In the pit of her stomach something was brewing. It felt like a longing, but she dismissed it as hunger. Food hadn’t been a priority by the time she’d awakened late this morning, and then her shower had been interrupted and Mrs. Gilbert arrived with that cat.
Cursing, she punched more keys on the keyboard. Something wasn’t adding up, or maybe she just couldn’t figure it out. Gingerly lifting the tattered file folder, she put it into her large purse. Shutting down her computer, she was grateful now for the lack of interest in her trip back to work. She left the narcotics division heading out of the building.
However, she was interrupted when she passed the meeting room midway between two departments. Double glass doors opened and people filed out. Detectives, plainclothes cops, and the chief of police walked by, all with sour looks on their faces. Something was up.
“Hey, Harper, what’re you doing here? Thought I heard you were UC.” Reed Sampson, a homicide detective with soft brown eyes and a killer smile, who’d asked her out too many times to remember, touched her elbow as he spoke.
“Hey, Sampson. Yeah, I was just there to see what else was going on and to follow a few leads I had on my case.” That was a lie. There were no leads. She couldn’t find anything on the guy, nothing except the feeling that he wasn’t all that he appeared. But that had really just become more pronounced in their last two encounters, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she was thinking along business or personal lines. “What’s happening?” she asked, nodding toward the line of men dispersing among the cubicles and toward the elevators.
“You haven’t heard? Probably not, since you’re on an assignment.” Reed nodded his head, directing her to his cubicle on the other side of the conference room.
Kalina really didn’t want to follow him, didn’t want to be in the enclosed space with him, knowing he’d try to hit on her once again. But she did want to know what was so important the chief of police was sitting in on a meeting on a Saturday afternoon. So she followed.
Dropping his folder, notepad, and pen on his desk, Reed hiked up his dress pants and sat. Kalina sat on the stool wedged into a corner across from him. “So what’s going on?”
“Two murders last night. SBFs, about your height and weight, sexually assaulted and ripped to shreds. Chief thinks there’s a connection to the senator and his daughter, who were both torn apart a few weeks back.”
Kalina remembered that case. Even if she hadn’t been a cop, it had been on the news for the first two weeks after the senator and his young daughter had gone missing. Their bodies had been mauled to the point where they had to make ID through the dental records. “Still no suspects on that one?” she asked.
Reed shook his head. “I’m with the chief on this one, it’s the same guy.”
“You think it’s a guy?” Kalina wasn’t so sure. She didn’t think it was a woman, but something about the pictures she’d seen of the senator and his daughter had made her think of something else. Something she’d sworn wasn’t true.
“You think a chick would do something like this?”
Reed was a nice guy, a nice dresser, a permanent fixture in the department. He was probably just the kind of guy she should be looking at to settle down with. But … not.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m narcs, remember.”
“That’s right,” he said, leaning back in his chair, flipping his tie over his shoulder as if that had some significant meaning. Other than to show her he was possibly partaking of too many donuts, she had no clue what that was. “You’re big time now, working with the DEA.”
The last was said with more than mild distaste. It was no secret that the local cops abhorred federal agents from any branch. Something about too much arrogance and too little street training. While federal agents—Kalina assumed—probably thought cops had too much time on their hands and didn’t know their ass from a hole in the wall. How she could play both sides she wasn’t sure, but it was a guess that made a lot of sense to her.
“I’m just working with them on this case.”
“You’re following that smooth criminal Roman Reynolds? Be careful of him,” Reed warned.
This was a conversation she definitely did not want to have with Reed. “It’s a job, Reed. Like all our others. So you have a list of possible suspects for these murders?” Changing the subject was the best course of action.
“Nah, these girls were nobodies. No family, no addresses, nothing.”
Just like her, Kalina thought with a pang to her chest. If not for her job, these women could have been her.
“So that means it’s not worth finding their killer?” Even to herself her tone sounded defensive. The surprised look on Reed’s face confirmed it.
“I didn’t say that. It just makes the pool of suspects that much deeper. If we had good background information, some type of friendships or connections, we’d have a starting point. At this stage all we know is that they were killed in the same manner.”
Kalina rubbed her palms up and down her thighs, willing herself to calm down. Suddenly she felt very edgy. “I see what you mean. Maybe I could pull some of my contacts, see if they’ve heard anything on the streets.”
Reed’s smile was slow. “You’d do that for me, baby?” he asked, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and reaching for her hands.
With an easy movement she lifted her hands, putting one up to her head to smooth down the sides of her hair while the other rested on the desk. “I could ask around to help get a lead on the case.”
“But aren’t you working on something right now with the feds?”
Hearing about the brutal murders had turned her attention from that, even though she wasn’t a homicide detective.
“Look, thanks for the offer,” Reed said his eyes having a hard time staying focused on her face. Obviously the small hint of cleavage that showed in her dress was more appealing. “But I think I’ve got this under control.”
She nodded. “Okay.” Sure, he had this under control, just like the other twenty-something murder cases still unsolved on his desk. Reed was definitely not the top detective in the homicide department; something about him being lazy and more than a little disheartened by the crime he’d seen in his years on the force took away any chance of that title. Still, he kept his job, and they kept giving him new cases. No wonder crime was steadily on the rise.
“Hope you catch this guy,” she said, standing and picking up her large purse with her own files and information inside.
Reed stood, too, this time grabbing her wrist. “We should really get together outside work. How about dinner?”
He was taller than her, but not taller than Rome. His slim build looked athletic and capable but didn’t exude the strength and dominance that Rome’s did. And she was losing her everlasting mind for thinking about a man who drove her absolutely crazy.
“Ah, that’s probably not a good idea,” she found herself saying. “We work together, remember?”
“Actually we don’t,” he said rubbing his fingers up her bare arm. The motion irritated her, scraped against something raw inside. “We’re in different departments and you seem to be moving on to bigger and better things.”
She sensed he was talking about the DEA again and wondered why he kept mentioning that. Probably jealousy. There was a lot of that in the department. But she was the last person anybody should feel jealous of.