“Hey, Sarge.” Isabella’s pulse kicked faster at the seriousness in Sinclair’s already steely eyes. “You wanted to see me?”
He nodded in just one lift of his chin before sending his stare to the chair across from his desk. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
Oh God. Oh God. She’d worn an identical expression enough times for her heart to crank down like a rusty vise.
After all, no matter how often you delivered life-altering news to a person, you still couldn’t erase the dread of it from your face.
“Did something happen to Kellan? Is he alright?” She wrestled the words past her suddenly dust-dry lips. He wasn’t on shift today, but still…
“This isn’t about Kellan,” Sinclair said, with enough honesty in his voice that Isabella swayed in relief. “As far as I know, he’s just fine. But still, you should sit down.”
She did as asked, perching on the edge of the thinly cushioned chair a few feet in front of her boss. “Okay. Is there something wrong with a case?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He paused to hold up one hand. “Look, this might be nothing, so I don’t want you to get spun up here. But I also thought you should hear it from me.”
“Jesus, Sam.” It was rare that she—or anyone around here, really—went for somebody else’s first name, Sinclair’s least of all. Which just went to show how freaked out she was, even if she hadn’t realized it fully until right this second. “What’s going on? Just tell me, please.”
He looked at her, and then he said eight little words that would change her life forever.
“There may be a lead in Marisol’s murder.”
Kellan looked at the printouts, Post-it notes, and index cards covering every inch of his dining room table and pondered the merits of eloping.
“Okay,” Kylie said, examining the mess (a.k.a. the final seating arrangements) the way a drill instructor eagle-eyed new recruits. “I know we have to make a few last-minute changes, but I think most of this will work.”
Kellan shifted his gaze to his best friend, Devon Randolph, who just so happened to also be his brother-in-law. “Tell me again why we can’t just let everyone park themselves wherever they want to,” he said, but Devon shook his dark blond high and tight as if to warn Kellan not to ask questions.
Kylie’s arched brows hammered the sentiment home. “I know you and I don’t have a whole lot of family, but Isabella’s got enough for the two of you combined. If we don’t get these seating arrangements just right, things could get chaotic. Not to mention ugly.”
“Nothing’s going to get ugly,” Kellan said, grabbing a slice of Kylie’s homemade pizza from the tray on the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the cozy dining area where the three of them stood. Damn, she was an incredible chef. “My wedding is going to be chock-full of cops, firefighters, and bodyguards. If there’s anything we know how to take care of, it’s ugly.”
“Gotta admit, your brother has a point,” Devon said. Smart man that he was, he waited until Kylie had turned toward the open kitchen to give Kellan a fist bump in solidarity.
“Fine. You might be right.” She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, giving in to her smile as she added, “I just want this to be perfect for you guys.”
“It will be,” Kellan said between bites of pizza, and funny, he didn’t even have to think twice. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. Isabella and I are happy we’ll have everyone with us for the ceremony, and it’ll be great to celebrate with a nice party afterward. But I just want to marry her, you know? That’s what will make it perfect.”
Devon nodded, his eyes locked on Kylie for a long second before he looked at Kellan from the other side of the dining room table. God, the guy had come such a long way from the rough, gruff Army Ranger Kellan had once known.
“Yeah, dude,” Devon said, nearly under his breath. “I know exactly what you mean.”
A ball-busting answer was halfway between his brain and his mouth—he was happy Devon and Kylie were together, but hello, she was still his sister—when the unexpected sound of a key in the lock yanked his attention to the front door.
“Hey,” Kellan said, concern chasing his quick pop of happiness at the sight of Isabella on the threshold. “You’re home early.” It was barely one o’clock, for Chrissake. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m…” Lying. Kellan could see it in her eyes from a mile and a half away. “I just have a really bad headache. I’m sorry, I forgot you guys were going over the seating arrangements today.”
