now she could look forward to spending the next few hours with her nemesis, Nick Fensom, and a crime scene where a woman had been brutalized and killed, all while freezing her fingers and toes.

  Happy New Year, indeed.

  * * *

  “HEY, GUYS—KEEP IT DOWN, okay?” Nick Fensom apologized for the loud piano music and fourth verse of “Auld Lang Syne” coming from the living room where his family was toasting the New Year with sparkling grape juice and prosecco. He moved down the hallway, farther away from the three generations of Fensoms and extended family who had gathered at his parents’ home to celebrate. “Yeah, Spencer, I know the address. Hell of a way for that woman’s family to ring in the new year.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m not letting time or the weather get in the way of finding answers. I’m tired of that bastard staying one step ahead of us.”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, Spence.” The piano music stopped and the boisterous conversation among his father’s parents, his mom and dad, his mother’s younger brother and his own five younger brothers and sisters faded into the dining room and kitchen. Nick opened the coat closet off the foyer and pulled down the metal box where he stored his badge and sidearm whenever he visited the house where he’d grown up. “Let me say some goodbyes here and explain the situation, and I’ll be there in twenty, thirty minutes, tops.”

  “Sorry to tear you away.” Although their looks and personalities were as different as night and day, Nick and his partner for three years, Spencer Montgomery, had grown as close as Nick was to either of his brothers. “Did your grandmother make her tiramisu cake?”

  Nick chuckled at the rare wistful softening in Spencer’s voice. “Stop by the house later today and I’ll make sure Grandma saves you a piece.”

  “I’ll do that.” Just like that, the glimpse of the human being beneath his partner’s buttoned-up exterior vanished. “I’ll
be at the morgue if you find anything useful. In the meantime, I want you and Annie to go over that alley with a fine-tooth comb. If there’s anything—or anyone—close by that makes you suspicious, check it out. And call me.”

  “Does Pee Wee know I’m coming?”

  “It’s CSI Hermann. Or Annie.” Spencer chided Nick’s inclination to tease the petite coworker with the wildly curly dark hair and apparent immunity to his charms. “And yes, she knows. So be on your best behavior. I need her to focus all those smarts on the crime scene—not on trading quips with you.”

  “I’ll mind my manners if she does,” Nick promised. “I’m on my way.”

  He snapped his phone shut and unhooked his belt to fasten on his holster and detective’s badge. Then he grabbed his insulated black leather jacket and gloves and headed toward the noise from the heart of the house.

  Nick paused for a moment in the kitchen archway to watch his mother, grandmother and oldest sister, Natalie, cleaning up second and third helpings of meatballs and soup and homemade bread. His middle sister, Nadine, was dancing in front of the microwave to whatever tune was playing in her earbuds while she waited for a bag of popcorn to pop. His father got a playful smack on the knuckles and a shooing from the room when he sneaked a molasses cookie from the desserts still on the table. His two brothers, Noah and Nate, and Nell, the baby of the Fensom family, were probably back in the dining room, dealing out another hand of penny-ante poker with their grandfather and Uncle George.

  Nick’s chest expanded in a sigh that revealed a mix of happiness and regret. His hand drifted down to the gun belted at his waist. He hated to leave the bustle and conversation, the good food and fun. But this was why he answered calls like Spencer’s in the middle of the night—to protect his city and the people he loved. The sooner he and the task force could put away the Rose Red Rapist, the sooner he’d stop worrying—a little less, at any rate—about his mother and grandmother and sisters being safe on Kansas City’s streets.