Tactical Advantage

by Julie Miller

  With a pensive sigh, he adjusted his glasses at his temple and pulled back. “When I got the call about your attack, the first thing I thought was that the Rose Red Rapist had returned to the scene to hurt you.”

  Interesting. Rumor—make that legend—around the crime lab was that Mac Taylor had earned those facial scars and lost the vision in one eye years earlier when he had gone head-to-head with some bad guys out to destroy the department’s then-fledgling crime lab. Annie had a strong suspicion that she’d been the victim of something similar, albeit on a much smaller scale.

  “The attack on me wasn’t about rape, sir. This was...vandalism. Someone wanted to steal the evidence and erase any clues from the crime scene.”

  “From the sound of things, he did a thorough job.”

  Raj came over to the foot of the exam table. The caterpillar had separated into two eyebrows again. “I couldn’t find the handprints you mentioned. Or any sign of your kit.” He turned his dark eyes to their boss. “I did find bleach that had been splashed onto the bricks. Between that and the weather, the blood evidence Annie found has all been compromised.”

  “Raj, I want you to take those tarps and the cut ropes back to the lab. See if you can get any kind of trace off them, either from the original crimes or from Annie’s attack. Maybe we can identify the tool that cut the ropes.” Mac stepped aside as his wife moved in to finish doctoring Annie’s wound. “It’s not enough that this bastard won’t get caught. Now he’s messing with what little evidence we do have. I want to stay on top of this. I know it’s a holiday, Raj, but I need you at the lab today.”

  “Of course, sir. I’ll find whatever I can. Take care, Annie.” Raj circled the table to take Annie’s hand on the opposite side. He wrapped his dark-skinned fingers around hers and squeezed. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “I’ll be at work later today,” she insisted, squeezing back. “Save something for me to do.”

  His dark eyes sparkled when he laughed. “You’re a shameless workaholic, Annie.”

  She smiled back. “It’s what I do.”

  Raj’s phone rang and his smile vanished. He pulled the cell off his belt and checked the number. His eyebrows gathered in another frown.

  Julia Dalton Taylor looked up from her work. “No cell phones in the E.R., please.”

  “I need to take this.”

  With a curt nod across the table, Mac dismissed Raj from the E.R. “Yes? I said I would. It’s a holiday and we’re short-staffed. You have to give me time...” Raj’s voice grew more strident, his Indian accent more pronounced, as it faded into the hallway.

  “I wonder what that was all about. He’s right about one thing—we are short on help today.” But when Mac looked down at Annie lying on the bed, his expression said he wanted to dismiss her, too.

  “I’m so sorry.” Annie’s spirits faded beneath the bright lights shining down onto the E.R. gurney where she lay. Those tarps would be next to useless for retrieving any evidence; they’d been out in the elements for so long. There had to be a way to salvage this train wreck of a night. And then a memory surfaced in the pounding throb of her brain. “Wait. Call Raj back.” She pushed herself up onto one elbow and pointed to the camera sticking out of her oversize purse on a chair in the corner of the treatment room. “I did manage to save the camera with all the shots I took of the crime scene. I’ll show you.” Swinging her legs over the edge of the gurney, Annie sat up to get it.

  “Hold on, you’re not going anywhere yet.” With a hand on either shoulder, both Julia and Mac urged her to stay put. “I’ll check it out.”

  Once he seemed convinced she’d sit still for Julia to complete her work, Mac borrowed a pair of sterile gloves from his wife’s medical supplies and retrieved the camera himself.

  Ignoring the headache that had been aggravated by the sudden movement, Annie still wanted to prove that she hadn’t completely botched the investigation. “I can document everything he took, so we can put out a BOLO on the items that were in my spare kit.”

  Mac shook his head. “Even if we found them, they’d be out of our chain of custody. Any findings would be inadmissible in court and any discoveries made from those tainted findings would be thrown out.”

  Annie knew that, but hope was about all she had left. This was a worst-case scenario for any criminologist, and if Rachel Dunbar’s killer went free because Annie hadn’t done her job, then she’d be disappointing all kinds of people—Mac Taylor, the crime lab, the task force, the D.A.’s office and KCPD—not to mention the Dunbar family. “Well, we still have whatever evidence comes off the victim. And I can go back with Raj to process anything that’s left at the scene. Footprints, fibers from my attacker.”