As if she sensed the same thing Kellan did, Kylie capped her bottle of water and scooped up the coat she’d hung over the back of a nearby dining room chair. “Actually, we’re all done and Devon and I were just headed out. I’ll take the printouts to triple-check them and make sure everything’s good to go to the event coordinator.” One quick grab had them in her hand on her way to the door. “Hope you lose that headache really soon.”
“Thanks.” Isabella nodded absently, kicking the unease in Kellan’s gut into fifth gear. He gave up a pair of economical goodbyes to Kylie and Devon, locking the door behind them before turning back to the spot where Isabella still stood in the open living space.
“Okay, what’s really going on?”
“Nothing, I…” She stopped. Closed her eyes. When she opened them a heartbeat later, they were full of tears that ripped at Kellan’s chest. “There’s a possible lead in Marisol’s murder case.”
Holy shit. “After twelve years?” he managed, his breath log-jamming in his windpipe. The case had dead-ended not long after Marisol’s funeral. He hadn’t been around then, of course, but Isabella had given him the full rundown when she’d first told him about her cousin’s rape and murder, not long after they’d gotten together. “How did you find out?”
“Maxwell and Sinclair were going over the case file on that kidnapping we had a couple weeks ago so they could send it to the D.A. You know, that custody battle where the dad snatched the kid from the mom?”
While sharing every gory detail of a case was a pretty strict no-no, Isabella still sometimes shared basic, no-names information with Kellan in a hey-how-was-your-day sort of way. “Yeah, I remember. But you guys closed that one quickly,” he said. They’d located the kid—safe and sound—in less than a shift, if he remembered right.
“We did,” Isabella said, her voice stony. “But when they went to enter the case report into the database, a string of other recent kidnappings popped up along with it, and Sinclair noticed that some of the details on one case in particular matched those from Marisol’s case.”
“Okay.” Kellan’s brain spun like a blender during a power surge. “Is the guy from this other case in custody?”
Isabella shook her head. Her tears breached her eyelids to spill over her face, and Kellan’s thumbs were on her cheeks before he even recognized his brain’s command to move.
“No,” she whispered. “But the details are all exactly the same. The girl was walking alone in the same part of Remington where Marisol was when she disappeared. She was missing for three days before…”
Kellan led Isabella over to the couch, and it was a true testament to how rattled she was that she let him without protest. “You don’t have to tell me all the details,” he said. Not that he didn’t want to hear them, especially if she needed to give the story air time, but… “I know this is hard for you.”
“Yes, but it’s happening, and I can’t ignore it.” Swiping at her face, she firmed up her expression before continuing. “The girl’s body was found three days after she disappeared. There’s strong evidence of sexual assault, although the autopsy’s not back yet to say definitively. Cause of death is listed as probable strangulation. The victim was fourteen.”
“Jesus.” Bile rose in the back of Kellan’s throat, capturing all the other, harsher swear words he wanted to launch. Fourteen? This guy needed to be found and castrated. Slowly.
“She was found in the laundry room of an apartment complex down
town, about twelve hours post mortem. That was four days ago. Maxwell and Sinclair caught it today.”
Kellan’s brows pulled down in confusion. “Wait. If the cases are so similar, how come nothing popped up in the database to connect them? Isn’t there an alert system for that?”
“There is,” Isabella agreed, slumping back against the couch cushions. “Well, there is now, anyway. But our database is only seven years old. The RPD is slowly adding old cases, but it takes time and resources, both of which are at a premium. There are hard copies of the reports and investigation notes, of course. But Marisol’s case file hasn’t made it into the database yet. Sinclair only caught it because he knows the details as well as I do.”
Although Kellan hated it, that did make sense. The RFD worked the same way with everything from incident reports to flat-out arsons. “So did Sinclair take this new kidnapping case?”
“No.” Isabella waited out the flare of surprise that must have been written all over his face before she continued. “Technically, he could. Homicide over at the Nineteenth has it right now, and their track record for solving crimes like this isn’t great. But it’s not terrible, either, and there’s no definite link between the cases other than matching M.O.s. The police never found a suspect in Marisol’s murder, let alone a match for the traces of DNA they managed to find in her underwear. The crime scene unit turned up damn little from the laundry room that could be definitively tied to this new murder, and the medical examiner’s initial report doesn’t show any DNA evidence at all. Plus, there’s a twelve-year gap between the two crimes.”
“That does leave a lot of maybes,” Kellan reluctantly agreed.
“And even more what-ifs. The whole thing is pretty much a speculation field day right now.” She paused for a deep breath, and Jesus, the look on her face just gutted him. “Sinclair doesn’t want me getting involved. He’s worried I’m too close to the emotional aspect of the case.”
Ah, hell. “He’s not entirely wrong. Surgeons don’t operate on their family members for the same reason, right? Because it’s too hard to be subjective? Maybe you are a little too close to this one.”
Kellan gentled the words as much as he could. Even the truth could sting like a sonofabitch, and the last thing he wanted to do right now—or ever—was hurt her. But Isabella surprised him by nodding in agreement.
“Of course I’m too close. She was my cousin. My best friend. As a cop, I know how dangerous it is to investigate a case with personal ties, especially ones that run this deep. But I promised to keep Marisol safe, Kellan. It was my job to take care of her.”
“Don’t.” Kellan’s pulse jumped. Isabella had carried around a ton of guilt over her cousin’s murder until just this past year. She’d come a long way toward being at peace with herself, but dredging up the case now could smash that peace like a wrecking ball. “Marisol’s murder wasn’t your fault, Isabella.”
“I know,” she said, automatically enough to chip away at Kellan’s unease. “But if this guy is out there, hurting girls again after twelve years, close or not, I need to do all that I can to stop him.”
“Sinclair told you not to touch this, didn’t he?”
Kellan knew the answer before he’d even let the question fully fly. No way would her salty, no-bullshit sergeant green-light her digging into this, especially if another unit had jurisdiction. Marisol’s murder had messed with Isabella for far too long. Hell, the guilt had fueled actions that had nearly cost her her job and her life last year.
“He did,” Isabella said.
But Kellan knew her all too well. “You’re not going to listen to him, are you?”
Her chin dropped toward her chest, the front of her dark green sweater lifting as she took a shaky inhale. “I don’t know if I can.”
He paused. Part of him—and not a small part, mind you—wanted to tell her what a spectacularly bad idea this was. Poking around in this case without permission was dangerous on a billion different levels, both physical and emotional. But Kellan also knew that right now, Isabella didn’t need a lecture. She didn’t need anyone to tell her this could go wrong, or hurt her, or maybe even amount to nothing.
Right now, what she needed was someone to have her back.
And dangerous or not, that someone was always going to be him.
“Okay,” Kellan said, his stare not budging from hers, even when her eyes went round and wide. “I guess you should start from the beginning, then. Let’s see what we can figure out.”
Chapter 4
Isabella stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket and tried to pretend she wasn’t doing major league origami with every rule in the book. She knew that looking into this case—even just as an observer, like Kellan had made her promise—was a bad idea in theory. She’d learned the hard way to trust her team and not stuff her feelings into the basement of her chest, and most of all, not to freelance on the job. But Marisol had been her family. Her responsibility. And someone was out there, preying on young women in the here-and-now.
She wasn’t going to jump in with both boots first and guns blazing. But she was a good cop, a smart cop. No way was she going to sit back and do absolutely nothing, either.
Not until she knew justice would be served. For this girl, and maybe even for Marisol.
“Hey,” Kellan said, his boots thumping over the sidewalk lining Marquette Boulevard as he closed the space between them to brush a kiss over her temple. “Glad you could get away to meet me for lunch.”
Isabella pressed her irony-laden smile between her lips. “If by ‘lunch’, you mean a covert recon mission to try and piece together what happened to Brittany Martin and figure out whether the same person who killed her also murdered my cousin, then me, too.”