  Mac offered her an apologetic smile. “It’s been snowing out there for hours. Any trace evidence has been buried and degraded beyond usefulness. Raj already took anything we can process to the lab.”

  Hopeful thoughts faded and Annie’s shoulders sagged. The clock on the wall above Mac’s head said it was nearly time for breakfast. “The press has probably gotten wind of the theft by now. That’ll give Gabriel Knight and Vanessa Owen plenty to criticize KCPD for in their reports. I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Quit apologizing.” Mac opened up his own evidence kit and pulled out a bag to place the camera inside. “I’m more interested in the well-being of the people who work for me rather than a newspaper reporter with a grudge against the department or some spotlight-seeking woman and her camera crew.” He locked down his kit and peeled off his gloves before facing her again. “I don’t blame you for any of this, Annie. I’m mad because one of my people got hurt. Where’s the officer who’s supposed to watch over you while you process the crime scene?”

  “Right here, sir.” The curtain blocking off the room opened and her dark-haired annoyance-turned-rescuer appeared. “I assume it’s all right to come in now, ma’am?”

  What was Nick Fensom still doing here? She’d been in this examination bay for nearly two hours now. Once she’d filled out her paperwork and been called in to see a doctor, she assumed he’d gone back to chase down the bad guys, or at least knock on more doors and ask more questions and intrude on more New Year’s Eve celebrations in the neighborhood where Rachel Dunbar’s body had been found.

  With a nod of permission from the nurse, Nick let the curtain close behind him and came farther in, filling up the tiny space with his heat and charging the cool, sterile air with that electric energy that seemed to follow him wherever he went. His blue eyes winced as they danced over Annie’s bandaged head. Oh, great. First Raj and now Nick? Just how beat-up did she look? The grimace disappeared as he nodded to the trauma nurse. Then he turned his attention to the taller, older man bagging up her camera. “I’m Nick Fensom. Fourth Precinct. Your nephew, Pike Taylor, is on the task force with me.” He thumbed over his shoulder to include Annie in the introduction. “With us.”

  “Mac Taylor, Crime Lab Supervisor.” He slowly reached out to take Nick’s extended hand. “This is your idea of teamwork? Maybe you’d better put Pike in charge of crime scene security, Detective.”

  Annie sat up a little straighter. True, Pike Taylor was a K-9 cop who specialized in security procedures, and whose height and bulk made up almost two of Nick. But the attack on her had been about stealth—Pike’s brute strength wouldn’t have kept her any safer than Nick’s speedy response had.

  “It wasn’t Nick’s fault,” Annie explained. “I should have been more aware of my surroundings. I get a little obsessed when I’m working evidence and can forget the bigger picture. I should have called for backup as soon as I suspected there was someone in the alley with me. But I hesitated. I wanted to verify the intruder’s presence first.”

  Nick’s blue gaze nailed her over the bulge of his shoulder.

  “You shouldn’t have had to.” Apparently, he didn’t need or want her defense. His hand fisted in the thick leather jacket he held down at his side, his expression grimly apologetic as he faced the higher-ranking off
icer. “This is all on me, sir. I dropped the ball. I sent the uniformed officers away, and then got distracted by my own end of the investigation. I let her out of my sight for longer than I intended. It won’t happen again.”

  “You won’t let me out of your sight?”

  “That’s right. I intend to keep a close eye on you.”

  Annie puffed up at the implication she wasn’t capable of taking care of herself. She pushed against the exam table. “I don’t need a babysitter or a nurse.” She flashed an apology to Julia Dalton Taylor. “Except for you, ma’am, of course. But I don’t—”

  “Relax, Hermann.” Nick reached back and tapped her knee with the back of his fingers and she froze.

  What was with all the touching tonight? This morning? Why were her traitorous nerve endings leaping to attention at even that most casual contact? Nothing had leaped when Raj had squeezed her hand. And who did Nick think he was anyway, deciding what she should or shouldn’t do?