“I say potato, you say recon mission. We’re just going for a walk, remember? But if it makes you feel any better about dodging Sinclair, I can take you out for a burger afterward.” Kellan fell into step beside her, and God, having him here while she worked through this was the only thing keeping her from falling apart right now.
“Nothing will make me feel better about dodging my boss, but it’ll be worth it when this case is solved. Even if the person who killed Brittany had nothing to do with Marisol’s murder,” she said, looping her arm through his.
He nodded as they walked down the block, dropping his voice to keep their conversation private. “Then let’s get to it. Were you able to turn up anything about the detectives who are investigating Brittany’s case?”
“Yeah, but I kind of wish I wasn’t.”
“That good, huh?” Kellan asked.
“Sadly, yes.” Isabella frowned, swiveling a gaze over their surroundings as they slowly walked. “Detectives Barton and Weiss are leading the investigation. We don’t work with the Nineteenth too much, but Sinclair mentioned this morning that he gave them a courtesy call to let them know about the similarities with Marisol’s case yesterday.”
“And?”
Her frown intensified. “And they pretty much gave him the Heisman.”
Kellan’s muscles tensed beneath his dark gray hoodie, not a lot, but it was enough to telegraph his displeasure. “I’m sure that went over well.”
“Sinclair didn’t seem thrilled when he told me,” Isabella agreed. “But he did say he got the impression it was more of a territorial pissing match than them blowing off the case, which means they’ll probably at least look into the similarities on their own.”
It wouldn’t be the first time another unit had gotten chippy with intelligence over jurisdiction. Especially since, if Barton and Weiss shared too much and Sinclair decided there was more than just an eerie coincidence between the two crimes, the sergeant had the juice to yank the case from them with little more than a “better luck next time”. Isabella knew he almost certainly wouldn’t, even if the cases did prove to be connected. But the homicide detectives didn’t, and most cops shared about as well as toddlers in dire need of a three-hour nap.
“We
ll, that’s not all bad, is it?” Kellan asked, bringing her back to the here-and-now of the sun-strewn sidewalk. “I mean, territorial isn’t great, but at least they want to find the guy who did this to Brittany.”
Isabella hedged. “Yes and no. I mean, of course it’s good that they want to catch this son of a bitch. But as mi abuelo likes to say, ‘wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first’.”
Kellan’s laugh warmed the chilly December air between them, keeping her grounded. “Your grandfather sounds like a no-nonsense kind of guy.”
“Let’s just say I come by my stubborn streak honestly,” she said. “Wanting to solve the case is one thing. Being good enough cops to actually do it is another.”
Stopping at the end of the block, she hung back, taking in the neat yet tightly packed brownstones, storefronts, and alleyways along both sides of the city street, most of which were festively decorated with wreaths or ribbons or lights that would surely kick on as soon as the sun began to set later. “Anyway, Maxwell told me that Weiss isn’t half-bad on his own, but Barton’s pretty much a dick weasel. He didn’t seem shocked that they wanted to hoard the details.”
“Great.” The corners of Kellan’s mouth pulled down to fully negate the word. “So we’re kind of flying blind here in terms of how seriously they’re taking this case and the possible connection to Marisol’s murder.”
“A little. But for now, all we’re doing is looking, remember?”
After another perusal of the street around them—which Kellan mirrored with the shrewd stare and intense observation skills he’d earned courtesy of the Army Rangers—they both began to walk again.
“So here’s the library where Brittany was last seen eight days ago.” Isabella pointed to the large brick building on the next block in front of them. The bones of the case had been in the file Sinclair had found online. He’d shared the details with her yesterday, and even though she’d had to couch things in hypotheticals and use a wheelbarrowful of air quotes, Isabella had shared them with Kellan last night. “She was working on a school project with two classmates. They both saw her leave at seventeen-hundred, and a text to her parents confirms that she was on her way at seventeen-oh-four.”
Forever Deep: A Station Seventeen novella Page 3