  “Relax?” Impossible. But Nurse Taylor’s hand on her arm diverted her attention, forcing her to be still while she cut and secured the last few inches of the bandage around her head.

  Nick had already turned his attention back to Mac anyway. “If you need to write me up, sir, I understand.”

  Nothing about tonight was standard operating procedure in Annie’s book. At last, she scooted off the edge of the table without anyone trying to stop her. When her feet hit the floor the room swayed a little and she grabbed on to the bed behind her and held on while her stomach righted itself.

  “Whoa.” Julia Dalton Taylor’s hand was instantly there.

  But Annie was tired of sitting and feeling weak and unable to take care of herself. “Why would he write you up? He’s my supervisor, not yours. I’m the one who lost the evidence. I screwed up.”

  As soon as Nick spun around, he tossed his jacket over the end of the exam table and braced his hand beneath her elbow. “Are you seriously arguing with me about who gets to take the hit on their service record?”

  Ignoring the zap of heat through her sweater sleeve, she shrugged his hand away and held on to Julia’s arm until her legs steadied beneath her. “I’m saying I don’t need a babysitter. I’ve never had a problem before tonight’s call, and I damn sure won’t ever let it happen again.”

  “Are you gonna take the next guy down all by yourself? Where was your gun?” Nick leaned in half a step. “Still in your car, right? Do you even know how to shoot the thing?”

  Silently cursing her diminutive height, Annie tilted her head back and splayed her hand in the middle of Nick’s chest to push him out of her personal space. “I was freezing cold and not thinking straight.”

  But the man didn’t budge. Instead, she palmed a hard swell of muscle beneath the taut softness of the pale gray sweater he wore and her argument stuttered into silence. Nick wasn’t the only one who’d overstepped the boundaries of professional distance and adversarial banter that normally described their relationship. She’d reached out to touch him more than once tonight, too.

  There was a beat of silence in the E.R. bay, a moment frozen in time, before Nick spoke in a tight voice. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt, Annie. Not on my watch.”

  Her fingers tightened in the finely knit wool as the shadows of something mysterious darkened his eyes to a rich midnight blue. Her lips pursed to question him on the raw sound of that apology.

  But before she could figure out exactly what she needed to ask, Julia circled behind Nick to stand in front of her husband.

  “Mac, quit analyzing these two.” Mac’s quick snap of attention down to his wife made Annie realize her boss had been observing the interchange. She quickly snatched her hand away from Nick’s chest and curled her tingling fingers into her palm. Just what had that clever eye seen? What was the deal between her and Nick this morning?

  “She’s my responsibility, Jules,” Mac insisted. “I don’t like it when my people get hurt. I feel I need to restrict her to the lab, where it’s safe.”

  “No—”

  “You know as well as I do that sometimes things happen that are beyond any one officer’s control.” Julia shushed Annie’s protest and gently chided both men. “Instead of debating who’s to blame for Miss Hermann’s injuries, I’d be more worried about the two fake cops and what they said or did that convinced the legitimate officers it was safe to abandon their post.”

  Nick glanced back at the nurse. “I’m already working on that, ma’am.”

  Mac seemed to accept his wife’s words more easily than Nick’s or Annie’s explanations and apologies. “I don’t see the need for any kind of reprimand. Or restriction of duty. Yet.” He pointed a finger at Nick. “But you keep an eye on her.”

  Nick’s thick chest expanded with a deep breath. “Yes, sir.”

  Mac defused some of the tension between the two men by switching from supervisor to CSI mode. He dropped the camera into an evidence bag and scrawled his name on its chain-of-custody sheet. He brought it over for Annie to sign, as well. “I’ll get this to the lab myself so we can get the pictures processed. I’ll check it for the perp’s prints, too.”

  “He was wearing gloves,” Annie warned him. “I remember seeing black from head to toe—ski mask, hood, black parka, gloves—you won’t find any identifiers.”

  Her boss was nothing if not thorough. “I’ll check it anyway. There could be trace. In the meantime, you get some rest.” He turned to Nick. “You keep me in the loop on anything you find regarding Annie’s assault. And you—” he dipped his sandy-blond head to kiss his wife “—I’ll see at home.”

  Julia nodded, smiling up at her husband. “Happy New Year.”

  After Mac left, Nick picked up his jacket and shrugged into it. He pulled a charcoal-gray knitted scarf from his pocket and headed toward the curtain blocking them from the other E.R. bays while Annie turned her attention to Julia.

  The nurse handed her papers and imparted some quick medical info. “The doctor left you this prescription for antibiotics, but with your tetanus shot current, there’s really nothing you need to do except get some rest. If you develop a severe headache, double vision, nausea—anything that comes on suddenly and lingers or concerns you—call your personal physician immediately or come back to the E.R. Check in with your doctor in a week to ten days about removing the stitches. The information’s all here if you have any questions. Do you have a ride home?”

  Annie’s mouth opened, but she didn’t get a chance to speak.

  “Yes, she does.”

  Annie swung around. Nick Fensom hadn’t left. The crackle of electricity that blazed in those cobalt eyes hadn’t gone, either.

  He was daring her to argue with him. “I’m taking her home.”

  “All right, then. Off to the next patient.” Julia gathered her instruments and computer pad. “Oh, and be careful about brushing your hair—those stitches will be pretty tender for a few days.”

  “I’ll remember. Thank you.”

  With a friendly smile, the nurse left. There was no avoiding the burly detective now.

  “I thought you’d gone.” Nick’s only response was to pick up Annie’s black, knee-length coat off the chair beside him. “You don’t have to take care of me.”

  He shook the coat open and held it up for her to put on. “Then you don’t know me.”

  Maybe it was the bump on her head and exhaustion from being up all night, or maybe it was the unexpected glimpses of chivalry beneath Nick’s thorny exterior that made her surrender to the cryptic promise she heard in his voice. Feeling too physically drained and off her mental game to put up any kind of fight, she simply nodded and turned to slide her arms into the lined wool sleeves.

  If his hands lingered a moment to add another layer of warmth against her shoulders, Annie couldn’t be sure. Nick pulled away as quickly as she’d imagined the tender gesture, muttering a choice word under his breath as he turned toward the sound of raised voices coming from the waiting room. Annie followed him
out into the hallway where the commotion grew louder with every step.

  He paused for a moment before turning the corner to the E.R.’s check-in desk. “Ah, nuts. Brace yourself.”

  “For what?” What she’d thought was an argument she could now tell were several excited people, all talking at once. “What is that?”

  “My family.” Nick squared his shoulders and moved forward again. “Mom. Dad.”

  “Nicky!” The group of people clamoring at the receptionist’s counter turned as one and swarmed him. “Are you all right?”

  The dark-haired man who answered to Dad reached him first. “George got a call that you were going to the E.R. Are you hurt?”

  Butted aside by the flow of people surrounding Nick, Annie retreated to the wall to watch nearly a dozen concerned visitors hug him, squeeze his shoulder or shake his hand.

  “I’m fine.” Nick leaned in to kiss his mother’s cheek. “In one piece. I promise.”

  His mother clutched her hand to her heart. “Thank God it was a false alarm.”

  “Then why are we at the hospital?” That was the silver-haired man in the dark green stadium coat.

  “I had to bring a coworker in,” Nick explained.

  A petite woman with striking white hair went pale. “Not Spencer.”

  Nick chuckled. “Don’t worry, Grandma, he’s fine, too.”

  “Then who got hurt?”

  “Annie...” Nick nudged aside a younger version of

  himself—a brother, no doubt—and spotted her shrinking away from the chaos. “Annie?”

  “Oh, my goodness, look at her.” At Grandma’s pitying gasp, the swarm shifted course and moved toward Annie.

  “I’m Connie.”

  The white-haired woman was quickly joined by Nick’s mother. “Poor dear. I’m Trudy Fensom. Noah, get her a chair.”

  One of the brothers darted away. “I’m on it.”

  “What a bummer to spend your New Year’s Eve in the hospital,” a sister added, extending a hand to introduce herself. “I’m Natalie.”

  The family resemblance was strong in the Fensom family—dark hair, stocky shapes—the subtleties of maintaining a polite distance completely forgotten in their sudden concern for her. “I’m fine. Really.”